Probing US Regime-Change in Pakistan & Bangladesh
August 22, 2024
Jeffrey D. Sachs says the U.N. should investigate the charges that Imran Khan and Sheik Hasina have leveled against Washington.
Mass victory rally on an elevated expressway in Dhaka, Bangladesh, after Sheikh Hasina’s resignation on Aug. 5. (Md Joni Hossain, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams
Two former leaders of major South Asian countries have reportedly accused the United States of covert regime change operations to topple their governments.
One of the leaders, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, languishes in prison, on a perverse conviction that proves Khan’s assertion. The other leader, former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, fled to India following a violent coup in her country.
Their grave accusations against the U.S., as reported in the world media, should be investigated by the U.N., since if true, the U.S. actions would constitute a fundamental threat to world peace and to regional stability in South Asia.
The two cases seem to be very similar. The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
In the case of Pakistan, Donald Lu, assistant secretary of state for South Asia and Central Asia, met with Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., on March 7, 2022.
Ambassador Khan immediately wrote back to his capital, conveying Lu’s warning that PM Khan threatened U.S.-Pakistan relations because of Khan’s “aggressively neutral position” regarding Russia and Ukraine.
[Related: Craig Murray: The Silence on Imran Khan]
The ambassador’s March 7 note (technically a diplomatic cypher) quoted Assistant Secretary Lu as follows:
“I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.”
The very next day, members of the parliament took procedural steps to oust PM Khan.
Khan at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in June 2019. (Kremlin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
On March 27, PM Khan brandished the cypher, and told his followers and the public that the U.S. was out to bring him down. On April 10, PM Khan was thrown out of office as the Parliament acceded to the U.S. threat.
We know this in detail because of Ambassador Khan’s cypher, exposed by PM Khan and brilliantly documented by Ryan Grim of The Intercept, including the text of the cypher. Absurdly and tragically, PM Khan languishes in prison in part over espionage charges, linked to his revealing the cypher.
Bangladesh Coup
The U.S. appears to have played a similar role in the recent violent coup in Bangladesh. PM Hasina was ostensibly toppled by student unrest, and fled to India when the Bangladeshi military refused to prevent the protestors from storming the government offices. Yet there may well be much more to the story than meets the eye.
According to press reports in India, PM Hasina is claiming that the U.S. brought her down.
Specifically, she says that the U.S. removed her from power because she refused to grant the U.S. military facilities in a region that is considered strategic for the U.S. in its “Indo-Pacific Strategy” to contain China.
While these are second-hand accounts by the Indian media, they track closely several speeches and statements that Hasina has made over the past two years.
On May 17, the same Assistant Secretary Lu who played a lead role in toppling PM Khan, visited Dhaka to discuss the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy among other topics.
Days later, Sheikh Hasina reportedly summoned the leaders of the 14 parties of her alliance to make the startling claim that a “country of white-skinned people” was trying to bring her down, ostensibly telling the leaders that she refused to compromise her nation’s sovereignty.
Like Imran Khan, PM Hasina had been pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality, including constructive relations not only with the U.S. but also with China and Russia, much to the deep consternation of the U.S. government.
Sheik Hasina at the 2019 summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Baku. (President.az, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
To add credence to Hasina’s charges, Bangladesh had delayed signing two military agreements that the U.S. had pushed very hard since 2022, indeed by none other than the former Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the neocon hardliner with her own storied history of U.S. regime-change operations.
One of the draft agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington. The government of PM Hasina was clearly not enthusiastic to sign it.
The U.S. is by far the world’s leading practitioner of regime-change operations, yet the U.S. flatly denies its role in covert regime change operations even when caught red-handed, as with Nuland’s infamous intercepted phone call in late January 2014 planning the U.S.-led regime change operation in Ukraine.
It is useless to appeal to the U.S. Congress, and still less the executive branch, to investigate the claims by PM Khan and PM Hasina. Whatever the truth of the matter, they will deny and lie as necessary.
UN Role
U.N. staff and delegates at U.N. headquarters ahead of Security Council meeting on peacebuilding and sustaining peace in March. (UN Photo/Manuel Elías)
This is where the U.N. should step in. Covert regime change operations are blatantly illegal under international law (notably the Doctrine of Non-Intervention, as expressed for example in U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2625, 1970), and constitute perhaps the greatest threat to world peace, as they profoundly destabilize nations, and often lead to wars and other civil disorders.
The U.N. should investigate and expose covert regime change operations, both in the interests of reversing them, and preventing them in the future.
The U.N. Security Council is of course specifically charged under Article 24 of the U.N. Charter with “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
When evidence arises that a government has been toppled through the intervention or complicity of a foreign government, the U.N. Security Council should investigate the claims.
In the cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the U.N. Security Council should seek the direct testimony of PM Khan and PM Hasina in order to evaluate the evidence that the U.S. played a role in the overthrow of the governments of these two leaders.
Each, of course, should be protected by the U.N. for giving their testimony, so as to protect them from any retribution that could follow their honest presentation of the facts. Their testimony can be taken by video conference, if necessary, given the tragic ongoing incarceration of PM Khan.
