The quest for a piece of the Bangladesh pie
SHEIKH Mujibur Rahman’s legacy has been consigned to history. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has taken over after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. What next for Bangladesh? Will it be a civil war or a period of prolonged instability that provides a fertile ground for foreign operators to play the ‘Great Game East’ in South Asia? Indeed, the game has been going on within for decades, with rival political players vying for power through any means — elections, mass uprisings on the streets or the assassination of Presidents (Mujibur and Gen Ziaur Rahman). Regrettably, from democracy to dictatorship or a fundamentalist religious state, Bangladesh has seen it all in the past half a century since its birth.
In a throwback to the bloody Partition of British India in 1947, Muslim-majority Pakistan saw itself being dismembered in 1971 to give birth to another Muslim-majority but profoundly secular, liberal and linguistic Bangladesh. In 1947, the British were the sole foreign player. In 1971, during Pakistan’s civil war, China, the US, the USSR and India were the four direct actors and the rest of the West was an indirect factor.
The lesson of history, however, is seldom learnt by the fighters, even if they chase a mirage at the risk of their territory being inexorably and inevitably parcelled out. Pages of history are replete with instances of internal political wars turning into an alluring arena for outsiders.
Today, four foreign players are again direct stakeholders in the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the turbulent nation of Bangladesh: India, the US, China and Pakistan — all with different purposes, though. Resultantly, Bangladesh has to reckon with and reconcile itself to the fact that none of the four is likely to give up its respective strategic interests as long as this young nation burns.
Three of these four nations (the US, China and Pakistan) do not share a border with Bangladesh. It’s only neighbouring India whose fortunes are intertwined with the rise and fall, prosperity or poverty of Bangladesh. Hence, the biggest stakeholder in that country is indisputably India; the leaders in Dhaka need to recognise that.
Bangladesh juts into India as its underbelly, directly or indirectly affecting the demography of 12 states (‘seven sisters’ of the North-East, Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha). The nearly 30-month-old Ukraine war owes it to the West’s NATO-EU combine’s determined expansion bid through Kyiv to Moscow’s indisputable territorial underbelly. Russia’s fear of being shrunk and robbed of its resource-rich land is a supreme factor in the bloody intra-Slav fratricidal fight leading to the devastating Black Sea-Balkan battle.
India already faces a two-front war owing to the Sino-Pak axis stretching from Karakoram to Kameng and beyond to Walong. Now, stretched further because of the Bangladesh crisis, there will be greater pressure on troops along the McMahon Line to Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh, thereby resulting in a colossal rise in costs. And that’s exactly what China is up to: to bleed the Indian economy without firing a shot.
Chinese stratagems in Bangladesh have been going on since the days of Gen HM Ershad in the 1980s. So much so that today virtually all main combat ships of Dhaka are built by China’s Wuhan Shipyard (Ming-class sub) and frigates and corvettes by Hudong Shipyard (Shanghai) and Wuchang Shipyard, Wuhan. The Belt and Road Initiative, too, has helped China make deep inroads into dual-purpose ports with the reported setting up of the PLA Navy base in the near future. No wonder the US had sought Hasina’s nod for a proposed naval base at St Martin’s Island off Cox’s Bazar, which is adjacent to Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state’s coastline. The refusal of Hasina to set up a naval base certainly didn’t endear her to the US; it upset Washington’s calculations to keep an eye on the Bay of Bengal trio of Dhaka, Yangon and New Delhi. The Chinese quest for at least two ports from Chittagong, Chalna, Khulna, Mongla, Barisal and Cox’s Bazar, too, didn’t amuse America.
Thus, Bangladesh today has become a frontline state for a conflict between overlapping interests of Beijing and Washington. Lately, the US also has been resentful of India’s refusal to take sides in the Ukraine war as Delhi displayed her ‘strategic autonomy’. For the US, any mass movement against Hasina, a friend of India, understandably wouldn’t have had been bad news at all. Similarly, Dhaka’s reduced dependence on Delhi would certainly make China happy. What’s the result? Both the US and China are fierce rivals in Dhaka, but both are happy at India’s discomfiture after Hasina’s exit and the arrival of the perceived anti-Hasina and anti-India ruling class in Bangladesh.
Now, how does Pakistan fit into this Bangladesh game of the giants? Well, one just has to visit the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad, where the ‘revenge’ mantra is inculcated into every trainee officer over India’s role in the 1971 war and the humiliation suffered by the Pakistan army in Dhaka. The idea is to create a permanent state of war without a direct fight — a war of terror to bleed India with a thousand cuts.
Thus has begun the ‘Great Game East’ in which India has got entangled. Pakistan, the US and China would all be happy to see post-Hasina Bangladesh in a prolonged state of instability. The prospect of more nations getting involved in the quest for a piece of the Dhaka pie has increased manifold. Hence, the question: is Hasina’s departure from Bangladesh a prelude to a fresh deluge or a new chapter in the ‘Great Game East’ in South Asia?
