HOW THE US SUSTAINS ISRAEL’S WAR CRIMES

The financial and military support that America has offered to Israel for decades is the reason why the Zionist state is able to

DAWN/EOS
Ejaz Haider 

November 3, 2024

“For generations to come, all will be told of the miracle of the immense planes from the United States bringing in the materiel that meant life to our people.”
— Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on the United States airlift during the 1973 War

“Things did not go particularly well for Israel over the next couple days, but as Israel started to push back the daily advances, the Nixon administration initiated Operation Nickel Grass, an American airlift to replace all of Israel’s lost munitions. This was huge — planeload after planeload of supplies literally allowed munitions and materiel to seemingly re-spawn for the Israeli counter effort. 567 missions were flown throughout the airlift, dropping over 22,000 tons of supplies. An additional 90,000 tons of materiel were delivered by sea.”

— How Richard Nixon Saved Israel from Nixonfoundation.org

PREAMBLE

The above quotes are facts about Operation Nickel Grass, a United States (US) airlift that was bigger than the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, and about how Israel found itself fighting for its survival. Since the United Nations Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine under Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, the US has been a major ally and supporter of Israel. However, the 1973 War helped change the entire dynamic of that relationship. Since that airlift, the US has committed itself fully and unequivocally to Israel’s defence.

Even when there have been differences about Israel’s conduct, the US has, for the most part, ensured that there must be “no daylight” between the two sides, a phrase attributed to the outgoing US President Joe Biden who self-describes himself as a “proud Irish-Christian Zionist.”

Two days after the publication of this article, the US will be electing a president. Among many other policy concerns, including domestic, a burning question for many Arab and Muslim American voters is which of the two candidates will be a better fit for bringing peace to the Middle East and force Israel to stop its savage genocidal war.

That concern, while totally justified, is largely, if not wholly, misplaced for structural reasons — the US system, which represents the current power relationships, is controlled by what political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt called “the Israel Lobby” in a 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Mearheimer and Walt call the US-Israel relationship and the US support for Israel a “unique” relationship unparalleled in US history. They also argue that this relationship is not really “based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives”, as is normally assumed, but “is due almost entirely to US domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’.”

There is a lot of literature on how the Israel lobby works. Organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in combination with big money, Christian Zionists and Israeli hasbara [public diplomacy techniques], work towards damaging politicians, activists and even scholars who are critical of Israel and its policies.

An October 24 report in The Intercept by Akela Lacy, ‘How Does AIPAC Shape Washington: We Tracked Every Dollar’ says AIPAC has “embraced a new strategy” — “It would use its vast funds to oust progressive members of Congress who have criticised human rights abuses by Israel and the country’s receipt of billions of US dollars in military funding.”

Lacy says that “AIPAC’s approach to electoral spending is bipartisan.” The strategy is to support candidates that are pro-Israel and defeat those who are not. Anyone familiar with how Washington DC works knows how legislation and actions by any administration can be influenced if the right people are available in the power corridors.

In addition to financial and military support, the US has lent Israel unqualified diplomatic support since 1972. Globalaffairs.org has estimated that “The US has vetoed resolutions critical of Israel more than any other council member — 45 times as of December 18, 2023, according to an analysis by Blue Marble.” Thirty-three of these resolutions “pertained to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the country’s treatment of the Palestinian people.”


The financial and military support that America has offered to Israel for decades is the reason why the Zionist state is able to carry out the ongoing genocide in Palestine and war crimes in Lebanon. Regardless of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the election on November 5, this US support for its client state will continue, making the US and its Western allies as culpable for Israel’s crimes against humanity

It is instructive to contrast the US’ actual behaviour with its platitudes about a two-state solution as an imperative for peace. The US has also, as I have noted in this space previously, consistently vetoed the push for Palestine’s statehood and full membership of the UN, because statehood bestows on Palestine sovereignty and the right to self-defence. That is not acceptable to either Israel or the US.

COROLLARY

Before proceeding with further details, I want to put the proposition already proved upfront: Israel could not have sustained itself, its unending wars in the Middle East and the structured violence against the Palestinian people without the unique support it gets from the US and some Western allies of the US.

That support spans the entire gamut of diplomatic, financial and military. This is also true of the current iteration of the Palestinians’ generational war against Zionism. Israel could not have sustained its continuing war without the full and unconditional diplomatic, financial and military support of the US.

