Civil war economy hits Myanmar garment workers


By AFP
November 20, 2024

A civil war is devastating Myanmar, but thousands of garment workers in the country still churn out clothing for brands like Adidas and H&M - Copyright AFP/File Ye Aung THU

As civil war pounds Myanmar’s economy and drives up prices, garment worker Wai Wai often starts her shift making clothes for international brands on an empty stomach.

The orders she and thousands of others churn out for big names including Adidas, H&M and others bring in billions of dollars in export earnings for Myanmar.

It is a rare bright spot in an economy crippled by the military’s 2021 coup and subsequent slide into civil war.

But for 12 hours of sewing clothes for export to China and Europe in a bleak industrial suburb of Yangon, Wai Wai earns just over $3 a day, which has to cover rent, food and clothes.

It must also stretch to supporting her parents in Rakhine state at the other end of the country, where conflict between the military and ethnic rebels has wrecked the economy and driven food prices up.

With times so hard, Wai Wai “decided to mostly skip breakfast” to save extra money, she told AFP, asking to use a pseudonym.

“Sometimes we just have leftover rice from the night before and save money, because if we use money for breakfast, there will be less money to transfer to our family.”

In a nearby factory, Thin Thin Khine and her two sisters work 12 hours a day sewing uniforms for a Myanmar company and earn a monthly salary of around 350,000 Myanmar kyat.

That’s about $165 according to the official exchange rate set by the junta of just over 2,000 kyat to the dollar.

On the open market, a greenback can fetch around 4,500 kyat.

“All my sisters are working, but there is no extra money at all,” she said.

“In the past, we could buy two or three new items of clothing every month, but now we can’t afford to buy new clothes, cosmetics or things for our personal care.”



– Lights out –



Since the coup, Zara owner Inditex, Marks and Spencer and others have left Myanmar, citing the difficulties of operating amid the turmoil.

Others such as Adidas, H&M and Danish company Bestseller have stayed, for now.

Adidas told AFP it worked closely with its suppliers in Myanmar to safeguard workers’ rights, while H&M said it was gradually phasing out its operations in the country.

Estimates of the apparel industry’s export earnings vary.

Myanmar’s commerce ministry said exports were worth more than $3 billion in the past financial year.

But the European Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar said export earnings were higher, surging from $5.7 billion in 2019 to $7.6 billion in 2022 — with more than half of exports going to the bloc.

The European body said the rise in Myanmar exports was helped by low labour costs compared to Cambodia and China, along with trade preferences granted by the EU and United States.

Keeping the factories running is a challenge.

In May, the junta said the national electricity grid was meeting about half of the country’s daily electricity needs.

To keep the lights on and the machines spinning, factory owners rely on expensive generators — themselves vulnerable to the regular diesel shortages that plague Yangon.

“The working situation right now is like we invest more money and get less profits,” said small factory owner Khin Khin Wai.

Cotton spindles have more than doubled in price from 18 cents to 50 cents, she said.

“Our lives here are not progressing year by year, they are falling apart,” she said.

Wai Wai’s factory supplies Danish clothing brand Bestseller.

A Bestseller spokesman told AFP that sourcing from Myanmar was “complex” and the company “continuously assessed” the situation, publishing regular reports on its operations in the country.

According to its September report, “on average” workers at Myanmar factories supplying it were paid a daily wage of 10,000-13,000 kyat ($5-6.50 at the official rate), including bonuses and overtime.

– Crackdown –

Abuses in the sector have spiked since the military took power, rights groups say.

This month, Swiss-based union federation IndustriALL Global Union said the junta had banned unions and arrested union leaders.

“There are widespread, comprehensive reports on the extensive violations of workers’ rights,” IndustriALL general secretary Atle Hoie said in a statement.

AFP has sought comment from the junta about conditions in the industry.

The latest concern is a conscription law enforced from February to shore up the military’s depleted ranks.

In its most recent report on Myanmar, Bestseller said two workers at factories that supply it had been drafted between March and September of this year.

Women are included in the draft, although the junta has said it will not recruit them for now.

For migrant workers like Wai Wai who do not have the means to pay bribes to avoid any draft, it is a huge worry.

“I am full of fear about how I will face it if I am called up for conscription,” Wai Wai said.

 

Kiribati Has Benefitted from Abolishing Its Military

by Richard Westra / November 20th, 2024

David Swanson asked me to write about Kiribati after I wrote to him to point out Costa Rica is not the only “full-fledged and totally independent country to be entirely demilitarised.” Kiribati, and other small countries I suspect, have no military. In Kiribati’s case this was a deliberate decision taken by the first President and Government of Kiribati as it was becoming Independent in 1979. Like Costa Rica it has almost certainly benefitted from that foundational decision. Many other newly independent ex British colonies suffered from coups and military rule as a result of the British policy of promoting nationhood on the British model: Westminster type parliament, independent judiciary, and a military force. It was interesting interviewing Sir Ieremia Tabai, the first President and a leading campaigner at the time when it was an issue, stating that the motivation was heavily economic – we are a small country with very little money so we can’t go wasting it on buying guns. If only more leaders would adhere to such basic commonsense!

But first of all a bit of an introduction to Kiribati, as most people have never heard of us and even fewer know much about us. Kiribati sits right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean but tending to the Western side. It is the only country in the world with a claim to be in all four hemispheres, north, south, east and west, spanning as it does the Equator and the 180 meridian, the International Date Line. There are 33 islands spread over 3000kms from west to east along the Equator. The population is currently 130,000 and rising fast, with more than half living in the capital Tarawa. The population is over 90% ethnically homogenous Micronesian, I-Kiribati, with its own language and unique culture. Kiribati dance is a unique cultural form and is central in the culture, an integral part of every occasion from the opening of Parliament to weddings, birthdays, and public holidays. It is one of the main ways in which the culture preserves itself, the Kiribati diaspora using it as an excuse to come together wherever they are and teach it to the children.

Current revenue is predominantly from fishing licences for the right to fish in Kiribati’s vast Exclusive Economic Zone, mainly tuna. The country is very democratic with 45 MPs elected from all the islands who then choose Presidential candidates from amongst their number and these then go up for election by the whole country. The President, who sits for 4 years, barring a vote of no confidence, then chooses a Cabinet from amongst their supporters. The country is now on its fifth President in 45 years. Presidents can have a maximum of three terms. Despite being classified by the UN as a Least Developed State Kiribati has free universal education and health provision, a form of Universal Basic Income, state provision for disabled people, and a non-contributary pension scheme for all those over 60. While some of these benefits are well below the standards provided in more wealthy countries they all represeent advances on previous times. Kiribati has a sovereign wealth fund of $1.5 billion and receives foreign aid from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Korea, the USA, Cuba, the UN, and the EU. The logistics of Kiribati ensure that it is never likely to become a developed state: the isolation and distances involved, and the consequent difficulties of providing services to tiny communities of only a few hundred people separated by thousands of kilometres ensuring that it continues to be underdeveloped, by world standards.