The U.S. might well exercise its veto in the U.N. Security Council to prevent such a investigation. In that case, the U.N. General Assembly can take up the matter, under U.N. Resolution A/RES/76/, which allows the U.N. General Assembly to consider an issue blocked by veto in the U.N. Security Council.
The issues at stake could then be assessed by the entire membership of the U.N.. The veracity of the U.S. involvement in the recent regime changes in Pakistan and Bangladesh could then be objectively analyzed and judged on the evidence, rather than on mere assertions and denials.
The U.S. engaged in at least 64 covert regime change operations during 1947-1989, according to documented research by Lindsey O’Rourke, political science professor at Boston Collage, and several more that were overt (e.g. by U.S.-led war).
It continues to engage in regime-change operations with shocking frequency to this day, toppling governments in all parts of the world.
It is wishful thinking that the U.S. will abide by international law on its own, but it is not wishful thinking for the world community, long suffering from U.S. regime change operations, to demand their end at the United Nations.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/22/p ... angladesh/
The US & Hasina’s Ouster in BangladeshAugust 22, 2024
India is now flanked on the west and the east by two unfriendly regimes that are under U.S. influence, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar.
Protesters hold victory march in Dhaka after Sheikh Hasina’s resignation on Aug. 5. (Rayhan9d, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
By M.K. Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
The exclusive report in the Aug. 11 Economic Times carrying Sheikh Hasina’s first remarks after her ouster from power must have come as a slap on the face of the nincompoops in India who are waxing eloquently about developments in her country, Bangladesh, as a stand-alone democracy moment in regional politics.
Hasina told ET,
“I resigned, so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies. They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it, I resigned from premiership. I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal. I beseech to the people of my land, ‘Please do not allow to be manipulated by radicals.’”
#LeadStoryOnET | #Hasina alleges #US role in ouster, says she was #dethroned over sovereignty of #StMartinIslandhttps://t.co/5m3KNaspPV
— Economic Times (@EconomicTimes) August 11, 2024
The ET report, citing Awami League sources, implied that the hatchet man of the colour revolution in Bangladesh is none other than Donald Lu, the incumbent assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs who visited Dhaka in May.
This is credible enough. A background check on Lu’s string of postings gives away the story.
This Chinese-American “diplomat” served as a political officer in Peshawar (1992 to 1994); special assistant to Ambassador Frank Wisner (whose family lineage as operatives of the Deep State is well-known) in Delhi (1996-1997); subsequently, as the deputy chief of mission in Delhi from 1997-2000 (during which his portfolio included Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations), inheriting the job, curiously enough, from Robin Raphel, whose reputation as India’s bête noire is still in living memory — C.I.A. analyst, lobbyist and “expert” on Pakistan affairs.
Indeed, Lu visited Bangladesh in mid-May and met with senior government officials and civil society leaders. And shortly after his visit, the U.S. announced sanctions against then Bangladesh Army chief General Aziz Ahmed for what Washington termed his involvement in “significant corruption.”
After his Dhaka visit, Lu told Voice of America openly,
“Promoting democracy and human rights in Bangladesh remains a priority for us. We will continue to support the important work of civil society and journalists and to advocate for democratic processes and institutions in Bangladesh, as we do in countries around the world…
“We [the U.S.] were outspoken in our condemnation of the violence that marred the election cycle [in January] and we have urged the government of Bangladesh to credibly investigate incidents of violence and hold perpetrators accountable. We will continue to engage on these issues…”
Lu addressing State Department employees in 2022. (State Department, Freddie Everett/ Public domain)
Lu played a similar proactive role during his past assignment in Kyrgyzstan (2003-2006) which culminated a colour revolution. Lu specialised in fuelling and masterminding colour revolutions, which led to regime changes in Albania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan (in the ouster of Imran Khan).
Sheikh Hasina’s disclosure could not have come as surprise to the Indian intelligence. In the run-up to the elections in Bangladesh in January, the Russian Foreign Ministry openly alleged that U.S. diplomacy was changing tack and planning a series of events to destabilise the situation in Bangladesh in the post-election scenario,
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement in Moscow,
“On December 12-13, in a number of areas of Bangladesh, opponents of the current government blocked road traffic, burned buses, and clashed with the police. We see a direct connection between these events and the inflammatory activity of Western diplomatic missions in Dhaka. In particular, US Ambassador P Haas, which we already discussed at the briefing on November 22.
Haas, on right, presenting his credentials to Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid at Bangabhaban, the presidential palace, on March 15, 2022. (U.S. Embassy Dhaka, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
“There are serious reasons to fear that in the coming weeks an even wider arsenal of pressure, including sanctions, may be used against the government of Bangladesh, which is undesirable to the West. Key industries may come under attack, as well as a number of officials who will be accused without evidence of obstructing the democratic will of citizens in the upcoming parliamentary elections on January 7, 2024.