That fact gives us a simple reality: the US is not an honest broker and cannot be expected to work towards an equitable resolution of the Palestine problem. It is complicit in everything Israel does and, by shielding it from the consequences of its crimes against humanity, the US is answerable for those crimes. This is also true of the ongoing war.

This also means what I have previously said in this space: this war will continue with its many ebbs and flows. It can only end with the end of Zionism.

ISRAEL’S DESPERATION: A PAGE FROM HISTORY

An American Patriot missile defence system on display during a joint US-Israel military exercise on March 8, 2018: Israel has privileged access to the most advanced US military platforms and technologies | AFP

At 1400 hours on October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack against Israel, along the Golan Heights and across the Bar Lev Line on the eastern bank of Suez Canal. Egyptian forces overran the presumably invincible Bar Lev line in just two hours, even though Israeli defence minister Moshe Dayan had famously called it “one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world.”

In the months leading up to the War, the Egyptians and Syrians had modernised their forces by purchasing Scud Surface-to-Surface Missiles from the Soviet Union to offset Israel’s air superiority. The first few days of the war saw dozens of Israeli fighter jets, tanks and APCs destroyed.

The US Department of State archives have a Memorandum of Conversation from October 9, 1973 between Israeli ambassador to the US, Simcha Dinitz, his military attaché Gen Mordechai Gur, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Gen Brent Scowcroft, deputy assistant to the US president for national security affairs. The contents of that conversation give a clear sense of Israeli losses and the panic that was setting in:

Dinitz: “We got a message which sums up our losses until 9am Israeli time. In planes, 14 Phantoms, 28 Skyhawks, 3 Mirages, 4 Super Mysteres — a total of 49 planes. Tanks — we lost something like 500 tanks. Some were lost on the way.”

Kissinger: “500 tanks! How many do you have? [to Scowcroft:] We should get Haig here. Well, we can give him the figures….

Kissinger: Explain to me, how could 400 tanks be lost to the Egyptians?“

Gur: “We were in a very big hurry to bring them to the front line. That’s why we say some were lost on the way to the battle.”

Dinitz: “Some got out of commission because of moving so fast.”

Scowcroft: “Do you know how many were battle losses?”

Gur: “Some were hit by artillery fire on the Suez Canal. They have heavy artillery fire. We don’t know the exact numbers. I assume the biggest number were put completely out of action.” [Gen Gur then pulls out a map and sits beside Kissinger.]


According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel is spending much more per month on the military — from $1.8 billion before October 7, 2023, to around $4.7 billion by the end of last year. According to several Israeli economists, the Gaza war alone has cost the Israeli economy over $67.3 billion.

This conversation also coincided with the October 9 Israeli counterattack that failed. Kissinger was concerned that an Israeli defeat would increase the prestige and footprint of the Soviets in the Middle East. This was also Nixon’s concern, though he also, initially, did not want to antagonise the Gulf monarchies.

The US secretary of defence, James Schlesinger, who went along with the decision, was not particularly in favour of US support to Israel. As the October 6 ‘Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting’ show, Schlesinger said, “We can delay on this. Our shipping any stuff into Israel blows any image we may have as an honest broker.”

Schlesinger also sent a memorandum to President Nixon on November 1. Subject-lined ‘Impact of the Mideast War’, Schlesinger wrote, “This memorandum provides my initial reaction to the recent Mideast crisis and to the transfer of military equipment to Israel… I am concerned… by the degradation of our conventional deterrent due to the loss of critical materiel.” [Emphasis added]

Kissinger was very unhappy with Schlesinger’s objections and told the White House Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, “They [Israelis] are anxious to get some equipment which has been approved and which some SOB in [the Department of] Defence held up which I didn’t know about.” Golda Meir had made a panicked phone call to President Nixon. That call became the basis for the massive US airlift of materiel to resupply Israel to offset its losses in the first few days of the war.

Kissinger would bring in other arguments, particularly the broader strategic concerns about the Soviet Union but, in the end, it was about Israel itself and America’s pledge to defend it. The dialogue in the Golda biopic about Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) telling Golda (Helen Mirren) that he is an American first, secretary of state second and a Jew only third, and Golda telling him that, in Israel, “we read from right to left”, was not just for dramatic purposes. It was an actual conversation that Kissinger would often narrate.

That support has continued. But how does it work?

HOW DOES THE US SUPPORT ISRAEL MILITARILY?

