Last week Bangladesh was hit with a political storm that brought down its government. Mass protests against the democratically elected government led to the abrupt resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, who fled the country to safety in the friendly neighbor India. Not many suspected at first whether there was any foreign hand in this political earthquake in Bangladesh. But now, Sheikh Hasina has made a bombshell revelation: the Biden administration had the key role in ousting her.
Over the weekend, Sheikh Hasina told India’s daily The Economic Times that she would have stayed in power if she had agreed to surrender the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and given America control over the Bay of Bengal. The former Prime Minister said:
“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 the people of my land, please do not be manipulated by radicals.”
On Sunday (August 11), Newsable Asianet News cited intelligence sources that were reported by CNN-News18 stating that both the US and UK played important roles in the crisis that led to Sheikh Hasina’s resignation. The story wrote:
It is reportedly said that the US fabricated concerns about election fairness and imposed sanctions on Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) over human rights abuses as part of a broader geopolitical strategy.
Adding details to indicate the larger political goal behind such involvement in Bangladesh’s unrest, the report suggests that the plan means to drag India into conflict with its neighbors, namely Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and China. It also claims that Pakistani intelligence is “playing a significant role in this complex situation.”
The American mainstream news media has remained quiet on Sheikh Hasina’s statement. However foreign media has published it and put it in perspective of relevant details. RT (Russia Today) reported that over the past months, a number of Bangladeshi officials claimed to have knowledge of US proposals seeking to lease Saint Martin Island, which were all refused by Sheikh Hasina’s government. Sheikh Hasina was also cited saying that “white men,” by which she meant Americans, met with her before the previous election and tried to persuade her to let them build an air base on Saint Martin Island.
Sheikh Hasina’s revelation about the Biden administration’s pursuit of military presence by the Bay of Bengal comes at a time when the political and military tensions in the nearby Middle East are increasingly on the rise with fears of a large-scale war impending between Israel and Iran and their allies. The U.S. military bases in Syria have already come under attacks allegedly from the Iranian side after Israel carried out multiple strikes against Iran and its allies in the Arabian Gulf. At the same time, the U.S. military has been kicked out of Niger and Chad this year by the governments of the African nations.