Isolation has not prevented Kiribati from suffering the depradations of colonialism, militarism, and capitalism. The islands were initially settled by various waves of settlement over the past few thousand years resulting in a homogenous culture and language developed over that timescale. Western Europeans started to arrive in the 19th century, particularly whalers operating out of America and elsewhere which started the first great exploitation, decimating the whale population which has not recovered to this day. This was followed at the turn of the 20th century by the beginning of phosphate mining on Banaba, or Ocean Island as it was called by the British. Banaba was mined to such an extent that its inhabitants were forced to resettle on another island which had been bought for them with their own money. It has been suggested that Banaba’s phosphate was used to subsidise the exponential growth of agriculture in Australia and New Zealand, Britain’s partners in exploiting Kiribati, to the tune of $800 million until the phosphate ran out in 1979, the year of Kiribati independence from Britain. Banaban phosphate royalties also covered the cost of Britain’s colonial administration of the Kiribati.

During WWII, the Japanese invaded Kiribati and fortified one island heavily which then became the site of one of the first major battles of the Pacific war when it was retaken by the Americans at the Battle of Tarawa. In the post WWII decades the British used Kiribati as a nuclear testing ground, doing atmospheric tests on Kiritimati Island in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The U.S. tested its bombs on Bikini and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands immediately north of Kiribati, while the French tested theirs in Muroroa to the south, inflicting on Kiribati and its Pacific island neighbours what Western nations’ own populations refused to accept.

Whilst fishing revenues are now the basis of the Kiribati economy, it is also true that this is the main way in which the country is exploited as its fishing licence revenues are only a small percentage of the profits gained by foreign fishing companies fishing in its EEZ. Kiribati has had to work hard, along with other Pacific countries, Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNU), to get even the comparatively small amount it gets in licences, gradually building on its success in forcing American fishing fleets to pay in the mid-1980s. Faced by the complete refusal of U.S. fishing companies to pay for fishing in Kiribati waters Kiribati sold the fishing rights to the Russians, exploiting their superpower rivalry so effectively that the following year the U.S. started to pay as prescribed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) – a great example of a microstate manipulating two superpowers to achieve its own ends!

Although to date Kiribati has suffered little from climate change it is quite possible that this could provide an existential threat in the future if ocean acidification and temperature increases, sea level rise and weather pattern change combine to make life impossible and cause dispersal of Kiribati’s people, despite Kiribati having made minuscule contributions to the causes.

Kiribati has hosted visits from foreign warships from the U.S., China, Taiwan, Australia, France and others but these are courtesy visits often bringing medical and other teams to share their expertise. Kiribati benefits from the assistance of an Australian patrol boat to police its EEZ and has occasionally held fishing boats illegally fishing in Kiribati waters. It also benefits from New Zealand Air Force search and rescue teams assisting searches for missing fishermen.

Pacific countries generally, and Kiribati particularly, are seen by the United States and its allies as being stategically important in their geo-political rivalry with China – or their need to have an enemy in order to justify their military spending and safeguard the profits of the military industrial complex. Whenever Kiribati is mentioned in articles and programmes in the Western media it is usually accompanied by references to its strategic significance and the threat of it being taken over by China, particularly over recent years since 2019 when Kiribati returned its diplomatic recognition to China following recognition of Taiwan in 2003. The fear seems to be that Kiribati will allow China to build ports and airbases from which China would be able to attack the United States and disrupt trade, although neither Kiribati nor China has shown any inclination to do this, a case it seems of the pot calling the kettle black. The United States has multiple military bases in the Pacific, and indeed throughout the world, and seems to think that everyone else wants to waste money and resources in the same way. Following the switch from Taiwan to China in 2019 the U.S. has been keen to make connections in Kiribati but has been thwarted by the lack of a military it can entice with hardware and a shortage of land in the capital Tarawa where it could build an Embassy. Kiribati sees itself as a Christian country and is naturally culturally connected to the U.S. – its first missionaries were American. U.S. churches have a strong presence in the country. It was liberated by U.S. forces defeating the Japanese in World War II. It has benefitted in the past from Peace Corps volunteers. And its official language is English which makes it part of the Anglophone world. There is a Kiribati diaspora including communities in the U.S. At the same time, the people of Kiribati have no wish to be controlled by any foreign power, and resent any country that interferes with Kiribati’s independence. Experience has also taught Kiribati that it can exploit rivalry for its own benefit. The dangers for Kiribati in this are that should the rivalry escalate to war it is likely that rival powers would prefer to fight in somewhere like Kiribati rather than in their own countries.

Whilst thinking about writing this article it occurred to me that a major benefit of Kiribati’s lack of a military is the lack of guns in the country. I can’t remember anyone ever having been shot, and on asking around I found that no one else could either – hardly surprising as there are no guns to shoot with! This was not always the case. Early contact with Europeans, mainly whalers and traders, was characterised by a trade in tobacco, alcohol, guns, and metal — knives, pots and pans, nails etc. Various chiefs and factions acquired guns to gain an advantage over local rivals, which led to a number of conflicts on and between different islands in the latter half of the 19^th century. This came to an end however with the declaration of a Protectorate by the British in 1892 when HMS Royalist raised the Union Jack on all the different islands and rounded up all the guns at the same time.

It feels to me that Kiribati has much to teach the world. Its culture is very communal with an expectation that we should help each other, most strongly within the extended family but also on a wider level. Strangers and visitors are welcomed and treated very well. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of maneabas, communal meeting houses where everybody is welcome, often offering accomodation to anyone who needs it. The expectation is that decisions should be reached by consensus. Most houses are not locked and many are indeed open sided without walls. Kiribati clearly demonstrates the benefits of any people having their own space over which they have control and which they can call their own, without being dominated or subjugated by other ethnicities — a principle which if applied worldwide would lead to the break up of bullying superpowers and other countries that have usually been created through conquest. We could see hundreds, or indeed thousands, of states offering all peoples their own autonomy within a cooperative world framework. Many conflicts in the world are caused by the domination of one group by another within the confines of a larger state, whether that be the Palestinians in Israel, the indigenous peoples of the Americas within their colonised lands, the Rohingya in Myanmar/Bangladesh, the Uyghers in China, the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the Kurds within Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, the West Papuans in Indonesia, or innumerable ethnicities within the colonial imposed boundaries of Africa.