“Unfortunately, there is little chance that Washington will come to its senses and refrain from yet another gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. We are confident, however, that despite all the machinations of external forces, the issue of power in Bangladesh will ultimately be decided by the friendly people of this country, and no one else.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the Pentagon on Sept. 26, 2022. (DoD/Alexander Kubitza)
Moscow and Beijing have nonetheless taken a scrupulously correct stance of non-interference. True to Russian pragmatism, Moscow’s Ambassador to Bangladesh Alexander Mantytsky noted that his country “will cooperate with any leader and government elected by the people of Bangladesh who is ready for equal and mutually respectful dialogue with Russia.”
That said, both Russia and China must be worried about U.S. intentions. Also, they cannot but be skeptical about the shape of things to come, given the abysmal record of U.S. client regimes catapulted to power through colour revolutions.
Unlike Russia, which has economic interests in Bangladesh and is a stakeholder in the creation of a multipolar world order, the security interests of China and India are going to be directly affected if the new regime in Dhaka fails to deliver and the country descends into economic crisis and lawlessness as a failed state.
It is a moot point, therefore, whether this regime change in Dhaka masterminded by Washington is “India-centric” or not. The heart of the matter is that today, India is flanked on the west and the east by two unfriendly regimes that are under U.S. influence.
And this is happening at a juncture when signs are plentiful that the government’s independent foreign policies and stubborn adherence to strategic autonomy has upset the U.S.’ Indo-Pacific strategy.
The paradox is, the colour revolution in Bangladesh was set in motion within a week of the ministerial level Quad meeting in Tokyo, which was, by the way, a hastily-arranged U.S. initiative too. Possibly, the Indian establishment was lulled into a sense of complacency?
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy reached out to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar with a phone call on Aug. 8 coinciding with the appointment of the interim government in Dhaka, which the U.K. has welcomed while also urging for “a peaceful pathway to an inclusive democratic future” for Bangladesh — much as the people of that country deserve “accountability” [emphasis added]”
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Tammy outside the prime minister’s office in London on July 6. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
India is keeping mum. The only way Bangladesh can figure a way out of the foxhole is through an inclusive democratic process going forward.
But the appointment, ostensibly at the students’ recommendation, of a U.S.-educated lawyer as the new chief justice of the Supreme Court in Dhaka is yet another ominous sign of Washington tightening its grip.
Against this geopolitical backdrop, a recent commentary in the Chinese daily Global Times, “China-India relations easing, navigating new realities“ gives some food for thought.
It spoke of the imperative for India and China “to create a new kind of relationship that reflects their status as major powers… Both countries should welcome and support each other’s presence in their respective neighbouring regions.”
Or else, the commentary underscored, “the surrounding diplomatic environment for both countries will be difficult to improve.”
The regime change in Bangladesh bears testimony to this new reality.
The bottom line is that while on the one hand, Indians bought into the U.S. narrative that they are a “counterweight to China,” in reality, the U.S. has begun exploiting India-China tensions to keep them apart with a view to advance its own geopolitical agenda of regional hegemony.
Delhi should take a strategic overview of where its interests would lie in this paradigm shift, as the usual way of thinking about or doing something in our neighbourhood is brusquely replaced by a new and different experience that Washington has unilaterally imposed.
What we may have failed to comprehend is that the seeds of the new paradigm were already present within the existing one.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/22/t ... angladesh/
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President of the Workers’ Party of Bangladesh Rashed Khan Menon arrested
Rashed Khan Menon was arrested on Thursday in what is widely seen as part of a broader crackdown against allies of the ousted government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
August 22, 2024 by Abdul Rahman
Source: Workers Party of Bangladesh/Facebook
Veteran Bangladeshi left leader Rashed Khan Menon (81) was arrested in Dhaka on Thursday, August 22. Menon is the president of the Workers’ Party of Bangladesh (WPB) and served as a member of the country’s recently dissolved parliament. The news comes after a recent attack on the party’s premises.
The exact charges against Menon have yet to be made public by the police, but it is widely speculated that his arrest is part of a broader crackdown against members and allies of the former government led by ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The WPB was part of a 14-party alliance led by Hasina’s Awami League during the elections held in January this year, where Menon was also elected.
He was the sole representative of the WPB in the parliament. He had served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Education and as a minister in the government led by Hasina between 2014 and 2018.
An interim government led by economist Muhammad Yunus was sworn in on August 8, following Hasina’s resignation and departure from the country amid widespread protests against her administration. These protests, initially sparked by student demands for reforms in the government job quota system, were supported by the WPB.
The protests escalated into violence in the last weeks of July following a crackdown by the former government. This unrest attracted various groups, including religious extremists like Jamaat-e-Islami, and led to the targeting of public property and attacks on members of the Awami League and other ruling alliance parties. In the weeks that followed, clashes between protesters and security forces resulted in hundreds of deaths.
A significant number of murder charges have been filed against Hasina, who is currently residing in India, as well as against several members of her former cabinet. In addition, members of the Awami League have been killed by mobs. Several former ministers and party members have been arrested.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/08/22/ ... -arrested/
