How does Washington perceive Bangladesh? Although it is difficult to be certain, we can develop some conjectures about it based on the available pieces of evidence.
First, it can be gleaned from the US State Department documents such as memos or position papers or the statements made by the White House. Second, the statements of American diplomats located both in Washington and Dhaka can give us some clues. Finally, the opinions expressed by the US public diplomats such as Congress members, senators, different caucuses, or think tanks engaged in promoting American ideologies on democracy, freedom of expression, and human rights can provide valuable evidence in this regard.
The third source seems to be the most potent for our purposes because the public diplomats dispatched to Bangladesh by Washington in recent months have given us ample clues to guess how the US government views Bangladesh.
The bipartisan two-member team of the Congress that visited Bangladesh to know about the political situation in the country and the plight of the Rohingya refugees in its meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen revealed that they were told that “Bangladesh is a lawless society where the violation of human rights is rampant, and the country has fallen into the trap of China.”
Like any other country, Bangladesh experiences incidents of human rights violations from time to time, but it would be a glaring exaggeration to call Bangladesh a lawless society. But has Bangladesh fallen into the trap of China? What is the evidence to draw such conclusions?
In fact, during Sheikh Hasina’s rule, Bangladesh practiced a balanced foreign policy maintaining an equally important relationship with China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the US. Before Hasina’s regime, the other governments were more inclined towards China and indifferent to India.
Sheikh Hasina’s government religiously pursued Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s foreign policy which was codified as “friendship to all and malice to none” and forged alliances with foreign countries across the board intending to secure leverage for Bangladesh’s economic upliftment.
If you look at the external debt scenario of Bangladesh, multilateral lenders dominate. The World Bank and ADB stand as the two largest lenders in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s debt to the World Bank and ADB stood at 36% and 23% respectively by 2022 (see the Debt Bulletins published by the government).
Among the bilateral lenders, Japan is the leading force. Bangladesh owes 19% of its external debt to Japan. Russian and Chinese loans to Bangladesh stand at 7% each. As a rational actor, in taking loans from foreign sources, Bangladesh assesses the economic viability of the projects.
The narrative of lawlessness and the Chinese trap are nothing but the reflection of Washington’s misperception about Bangladesh. The question then arises: What contributed to the creation of this misperception?
In recent years Bangladesh has been a victim of negative public diplomacy. We can document many instances of that. First, legal actions against Nobel Laureate Professor Yunus have been perceived by a section of the US power lobbies as acts of harassment and persecution. They are either not aware of the allegations against Professor Yunus or hesitant to accept them as true.
He is alleged to have collaborated with the military-backed nonpartisan government in 2007 to become the head of the government by driving key politicians including Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia out of politics. He wanted to remain the managing director of the Grameen Bank ignoring the age limit (60 years) for the position.
Yunus evaded paying taxes on the donations he made to three trusts such as Professor Muhammad Yunus Trust, Yunus Family Trust, and Yunus Centre in the tax years of 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 which was required under the Gift Tax Act, 1990. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) asked him to pay, but Professor Yunus went to court challenging NBR’s actions against him. He lost and eventually paid about TK124.67 million in taxes.
Yunus’s friendship with many powerful actors in Washington has been successful in framing him as a victim of the Hasina government.
Second, the section of the Bangladeshi diaspora that is sympathetic to the opposition BNP and the Islamist party Jamat-e-Islami cast the Hasina government in a negative light. Third, the anti-Hasina and anti-Awami League forces have been successful in manipulating some of the Congress members to take an anti-Hasina stand. For example, a pro-BNP man holding a press card regularly attends press briefings at the White House and the State Department and asks provocative and controversial questions about the activities of the incumbent government in Bangladesh.
The pro-BNP and Jamat-e-Islami forces are also connected with different lobby groups in Washington and caucuses at Congress. At a recent hearing, conducted by Tom Lentos, Human Rights Commission at Congress, panelists called upon the US government to impose more sanctions on Bangladesh for what they said was the violation of human rights and continuous disrespect of Professor Yunus. The hearing was one-sided because it did not include anyone to talk about the other side of the story.
Fourth, we have an NGO-based civil society that presents things about the country in a way that would secure their foreign funds. Finally, American diplomats or public diplomats visiting or staying in Bangladesh listen to a particular section of the NGO-based civil society. Lately, the media published the names of the civil society representatives with whom the bipartisan Congress team met. Reading the names in different newspapers and online news portals, anyone conversant in Bangladesh politics would not hesitate to conclude that the Congress members sat with people who opposed Sheikh Hasina and her government.
If Washington continues only to listen to the anti-Hasina and anti-Awami League elements and make decisions based on that, the Dhaka-Washington relationship will get complicated. Consequently, Dhaka will look for allies in the anti-American axis. It is aware of the significance of Bangladesh’s strategic geographical location and the geopolitical proclivities of the major world powers.
Dr AJM Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Dhaka.