In conclusion, it is worth reiterating the main benefits of Kiribati’s lack of a military. Ieremia insisted that the rationale was wholly economic – we cannot afford to spend money financing a military as that will deprive far more essential services such as education and health of much needed resources. And who is going to attack us anyway out here in the middle of the ocean? The other benefits, which are difficult to be so sure about, include the political stability that has allowed peaceful development and the unchallenged primacy of the democratic electoral system without interference from unelected military officers enforced by soldiers. Then there is the lack of a gun culture leading to completely unnecessary deaths. It is difficult to imagine any advantages that would be gained by having a military!

Richard Westra is Designated Associate Professor, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. His work has been published in numerous international refereed journals. He is author and editor of 10 books including Confronting Global Neoliberalism: Third World Resistance and Development Strategies, Clarity Press 2010. Read other articles by Richard.

'An inauspicious day': the landmines ruining Myanmar lives

Agence France-Presse
November 20, 2024

A Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) member looks at a Myanmar military unexploded ordnance in Mantong town, northern Shan State (STR/AFP)

It was an unlucky day in the Burmese calendar, farmer Yar Swe Kyin warned her husband in July, begging him not to go out to check on their crops.

Hours later he was dead, killed by one of the countless landmines laid by both sides in Myanmar's three brutal years of civil war.

In the evening, "I heard an explosion from the field," she told AFP at her home in the hills of northern Shan state.

"I knew he had gone to that area and I was worried."

She had urged her husband to stay home because the traditional Burmese calendar, which is guided by lunar cycles, planetary alignment and other factors, marked it out as inauspicious.

"He didn't listen to me," she said.


"Now, I only have a son and grandchild left."

Decades of sporadic conflict between the military and ethnic rebel groups have left Myanmar littered with deadly landmines.

That conflict has been turbocharged by the junta's 2021 coup, which birthed dozens of newer "People's Defence Forces" now battling to topple the military.


Landmines and other remnants of war claimed more victims in Myanmar than in any other country last year, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), with the Southeast Asian country overtaking war-ravaged Syria and Ukraine.

- 'Trees were spinning' -

At least 228 people -- more than four a week -- were killed by the devices and 770 more were wounded in Myanmar in 2023, it said in its latest report Wednesday.


In eastern Kayah state, a short journey to collect rice to feed his wife and children left farmer Hla Han crippled by a landmine, unable to work and fearing for his family's future.

He had returned home after junta troops had moved out from his village and stepped on a mine placed near the entrance to the local church.

"When I woke up I didn't know how I had fallen down and only got my senses back about a minute later," he told AFP.


"When I looked up, the sky and trees were spinning."

Now an amputee, the 52-year-old worries how to support his family of six who are already living precariously amidst Myanmar's civil war.

"After I lost my leg to the land mine, I can't work anymore. I only eat and sleep and sometimes visit friends -- that's all I can do," he said.


"My body is not the same anymore, my thoughts are not the same and I can't do anything I want to... I can eat like others, but I can't work like them."

His daughter Aye Mar said she had begged him not to go back into the village.

"When my father lost his leg, all of our family's hopes were gone," she said.


"I also don't have a job and I can't support him financially. I also feel I'm an irresponsible daughter."

- 'Nothing is the same' -

Myanmar is not a signatory to the United Nations convention that prohibits the use, stockpiling or development of anti-personnel mines.

The ICBL campaign group said there had been a "significant increase" in anti-personnel mine use by the military in recent years, including around infrastructure such as mobile phone towers and energy pipelines.


The church in Kayah state where Hla Han lost his leg is still standing but its facade is studded with bullet wounds.

A green tape runs alongside a nearby rural road, a rudimentary warning that the forest beyond it may be contaminated.

Some villagers had returned to their homes after the latest wave of fighting had moved on, said Aye Mar.


"But I don't dare to go and live in my house right now."

She and her father are just two of the more than three million people the United Nations says have been forced from their homes by fighting since the coup.

"Sometimes I think that it would have been better if one side gave up in the early stage of the war," she said.


But an end to the conflict looks far off, leaving Hla Han trying to come to terms with his fateful step.

"From that instant you are disabled and nothing is the same as before."

India to send 5,000 extra troops to quell Manipur unrest

By AFP
November 19, 2024

People run past burning vehicles during a protest in November to condemn the alleged killing of women and children in Manipur - Copyright AFP/File -

India will deploy an extra 5,000 paramilitary troops to quell unrest in Manipur, authorities said Tuesday, a week after 16 people were killed in fresh clashes in the troubled state.

Manipur in India’s northeast has been rocked by periodic clashes for more than 18 months between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community, dividing the state into ethnic enclaves.

Ten Kuki militants were killed when they attempted to assault police last week, prompting the apparent reprisal killing of six Meitei civilians, whose bodies were found in Jiribam district days later.

New Delhi has “ordered 50 additional companies of paramilitary forces to go to Manipur”, a government source in New Delhi with knowledge of the matter told AFP on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorised to speak with media.

Each company of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), a paramilitary unit overseen by the home ministry and responsible for internal security, has 100 troops.

The Business Standard newspaper reported that the additional forces would be deployed in the state by the end of the week.

India already has thousands of troops attempting to keep the peace in the conflict that has killed at least 200 people since it began 18 months ago.

Manipur has been subject to periodic internet shutdowns and curfews since the violence began last year.

Both were reimposed in the state capital Imphal on Saturday after the discovery of the six bodies prompted violent protests by the Meitei community.

The ethnic strife has also displaced tens of thousands of people in the state, which borders war-torn Myanmar.

Incensed crowds in the city had attempted to storm the homes of several local politicians.

Local media reports said several homes of lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which governs the state, were damaged in arson attacks during the unrest.

Long-standing tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities revolve around competition for land and jobs.

Rights groups have accused local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.

Exposed: The Oil and Gas Giants Profiting Most From Israel’s Gaza Genocide

"The complicity of international corporations and governments in fueling Israel's war machine represents the latest chapter in a long history of fossil fuel companies enabling genocide and mass atrocities," said one campaigner.

By Brett Wilkins

November 16, 2024

Source: Common Dreams

Mohammed Usrof, a member of the Palestian Youth Climate Negotiating Team who lost 21 relatives during Israel's assault on Gaza, speaks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 14, 2024. (Photo: Oil Change International/X)

On the fourth day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Azerbaijan, green groups highlighted how fossil fuel companies “enable and profit from Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” continuing “a long history of the industry’s complicity in mass atrocities worldwide.”

“The fossil fuel industry is culpable in death and destruction around the world, not only through the climate crisis they cause but through the violence they fuel,” Oil Change International said in a statement Thursday.