President Richard Nixon with Israeli prime minister Golda Meir at the White House in Washington on Sept 25, 1969: following Meir’s panicked phone call to Nixon, the US airlifted materiel to resupply Israel to offset its losses in the first few days of the Yom Kippur War|AP

The two countries do not have a mutual defence pact, but Israel has privileged access to the most advanced US military platforms and technologies. In cumulative terms, Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid since its founding and has received over $300 billion in economic and military assistance.

According to a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report, “The United States provided Israel considerable economic assistance from 1971 to 2007, but nearly all US aid today goes to support Israel’s military, the most advanced in the region. The United States has provisionally agreed, via a memorandum of understanding (MOU), to provide Israel with $3.8 billion per year through 2028.”

As Mearsheimer and Walt have noted, “This largesse is especially striking when one realises that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”

The CFR report also mentions that, since October 7, 2023, the US “has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which includes $3.8 billion from a bill in March 2024 (in line with the current MOU) and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April 2024.”

The yearly military aid is actually grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme. While Israel must use these funds to purchase US military equipment and services, it can use about 25 percent of these funds to buy equipment from Israeli defence firms. It also buys US equipment outside of the FMF facility. Until last October, as per the Biden administration, “Israel had nearly 600 active FMF cases, totalling around $24 billion.”

Separately, an annual $500 million fund is slated for Israeli and joint US-Israeli missile defence programmes. These programmes involve joint collaboration “on the research, development and production of these systems used by Israel, including the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow II. Iron Dome was solely developed by Israel, but the United States has been a production partner since 2014.”

While transfers of US military equipment to Israel are subject to relevant US laws and scrutiny by the Congress, in reality Israel gets a clear pass from US administrations. For instance, during the ongoing war, multiple rights organisations, UN bodies and the International Court of Justice have determined constant violations by Israel of International Law and International Humanitarian Law. Despite clear evidence, the Biden administration has continued to shield Israel, including from the application of US laws such as the Leahy Law.

US State Department official Stacy Gilbert quit last May and told the media that her resignation was precipitated by an administration report to Congress that, she said, falsely stated Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. The true picture would have brought the Leahy Law into action and prevented further US military aid to Israel.

Just days ago, Maryam Hassanein, a political appointee at the US Department of the Interior, quit over the war on Gaza, saying, “I saw a policy that was really harming Palestinians through this kind of blind, destructive support of Israel and its occupation.”

While the US Congress can block a sale through a joint resolution, this has never happened in the case of Israel. In fact, since this war, as with special cases, Biden has bypassed the congressional review and used this waiver process both for Ukraine and Israel.

Additionally, the US has another special arrangement for Israel called ‘qualitative military edge’ (QME), which was formalised through a 2008 law. The law reads: “The [US] President shall carry out an empirical and qualitative assessment on an ongoing basis of the extent to which Israel possesses a qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel. The assessment required under this sub- section shall be sufficiently robust so as to facilitate comparability of data over concurrent years.”

The CFR report calls QME “a conceptual backbone of US military aid to Israel.” The 2008 law “requires the US government to maintain Israel’s ability ‘to defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damage and casualties.’”

In simple terms, it means that the US must not provide any weapons or platforms to any state in the Middle East that could compromise Israel’s QME. Or, if it does in some way, it must provide counter-measures to Israel, to offset any disadvantage to Israel.

The US also maintains a strategic stockpile of weapons in Israel since the 1980s. Israel has been drawing from that stockpile during its ongoing war. Given Israel’s consumption of interceptors, the US also “agreed to lease Israel two Iron Dome missile defence batteries that Washington had previously purchased from the country.”

The military aid provided to Israel by the US, the UK, Germany and France includes tank and artillery ammunition, bombs, rockets, small arms, interceptors, surveillance drones, night-vision goggles, body armour etc. At least $18 billion of aid, including 50 F-15 fighter jets are also in the pipeline, though that supply won’t materialise for some years.

This is by no means an exhaustive treatment of US support for Israel. There are hundreds of assessments out there and most are available to any diligent researcher. The essential point is that, without this unconditional military, financial and diplomatic support, Israel could neither sustain its current war nor its place in the comity of nations through the hubris it has consistently displayed. This hubris includes Israel’s government declaring the UN Secretary-General persona non grata, the Israeli military targeting UN aid workers and premises, and its Knesset (parliament) legislating to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the primary agency delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza — from the areas under Israeli control.

