On Wednesday, Yunus urged Bangladeshi politicians to put up a united front against ‘India’s aggression.’ Yunus has ensured the normalization of ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh.
NEW DELHI: The increasing collaboration between Dhaka and Islamabad, fueled by growing anti-India sentiment, will be one of the biggest challenges for the incoming administration of Donald Trump. He will inherit a complex situation largely shaped by multiple U.S. departments, particularly the U.S. State Department, which is often referred to as the ‘Deep State.’ This group successfully removed the democratically elected Sheikh Hasina from her position as Prime Minister of India’s immediate neighbor, Bangladesh, and installed their own protégé, Mohammad Yunus, as the ‘caretaker’ PM.
While the outgoing Joe Biden administration has denied any role in the removal of Hasina, inputs shared with The Sunday Guardian by official sources indicate that the common people of Bangladesh are aware of Washington’s intervention in Dhaka.
Last week, Yunus, who has come under fire not just from Delhi but from other ‘developed’ countries for failing to stop the religious-based persecution of Hindu minorities, said that India was spreading false rumors and exaggerating the violence against Hindus, suggesting that the violence was politically motivated rather than religious.
On Wednesday, Yunus urged the Bangladeshi politicians to unite and put up a united front against “India’s aggression.”
“They are undermining our efforts to build a new Bangladesh and are spreading fictitious stories. They have spread these rumors in particular countries and among influential players,” Yunus told a gathering of Bangladeshi political parties, describing the matter as “a question of our existence.” According to local media reports, quoting Yunus’s media team, the said interaction was part of an initiative to promote national unity in the face of “Indian aggression.”
This rhetoric of Yunus, considered as the poster boy of the US model of grooming influential people in every country to further its own interest, should not be seen in isolation. It has come amidst a series of steps and decisions taken in the last three months after Hasina was forced to flee to India in what essentially was a regime change operation.
In the last few days, Yunus, as part of a well-planned strategy, has ensured the normalization of ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh—in a repeat of what used to happen when Hasina was not in power.
Last month, a cargo vessel from Pakistan’s Karachi arrived at Chittagong Port, marking the first-ever direct maritime link between the two countries. The docking was viewed as a major step towards enhancing trade and business ties between the two Muslim-majority nations and a precursor to the rapidly changing Dhaka’s strategic views and goals under Yunus, backed by the US-based deep state, who, irrespective of the political entity in power, continue to work on their set agenda.
In October, Bangladesh scrapped the mandatory 100 percent physical inspection of all imported goods from Pakistan. The stringent inspections were originally imposed by the Hasina government. The recent change came after a high-level meeting between Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Mohammad Yunus during the United Nations General Assembly summit in New York. Earlier, goods imported from Pakistan were subjected to movement through a “Red Lane,” as part of the risk management framework, which included stringent document and physical inspections. With the new directive, Pakistani goods will no longer be automatically categorized as high-risk. Instead, a more flexible, Product-Based Risk Management system will be implemented, allowing customs authorities to focus on specific products that might require attention rather than blanket inspections.
Earlier last week, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) instructed its missions abroad to facilitate visas for Pakistani citizens and those of Pakistani origin and removed the requirement for Pakistani citizens to obtain a security clearance before applying for a Bangladeshi visa, a mandate imposed by the Hasina government. Under Hasina’s government, all Pakistanis who wished to travel to Bangladesh were required to obtain a ‘no objection’ clearance from Bangladesh’s Security Services Division.
Watchers of strategic development in the region believe that this series of easing of norms related to trade and movement of people and goods is a precursor to impending cooperation between Dhaka and Islamabad in the field of defense, particularly those related to the nuclear field. According to inputs shared with the Sunday Guardian by people in government machinery in Dhaka, the presence of senior Pakistan military officials has increased significantly in the national capital in the last three months.
A few months ago, the Yunus government, in a surprising development that was later leaked to the media, bought artillery ammunition, tank ammunition units, RDX explosives, and high-intensity projectiles from Pakistan.
Dhaka and Islamabad are also working on a Pakistan-Bangladesh Joint Economic Commission (JEC) meeting, which is set to take place in Dhaka in late December or early January, to focus on enhancing bilateral relations across various sectors, including trade, defense, and economic cooperation. Sources said that the representatives of the two countries are likely to finalize a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) and work on negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
This series of developments, which have occurred within just three months of Sheikh Hasina’s removal, is likely to raise alarm bells among the officials both in Delhi and Washington, especially among the officials who will be joining the Trump administration next year in January and are unlikely to align with the assessment of the U.S. State Department officials who decided to remove her without properly taking into account the long-term ramifications of this decision.