The group—along with others including Friends of the Earth Palestine/PENGON and Tipping Point U.K.—is seizing the opportunity presented by COP29 to draw attention to an aspect of the Gaza war often overlooked amid the staggering death and destruction wrought by Israel’s 13-month onslaught, which a United Nations panel on Thursday said is consistent with the “characteristics of genocide.”

“Investor-owned and private oil companies supply 66% of oil to Israel—more than a third of that from major oil companies like Chevron, Shell, and BP—despite genocide warnings from the International Court of Justice,” Oil Change said. “BP is among the top corporate suppliers of oil to Israel. It operates and is the largest owner of the BTC pipeline, which transports Azeri oil that is ultimately sent to Israel.”


The BTC pipeline runs from Baku—the Azeri capital and COP29 host city on the Caspian Sea—through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey and, according to Oil Change, supplies Israel with 28% of its oil, belying Thursday’s claim by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the country has severed all ties with Israel.

An investigation published in September by Energy Embargo for Palestine showed how oil transported via the BTC pipeline is refined into jet fuel for Israel Defense Forces warplanes.

Oil Change continued:


BP has also been granted gas exploration licenses in occupied Palestinian waters. By providing it with fuel, BP enables the Israeli government to commit genocide in Gaza. Chevron operates and partially owns the two largest Israeli-claimed fossil gas fields, Tamar and Leviathan, making it the main international actor extracting fossil gas claimed by Israel in the Mediterranean. In 2022, 70% of Israel’s power was generated from fossil gas extracted by Chevron. Through the millions of dollars it pays Israel for its gas extraction licenses, Chevron is also directly contributing to financing Israel’s regime of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation.

“The complicity of international corporations and governments in fueling Israel’s war machine represents the latest chapter in a long history of fossil fuel companies enabling genocide and mass atrocities,” Mohammed Usrof, a member of the Palestinian Youth Climate Negotiation Team at COP29 who lost 21 relatives to Israel’s onslaught, said in a statement Thursday. “Every shipment of oil to Israel carries the weight of Palestinian lives.”

Tipping Point U.K. organizer Sadie DeCost said that “BP originated as a key enabler of the British empire, and continues as one of the top 10 largest carbon emitters in the world.”

“It operates and is the largest owner of the BTC pipeline, which ships Azeri oil to fuel Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” DeCost added. “BP’s historic colonial harms continue through its support of violent regimes. Its emissions are estimated to cause hundreds of billions of dollars of loss and damage. We must shut down BP to end this injustice, and demand climate reparations for impacted communities around the world.”

Mahmoud Nawajaa, general coordinator of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, lamented that “criminal fossil fuel companies that have shamefully been invited to join COP29 are not only responsible for destroying the planet, they are also responsible for fueling genocide and other atrocity crimes around the world, from Gaza to Myanmar to the Amazon region.”

“Prime among these is Chevron, [which] continues to supply Israel and its military with energy and millions of dollars in tax revenues through fossil fuel extraction activities in the Mediterranean,” Nawajaa added.

Oil Change International U.S. campaign manager Allie Rosenbluth asserted Thursday that “the fossil fuel industry is not just destroying our climate—it’s actively profiting from genocide.”

“These companies and the governments enabling them know exactly how their supplies are being used against Palestinian civilians,” she continued. “Palestinian groups and their allies around the world have called for an energy and arms embargo demanding governments and companies cease all fuel and arms shipments to Israel until it ends the genocide and its regime of apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

“Despite these strong demands, the U.S. continues to be a key supplier of JP8 jet fuel to Israel, which is crucial for its military operations,” Rosenbluth added. “This isn’t just business—it’s complicity in mass atrocities.”

Oil Change noted that while many governments have prioritized profit and national interest over human rights in Palestine, Colombia—which is led by leftist President Gustavo Petro—”has set a strong precedent and issued an embargo on coal exports to Israel” as part of a broader suspension of relations due to the Gaza onslaught.

This is more than just a symbolic move, as Israel imports more than half of its coal from Colombia.

“Others must follow suit,” Oil Change stressed.

Nations approve new UN rules on carbon markets at COP29

By AFP

November 11, 2024

Carbon credits are generated by activities that reduce or avoid planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions, like planting trees or replacing polluting coal with clean-energy alternatives - Copyright AFP Tony KARUMBA

Governments at the COP29 talks approved Monday new UN standards for international carbon markets in a key step toward allowing countries to trade credits to meet their climate targets.

On the opening day of the UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, nearly 200 nations agreed a number of crucial ground rules for setting a market in motion after nearly a decade of complex discussions.

Other key aspects of the overall framework still need to be negotiated, experts said, but the decision brings closer a long-sought UN-backed market trading in high-quality credits.

“It’s hugely significant,” Erika Lennon, from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), told AFP in Baku, saying it would “open the door” for a fully-fledged market.

Carbon credits are generated by activities that reduce or avoid planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions, like planting trees, protecting carbon sinks or replacing polluting coal with clean-energy alternatives.

One credit equals a tonne of prevented or removed heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, the UN has been crafting rules to allow countries and businesses to exchange credits in a transparent and credible market.

The benchmarks adopted in Baku will allow for the development of rules including calculating how many credits a given project can receive.

Once up and running, a carbon market would allow countries — mainly wealthy polluters — to offset emissions by purchasing credits from nations that have cut greenhouse gases above what they promised.

Purchasing countries could then put carbon credits toward achieving the climate goals promised in their national plans.

– ‘Big step closer’ –

“It gets the system a big step closer to actually existing in the real world,” said Gilles Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch, a think tank.

“But even with this, it doesn’t mean the market actually exists,” he added, saying further safeguards and questions around governance still remain unanswered.

An earlier UN attempt to regulate carbon markets under the Paris accord were rejected in Dubai in 2023 by the European Union and developing nations for being too lax.

Some observers were unhappy that the decision in Baku left unresolved other long-standing and crucial aspects of the broader crediting mechanism, known in UN terms as Article 6.

“It’s not possible to declare victory,” said a European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There are hopes that a robust and credible UN carbon market could eventually indirectly raise the standards of the scandal-hit voluntary trade in credits.

Corporations wanting to offset their emissions and make claims of carbon neutrality have been major buyers of these credits, which are bought and exchanged but lack common standards.

But the voluntary market has been rocked by scandals in recent years amid accusations that some credits sold did not reduce emissions as promised, or that projects exploited local communities.

And the idea of offsetting as a whole faces deep scepticism from many.

“No matter how much integrity there is in the sort of the carbon markets, if what you are doing is offsetting ongoing fossil fuels with some sort of credit, you’re not actually reducing anything,” said Lennon.