It should also be clear that this sustainment works at two levels: the Israeli lobby’s ability to influence US domestic politics sustains the presence of pro-Israel politicians within US power structures; and the presence of those politicians, in turn, helps preserve the unique US-Israel relationship, which allows Israel to sustain its wars, violate international norms and continue to repress the Palestinians.

So, why is sustainment important? What does it mean?

WHAT IS SUSTAINMENT?

Sustainment is the ability of a nation and its military to fight and sustain that fight. Sustainment in a non-kinetic sense also means the ability of a state to override international legal norms and act independently, without suffering any consequences. Since the point about sustainment at the second level should already be obvious, I will stick to military sustainment.

This point, as any student of war knows, is crucial. Attritional wars are all about sustainment. Wars are expensive; long wars are very expensive. They take a toll on men and materiel.

To quote from a 1942 US Naval College report titled ‘Sound Military Decision’: “Success is won, not by personnel and materiel in prime condition, but by the debris of an organisation worn by the strain of campaign and shaken by the shock of battle. The objective is attained, in war, under conditions which often impose extreme disadvantages.” [Emphasis added]

Initial planning can go awry; initial supplies can run dry or troops can run low on them; logistics are crucial — you can have the best troops and equipment, but battles take their toll. Men get killed; materiel gets destroyed. Nothing remains in prime shape.

Modern war requires a very complex logistics and supply system with multiple tiers. The Table of Organisation and Equipment (TOE), a document in modern militaries, not only details the wartime mission, capabilities, organisational structure, and mission-essential personnel, but also supply and equipment requirements for military units.

Tanks, armoured personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery — all essential components of manoeuvre warfare — are very logistics-heavy. A typical armoured division would have supplies based on troop strength, such as rations; items listed and identified in the TOE (clothing, personal equipment, vehicle replacements, etc); POL (petrol, oil, lubricants); supply requirements for damaged equipment which cannot have a fixed quantity and would depend on attrition rates; and, yes, ammunition.

This brings us to the nexus between fighting and sustaining a war and a state’s economy. To quote US Rear Admiral Henry Eccles, “logistics is the bridge between military operations and a nation’s economy.” The linkage is not just about existing stocks and how reduced human resources and materiel can be replenished, but also the industrial base that can supply to the fighting troops what they need.

Rations, POL, replacement of damaged equipment, cannibalising equipment and vehicles, replenishing ammunition, evacuating casualties — the list of what needs to be done is long and everything that needs to be done gets done (or doesn’t) under fire. But most importantly, all of it requires money and a pipeline.

Israel’s extensive use of aerial platforms, including fighter jets, is a very expensive proposition. For instance, according to the US Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that provides information to the US Congress, the per-hour flight cost of an F-16 Fighting Falcon is $26,927, while that for an F-35 is $41,986.

The calculation metrics involve repair parts, depot and field maintenance, contract services, engineering support and personnel, plus “other things”, such as sortie-generation rate, pilot training etc. This cost might differ with different air forces but is a good benchmark to roughly monetise Israel’s use of aerial platforms over a year against targets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

Similarly, the Tamir interceptor for the Iron Dome system costs $50,000-100,000 per interception. According to Brig-Gen Ram Aminach, the former financial adviser to the Israeli chief of staff, “the cost of defence last night [April 13 Iran attack] was estimated at between four to five billion shekels [$1.08-1.35B].” He was speaking to the Israeli Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel is spending much more per month on the military — from $1.8 billion before October 7, 2023, to around $4.7 billion by the end of last year. According to several Israeli economists, the Gaza war alone has cost the Israeli economy over $67.3 billion.

Yet another crucial aspect of how the US sustains Israel’s war is the close cooperation between US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Israeli military and intelligence agencies.

Since January 2021, following a Pentagon decision to shift Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to CENTCOM — an arrangement described by YnetNews.com in an August 24, 2024 report as “the American wall of defence around Israel” — the US is sharing intelligence with Israel and providing it complete air defence support against Iran. That support has been on display in the two direct rounds exchanged between Iran and Israel since April this year.

By all evidence, Israel does not have the stocks to fight a long war, nor can it produce them in the volumes it requires. The fact that must be known and constantly reiterated is simple: Israel’s war has been sustained by the US and its Western allies.

The corollary is simple: even as the US has been mouthing its desire for a ceasefire, it has been perpetuating Israel’s war. And given the savagery of this war, it is also complicit in every war crime committed by Israel.

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 3rd, 2024

 

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