Paris agreement climate goals ‘in great peril’, warns UN


By AFP
November 11, 2024

'Wake-up call': The last decade has been the hottest, deepening climate choas including floods in Valencia, Spain this month - Copyright AFP JOSE JORDAN

The Paris climate agreement’s goals “are in great peril” and 2024 is on track to break new temperature records, the United Nations warned Monday as COP29 talks opened in Baku.

The period from 2015 to 2024 will also be the warmest decade ever recorded, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a new report based on six international datasets.

WMO chief Celeste Saulo said she was sounding the “red alert”.

“It’s another SOS for the planet,” she told reporters in Baku.

The warming trend is accelerating the shrinking of glaciers and sea-level rise, and unleashing extreme weather that has wrought havoc on communities and economies around the world.

“The ambitions of the Paris Agreement are in great peril,” the WMO climate and weather agency said as global leaders gathered for high-stakes climate talks in Azerbaijan.

Under the Paris agreement, nearly every nation on Earth committed to work to limit warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to below 1.5C.

But the EU climate monitor Copernicus has already said that 2024 will exceed 1.5C.

This does not amount to an immediate breach of the Paris deal, which measures temperatures over decades, but it suggests the world is far off track on its goals.

The WMO, which relies on a broader dataset, also said 2024 would likely breach the 1.5C limit, and break the record set just last year.

– ‘New reality’ –

“Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace. The vulnerable are hardest hit,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

Analysis by a team of international experts established by the WMO found that long-term global warming was currently likely to be around 1.3C, compared to the 1850-1900 baseline, the agency said.

“We need to act as soon as possible,” Saulo said, insisting that the world must “not give up on the 1.5 (ambition)”.

Monday’s report cautioned that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which lock in future temperature increases even if emissions fall, hit new highs in 2023 and appeared to have climbed further this year.

Ocean heat is also likely to be comparable to the record highs seen last year, it added.

Saulo insisted that “every fraction of a degree of warming matters, and increases climate extremes, impacts and risks.

“Temperatures are only part of the picture. Climate change plays out before our eyes on an almost daily basis in the form of extreme weather,” she said.

Saulo pointed to how “this year’s record-breaking rainfall and flooding events and terrible loss of life… (had caused) heartbreak to communities on every continent.

“The incredible amount of rain in Spain was a wake-up call about how much more water a warmer atmosphere can hold,” she added.

She warned that the string of devastating extreme weather events across the world this year “are unfortunately our new reality”.

They are, she said, “a foretaste of our future”.

Climate crisis worsening already ‘hellish’ refugee situation: UN


By AFP

November 12, 2024


weather-related disasters have displaced some 220 million people inside their countries over the past decade alone - Copyright AFP/File Daniel Beloumou Olomo
Nina LARSON

Climate change is contributing to record numbers of people being uprooted from their homes globally, while worsening the often already “hellish” conditions of displacement, the United Nations said Tuesday.

With international climate talks under way in Baku, the UN refugee agency highlighted how soaring global temperatures and extreme weather events are impacting displacement numbers and conditions, as it called for more and better investment in mitigating the risks.

In a fresh report, UNHCR pointed to how climate shocks in places like Sudan, Somalia and Myanmar were interacting with conflict to push those already in danger into even more dire situations.

“Across our warming world, drought, floods, life-threatening heat and other extreme weather events are creating emergencies with alarming frequency,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in the foreword to the report.

“People forced to flee their homes are on the front lines of this crisis,” he said, pointing out that 75 percent of displaced people live in countries with high-to-extreme exposure to climate-related hazards.

“As the speed and scale of climate change increase, this figure will only continue to rise.”



– 120 million displaced –



A record 120 million people already live forcibly displaced by war, violence and persecution — most of them inside their own countries, UNHCR figures from June showed.

“Globally, the number of people that have been displaced by conflict has doubled over the last 10 years,” Andrew Harper, UNHCR’s special advisor on climate action, pointed out to AFP.

At the same time, UNHCR pointed to recent data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre indicating that weather-related disasters have displaced some 220 million people inside their countries over the past decade alone — equivalent to approximately 60,000 displacements per day.

“We’re just seeing more and more and more people being displaced,” Harper said, lamenting a dire lack of the funds needed to support those who flee and the communities that host them.

“We are seeing across the board, a hellish situation become even tougher.”

Most refugee settlement areas, he pointed out, are found in lower-income countries, frequently “in the desert, in areas which are prone to flooding, in places without necessary infrastructure to deal with the increasing impacts of climate change”.

This is set to get worse. By 2040, the number of countries in the world facing extreme climate-related hazards is expected to rise from three to 65, UNHCR said, with the vast majority of them hosting displaced populations.



– Dangerous heat –



And by 2050, most refugee settlements and camps are projected to experience twice as many days of dangerous heat as they do today, the report cautioned.

That could not only be uncomfortable and a health hazard to the people living there, but could also lead to crop failures and livestock dying off, Harper warned.

“We’re seeing increasing loss of arable land in places exposed to climate extremes, like Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Afghanistan, but at the same time we’ve got the massive increase in populations,” he said.

UNHCR is urging decision-makers gathered for the COP29 in Baku to ensure that far more of international climate financing reaches refugees and host communities most in need.

Currently, UNHCR pointed out, extremely fragile states receive only around $2 per person in annual adaptation funding, compared to $161 per person in non-fragile states.

Without more investment in building climate resilience and adaptation in such communities, more displacement towards countries less impacted by climate change will be inevitable, Harper said.

“If we don’t invest in peace, if we don’t invest in climate adaptation in these areas, then people will move,” he said.

“It’s illogical to expect them to do anything different.”

World leaders meet for climate talks, but big names missing

ByAFP
November 11, 2024

Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Emmanuel Macron are among G20 leaders missing the event - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Nick Perry

Dozens of world leaders convene in Azerbaijan on Tuesday for COP29 but many big names are skipping the UN climate talks where the impact of Donald Trump’s election victory is keenly felt.

More than 75 leaders are expected in Baku over two days but the heads of some of the most powerful and polluting economies are not attending this year’s summit.

Just a handful of leaders from the G20 — which accounts for nearly 80 percent of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions — are expected in Baku, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“This government believes that climate security is national security,” his Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said on X on Monday.

Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Emmanuel Macron are among G20 leaders missing the event, where uncertainty over future US unity on climate action hung over the opening day.

Washington’s top climate envoy sought to reassure countries in Baku that Trump’s re-election would not end US efforts on global warming, even if it would be “on the back burner”.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell also appealed to solidarity, kicking talks off on Monday by urging countries to “show that global cooperation is not down for the count”.

But the opening day got off to a rocky start, with feuds over the official agenda delaying by hours the start of formal proceedings in the stadium venue near the Caspian Sea.

Later in the evening, governments approved new UN standards for a global carbon market in a key step toward allowing countries to trade credits to meet their climate targets.

COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev hailed a “breakthrough” after years of complex discussions, but more work is needed before a long-sought UN-backed market can be fully realised.



– Difficult negotiations –



The top priority at COP29 however is landing a hard-fought deal to boost funding for climate action in developing countries.

These nations — from low-lying islands to fractured states at war — are least responsible for climate change but most at risk from rising seas, extreme weather and economic shocks.

Some are pushing for the existing pledge of $100 billion a year to be raised ten-fold at COP29 to cover the future cost of their nations shifting to clean energy and adapting to climate shocks.

Babayev, a former oil executive, told negotiators that trillions may be needed, but a figure in the hundreds of billions was more “realistic”.

Nations have haggled over this for years, with disagreements over how much should be paid, and who should pay it, making meaningful progress next to impossible ahead of COP29.

“These will not be easy negotiations, perhaps the most challenging since Paris,” said Germany’s climate negotiator Jennifer Morgan.

Developing countries warn that without adequate finance, they will struggle to offer ambitious updates to their climate goals, which countries are required to submit by early next year.

The small group of developed countries that currently contributes the money wants the donor pool expanded to include other rich nations and top emitters, including China and the Gulf states, something firmly rejected by Beijing.

Stiell warned rich countries to “dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity”.

Around 50,000 people are attending summit in Azerbaijan, a petrostate wedged between Russia and Iran, including the leaders of many African, Asian and Latin American countries beset by climate disasters.

 

Beyond The Revolution: Building A New Bangladesh – Analysis

Protestors with the Bangladesh flag. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

 November 5, 2024 

By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

By Rimon Tanvir Hossain

(FPRI) — Once touted as the “Iron Lady” of Asia, Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was both the longest-serving Bangladeshi head of state and the world’s longest-serving female. However, on August 5, 2024, her reign came to an unceremonious end as a student-led revolution, which started after the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh reinstated a quota system for government jobs on June 5, 2024, forced her to flee to India and resign from office.

Today, “July 36” refers to the date of Hasina’s resignation and subsequent collapse of her Awami League government, which has also been heralded in pop culture as Bangladesh’s “Second Independence.” According to a report by the Human Rights Support Society, more than 30,000 people were injured and more than 875 were killed in the collective unrest, 77 percent of whom died from gunshot wounds.

While Nobel laureate and social entrepreneur, Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s appointment to lead the fifty-three-year-old nation—born after a revolution celebrated and strongly supported by Western capitals to provide Bangladesh a fresh start—was positively received at home and abroad, his task of assuring that the country’s institutions regain public trust, once captured by Hasina’s fifteen-year electoral autocracy, is daunting. The growing challenges ranging from Islamist parties, communal tensions, surging inflation, and inability to hold perpetrators of the revolution’s victims accountable seem distant from reaching the solutions the Yunus-led interim government promised: establishing reforms in the election commission, civil administration, and implementing judiciary and security forces in time for the upcoming elections.

The Roots of Unrest: The Quota Reform Movement

The student-led protests, initially known as the Quota Reform Movement, sought to change the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) quota which was done away with in 2018 but brought back with the June 5, 2024, High Court decision. The BCS Quotas have a deeper connection to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, due to the fact that 30 percent of the 56 percent of reserved civil service positions were reserved for descendants of Bangladeshi Freedom Fighters (“Muktijuddhos”). The Muktijuddhos fought against the Pakistan Army and helped win independence in the nine-month war with Indian and Soviet support. Over the years, the fact that the biggest quota—relative to the 10 percent of positions reserved for women, 10 percent reserved for people from underdeveloped districts, 5 percent for indigenous people, and 1 percent for people with disabilities—went to families strongly associated with the Awami League for their role in winning the 1970 Pakistan General Elections (which led to full-scale war) became increasingly perceived as a base forconsolidating the Awami League through entrenchment in the state bureaucracy.

The BCS positions offered stable, lifelong employment with government-provided cars, housing, and other benefits, which the students leading the protests argued was designed to favor Awami League supporters. Rising youth unemployment, which has gone from 8 percent when Hasina came to power in 2008 to 16 percent, coupled with bias in the state bureaucracy to provide loans and other benefits to private-sector leaders associated with the Awami League, further added to the intensity of this Quota Reform Movement.

Behind the quota was the even larger electoral autocracy operated by Hasina and her Awami League party, who after winning her electoral mandate in 2008, continually crushed the opposition and repeated this every five years through ballot stuffing, strong-arming the media, and voter intimidation. The US State Department issued stern warnings ahead of both the 2018 election and prior to the most recent January 2024 election. Deputy Assistant Secretary of South and Central Asian Affairs Afreen Akhter offered Hasina an ultimatum to allow for a caretaker-run election in October 2023, which the Awami League abolished in 2011.

In the lead-up to the most recent January 2024 election, the Awami League also faced US and E.U. scrutiny and even sanctions with regard to their domestic security forces—namely, their elite paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). On December 10, 2021, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on RAB as well as its former and current leaders for human rights abuses. Sweden-based investigative and public interest journalism platform founded in 2019 by exiled Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil, Netra News, also reported how RAB ran a secret prison for dissidents and other opponents to the Hasina regime called “Aynaghor” (House of Mirrors). This was followed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s May 24, 2023, announcement of visa restrictions on former and current pro-Awami League and opposition officials for undermining democracy ahead of the January 2024 elections.

A statement issued by the US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller mentioned “these individuals include members of law enforcement, the ruling party, and the political opposition” and that “their immediate family may be found ineligible for entry into the United States.”

Ultimately, Hasina evaded all these carrots and sticks to allow a free and fair election on January 2024, while the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), boycotted the election. This timeline of sanctions and other disciplinary measures made by the United States was put into perspective within the Biden administration’s wider democracy promotion campaign, of which Bangladesh was a clear target for its strong people-to-people ties, business and trade interests, and diaspora-lobbying with respect to human rights. The Quota Reform Movement in the perspective of this wider US democracy promotion agenda proves that the Hasina regime was unwise not to heed warnings and shot itself in the foot by relentlessly capturing institutions and leveraging their resources to crush any sign of opposition.

A Slow Start to a Quick Fix: Yunus’s Interim Government

Yunus received much fanfare after being sworn in as Chief Advisor to the Bangladesh interim government on August 8, 2024, only three days after Hasina’s resignation and flight for refuge in India. The eighty-four-year-old Nobel Laureate was invited to lead the new transitional government after the student advisory board picked him as their leader, but received the more requisite support of Bangladesh’s only surviving institution—the Bangladesh Army.

Immediately upon Yunus’s swearing-in, lawlessness, communal tensions, difficulty for the country’s rapidly growing economy, and accountability for revolution victims were all on the agenda. Hasina and the Awami League were notorious for summoning all arms of the state’s security apparatus on protestors and civilians alike. These forces included not only the RAB but also the Bangladesh Border Guard forces as well as the student wing of the Awami League, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL). The Chhatra League in particular has earned much notoriety, as their coordination with government security forces since their 2019 murder of Abrar Fahad—a dissenter whose Facebook post expressing concern over a water deal with India led to him being killed in a Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) dorm—was on full display during the Quota Reform Movement. While the country underwent internet shutdowns during the Quota Reform Movement and protestors were subject to “shoot-on-sight” orders by Hasina, the Chhatra League was provided arms, ammunition, and access to the internet to better coordinate their efforts in stopping the protests. Following Hasina’s ousting, the estimated 100,000 members of the Chhatra League have been abandoned as targets for retribution after the Yunus-led interim government declared BCL a “terrorist organization” under the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Act and banned it on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, for their serious misconduct during the July unrest.

Even though the Yunus-led interim government has overseen Dhaka University banning the activities of political party student wings on September 19, 2024, which also includes the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami student branches, Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dol and Bangladeshi Chhatra Shibir, clashes between these groups continue. Additionally, Washington has expressed much concern over the need to contain the Islamist elements operating within Bangladesh, which Hasina’s Awami League and successive Indian governments were keen on clamping down on. On August 28, 2024, still within the month of Hasina’s ousting, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the country’s main Islamist party which has never earned more than eighteen out of the Bangladeshi Parliament’s three hundred seats, had their 2008-imposed ban lifted on them. Additionally, the day before on August 27, 2024, the leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) leader, Jashimuddin Rahmaani, was freed by the Yunus-led interim government. Rahmaani was originally jailed on August 2, 2013, for his role in murdering an atheist blogger and since his release has requested Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of the neighboring West Bengal state of India, to “declare independence from India,” further suggesting to hoist “Islamist flags in their capital of Kolkata.” These recent developments have led to a perception in New Delhi and Western capitals that Yunus is allowing free reign to the most dangerous elements of Bangladesh’s Islamist cadres, who are actively preparing for the upcoming elections which have yet to be given a date.

Of immense concern to both India and its transnational diaspora has been the extent of communal violencethat has rocked Bangladesh after Hasina’s ousting. According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist ChristianUnity Council, there have been over 2,010 attacks on Hindus or their properties in fifty-two districts out of the country’s sixty-four districts, and five Hindus have been killed in these attacks, two of which were confirmed as Awami League members. Due to the Awami League’s close ties to India, performative commitment to secularism, and an iron-fist policy towards Islamists, the Hindu minority in Bangladesh votes in majority for the Awami League and is also perceived by Islamists as a key constituency that lobbies for pro-India policies. Many Bangladeshi, Indian, and Western analysts, journalists, and commentators alike have argued that the Yunus government has done a generally decent job in addressing the communal tensions, with visits to temples and urging students and the common citizen to protect minorities themselves. On August 6, 2024, Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Shri Thanedar wrote separate letters to Blinken, advocating on behalf of the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh. On the same day, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, US Senator Ben Cardin, released a statement urging Bangladesh to form a responsible caretaker government “that will promptly organize inclusive democratic elections. The people of Bangladesh deserve a government that honors their voices, respects their will, and upholds the dignity of their nation.”

On September 20, 2024, US Senators Cardin, Murphy, Van Hollen, and Merkley issued a letter to Yunus directly, urging reforms and accountability in Bangladesh. The letter stated: “While many celebrate this new chapter in Bangladesh, a concerning volume of those celebrations have turned violent, with documented reports of reprisals targeting police as well as minority Hindu communities and those perceived to be supporters of Hasina’s government. As a result, the country has witnessed gaps in law enforcement and a lack of protections for those facing violent attacks, including members of the Hindu community and Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar.” Four days later, Yunus met with US President Joe Biden at the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where Biden congratulated Yunus and affirmed a close partnership between the United States and Bangladesh rooted in democratic values and strong people-to-people ties. Yunus gifted Blinken, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Italian Prime Minister GiorgiaMeloni with a book of paintings known as the “Art of Triumph,” capturing scenes from the July 36 student-led revolution. The gesture of gifting these Western heads of state photo books was in line with trade and education diplomacy interests as roughly 10,000 Bangladeshi students study in Canadian universities, making Canada a “study destination of choice” among Bangladeshi students, and the European Union’s role as Bangladesh’s largest trading partner, accounting for 20.7% of Bangladesh’s trade.

At the General Assembly, Yunus also met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif on the sidelines, where they reaffirmed their commitment to expanding the two countries’ bilateral cooperation. The long-held demand by the Awami League government for the Pakistani government to apologize for its genocideduring the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and Pakistan’s unwillingness to do so has held back bilateral ties according to Foreign Policy columnist and South Asia Brief writer Michael Kugelman. However, while steps were made in regard to this longstanding issue in 2021 with an exchange of letters between former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Hasina, Yunus’s willingness to engage Pakistan without mention of the 1971 chapter suggests this grievance in bilateral relations may not be as much of a constraint in Bangladesh-Pakistan relations post-Hasina.

While some of the Awami League ministers were detained—some on their way out of the country—many fled during the month of the student-led revolution. Bangladeshi news sources like the Daily Star and Prothom Alo have documented how a total of thirty current and former Awami League ministers weredetained and are currently being subject to proceedings.

Meanwhile, Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, who served as an advisor on Information and Communications Technology affairs to Hasina, has hired a former Trump lobbyist and actively operates as the de facto leaderof the Awami League in an attempt to make a comeback for the upcoming election.

On the day of Diwali, Thursday, October 31, 2024, US presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted that he “strongly condemned the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh,” further stating that it would have “never happened on my watch,” before tying these developments to Ukraine and the Southern border. In the same tweet, he promised to “also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left” and “also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Narendra Modi.” This timely statement by Donald Trump signals both a nod to the Indian American vote as well as Hindu Nationalist and Awami League lobbies, attempting to undercut Kamala Harris’s appeal to Indian Americans by explicitly claiming that she “ignored Hindus,” while also signaling a preference for the Awami League. Viewed within the backdrop of US electoral politics, Bangladesh is a partisan issue, and given Yunus’s former criticism of Trump back in 2016, the interim government can expect a less supportive White House if Trump returns to the White House after the 2024 US general elections.

In Between Rising Powers: Bangladesh in the Eyes of New Delhi and Beijing

The collapse of Hasina’s regime was a strategic failure for the Awami League’s long-time and premier supporter—India. Since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, where India played a leading role through covert support to the guerilla war, India has sustained a favorable trade imbalance, security cooperation, political alignment, and common cause over the containment of Islamist elements within Bangladesh. However, recent developments and the trajectory set for the next Bangladeshi election seem to swayagainst New Delhi’s favor, as anti-Indian sentiments have reached all-time highs and the Awami League has very little legroom to launch a comeback, given their reputation from their bloody crackdown on the Quota Reform Movement.

Another key supporter of Hasina’s regime was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Bangladesh is the second-biggest destination of Chinese military imports according to the Stockholm Peace International Research Institute (SIPRI). Between 2016 and 2020, Bangladesh bought 17 percent of all Chinese military exports and two-thirds of the Bangladesh Air Force weapon arsenal is currently made up of Chinese weapons. In line with the 2002 Defense Cooperation Agreement signed between China and Bangladesh, making China the only country with a broad defense agreement with Bangladesh, Dhaka has also inaugurated a Chinese-built naval base for the Bangladesh Navy at Pekua in Cox’s Bazar in 2023, BNS Sheikh Hasina, where two Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) officers were in attendance. According to a CSIS report entitled “Submarine Diplomacy,” published in November 2023, commercial satellite imagery revealed significant progress on this naval base, which both signaled Beijing deepening its influence in the Bay of Bengal while also attempting to strengthen ties between Bangladesh and Myanmar, aimed at undercutting New Delhi’s influence in its neighborhood.

Since 2010, half of Myanmar’s and two-thirds of Bangladesh’s arms imports have come from China. However, Bangladesh’s military still conducts annual bilateral exercises with the Indian military, most recently in October 2023, showing how Dhaka balances India and China even as it actively courts Beijing.

Over a fourth of world trade passes through the Bay of Bengal each year, with ports located in the bay that handle 33 percent of global trade and half of the world’s container traffic. Additionally, the Bay of Bengal is located at a strategic chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. This chokepoint is vital because it controls maritime access to the Far East and is used by a large amount of international shipping. Upon Hasina’s ousting, in one of her first statements from her refuge in a military base in India, she stated that she could have remained in power had she acquiesced to a US demand for a military base in Bangladeshi territory — St. Martin’s Island.

The Padma Bridge, inaugurated in February 2022, is Bangladesh’s largest bridge, standing at 3.88 miles in length and 60 feet wide, able to carry 10,000 tons, and projected to boost the country’s GDP by 1.2 percent. Proposed in 1998, the bridge had many setbacks in construction due to the withdrawal of support by the World Bank in 2015 after allegations of corruption. A Chinese engineering firm, China Major Bridge Co., hadtaken over construction of the bridge following the World Bank exit. The Padma Bridge is the largest bridge built by a Chinese company outside of China and was dubbed the “dream bridge,” by the Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Yao Wen. Ambassador Wen further stated that not only will the bridge “contribute to the connectivity in South Asia,” but also that whenever China’s President Xi Jinping “mentions Bangladesh, he will mention the Padma Bridge.” Additionally, a much-needed $12.65 billion dollar nuclear power plant in Rooppur is pledged to be 90 percent financed by Russia as of 2023. Putin has also made inroads in Dhaka, helping the country shift away from energy dependence on India, while also benefitting from Bangladesh abstaining from a recent 2023 UN vote to cease the war in Ukraine.

Washington’s Approach for Bangladesh’s Role in the Indo-Pacific

Bangladesh plays a tough balancing act in the Indo-Pacific due to its immense population, resource endowments, and strategic location in the Bay of Bengal. This was played to Hasina’s hand, who sought to balance neighboring Beijing and New Delhi while maintaining Bangladesh’s role as an important trading partner to the United States and European Union. Her capture of state institutions, momentum for turning the country into a one-party state, and ability to navigate the trail of Western sanctions, all while maintaining consistent economic growth at a 7 percent annual rate, attests to this small-state-leverage playing larger powers off one another. Ultimately, mass rebellion and inability to provide effective governance and economic opportunity succeeded where coercive US measures could not.

With Yunus at the helm, Bangladesh is under a transitory governance scheme where Washington has a more receptive head of state. However, commitment to free and fair elections that releases far-right Islamist elements, while committing to deepening Western and Indian interests, presents a conflict of interest. More pressing, the Chinese inroads made in Bangladesh with BNS Sheikh Hasina, military imports, and the Padma Bridge have distanced Washington as a strategic competitor in the region. The steps Washington takes next with Bangladesh must account for the need to assure an effective democratic framework for elections, state security and law and order for the regime that assumes power after the interim government holds its election. The announcement that Yunus would not run himself and the momentum gained by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Islamist parties has raised alarms in New Delhi and Western capitals, with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh recommending at the Indian Air Force Commanders’ Conference to be ready for “new challenges” in response to the changing posture of the incumbent and coming regime in Dhaka. In response, the former Bangladesh Army Chief of Staff, Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan, has led the Bangladesh military to assess putting the country on war footing under a model of the French levée en masse—referring to the French Revolution’s policy of requiring all able-bodied men to serve the military to defend the nation.

Washington is uniquely poised to help Dhaka deter any confrontation with New Delhi, while also reeling the strategically-located country from China’s embrace ahead of the 2027 projected Chinese invasion ofTaiwan. Diplomatic overtures and economic cooperation can collectively aid in preventing Bangladesh from becoming another autocratic regime, as well as from becoming a vassal for Beijing’s interests in the Indo-Pacific neighboring its regional rival, India. However, Yunus must hold the line against Islamists, as Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Yao Wen, recently praised Jamaat-e-Islami as a “well-organized party.” Yunus must also continually court the United States and European Union in order to reel Bangladesh from the crosshairs of China’s grand strategy in South Asia.

While the Yunus-led interim government’s decision to lift the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami was rooted in ending the Awami League’s one-party governance, Beijing’s open embrace of Islamist forces who have historically antagonized Washington, New Delhi, and European capitals has raised alarms for the country’s trade, people-to-people ties, and defense posture. A Bangladesh where institutions are captured by the anti-Awami League axis of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami will allow Beijing unprecedented leverage in Bangladesh, given both their anti-Indian and anti-Western track record, ongoing rhetoric, and overall platforms. The Yunus-led interim government is Washington’s last window ofopportunity to chart a prosperous and democratic Bangladesh for decades to come, or it can serve as a missed opportunity that offered China and Russia an indefinite foothold.

• About the author: Rimon Tanvir Hossain is a Research Assistant with the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Technologies and Cybersecurity Program. He received his M.P.P. from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and his B.A. from UC Berkeley. He was a former congressional staffer in the United States Senate and conducted research with the UCLA Luskin Global Public Affairs program on U.S.-China competition in the Bay of Bengal.
• Source: This article was published by FPRI