The West’s Hybrid Assault on Bangladesh

After the last general elections in Bangladesh, the Western media had started publishing aggressive reporting highlighting the lack of credibility of the outcome of the vote. The media reports, although penned by several authors, sing in unison, urging the liberal West to take note of the situation in Bangladesh and to work towards restoring credible democracy in the country.

News media outlets like Channel 4, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Aljazeera took a reproaching point of view in highlighting the political affairs of Bangladesh. The country that was once labeled in the world media as a disaster-prone country and a success story for NGOs in transforming the poverty-stricken rural areas now has attention as an up-and-coming focal point of heightened geopolitical intrigues. NGO activists chanting humanist slogans are actively pushing the globalist agenda of thwarting Dhaka in embracing multipolarity with covert and open support from the West. These elements are engaged in actively supporting insurgency in the hill tracts in the country and anti-Eurasianist activities in the country, while pillaging over the ethno-religious harmony of Bangladesh.

A birth in the Cold War

The very birth of Bangladesh was an act of upstaging a rival in the then Cold War era. Breaking up an adversary through hybrid war and the manipulation of a country’s internal affairs through NGOs were executed in such a triumphant fashion in Bangladesh, which were later used by the empire to weaken its adversaries and thus achieve a unipolar world order-based dominance.

The 1971 war of liberation of Bangladesh was one of the world’s first hybrid wars, where Pakistan fought with Indian proxies, often engaging Indian troops who mingled in with Bangladeshi guerillas even before the two countries officially declared that they were in a state of war. The constant flow of Soviet arms and supplies in the erstwhile East Pakistan and the successful engagement of the Indian army in guerilla outfits helped to carve out a brand new country out of US influence and set up a new grammar in the world of conflict, which the US and its allies used in dislodging governments and countries opposed to them in the decades to come.

Gaining lost ground

After the breakup of the then-Western ally Pakistan, India gained the upper hand in the regional dynamics of South Asia which was desirable for the USSR. The Soviet Union maintained its influence in the region through India and thus, the social, political, and cultural affairs started to witness the emergence of Indian soft power.

The pro-Soviet and pro-Indian intelligentsia community in Bangladesh blossomed in the universities of Bangladesh before its independence. The US and the West lacked the necessary strategy to contain the growth of that renegade community, which in turn changed the public perception of the West Pakistani military junta and thus launch an armed rebellion.

After the independence of Bangladesh, the West swallowed a bitter pill and hastily realized the Soviet tactic of manipulating entire nation through a carefully nurtured and tutored intelligentsia community.

A country mired by poverty had prospects for the Western lobby to buy out and/or create a pro-Western community of its own. Like other third world countries of that time, Bangladesh was fighting its way against acute poverty through immense obstacles, which seemed far more difficult due to the absence of a strong government in a center troubled by coups, counter coups, and military purges.

Taking advantage of the confusion, the West grabbed the opportunity to funnel in funds in the name of donations and gave birth to NGOs in the name of alleviating the country from poverty and supporting development, taking on a pious, humanitarian garb. The huge donations for changing the fate of the poor, now infamously known as the George Soros Open Society model were instrumental in buying and burying the hopes of Bangladesh: The first blow to Soviet influence in Bangladesh and in South Asia.

It has to be noted that, although the intelligentsia community in Bangladesh was pro-Soviet, they were tutored by and aligned to the Indian intelligentsia community. Thus, the West first bought its way through the Indian activist network, which in turn paved the way into the Bangladeshi activist network. Big names like BRAC, ASA, Care Bangladesh, and Grameen Bank were churned out in Bangladesh due to active and covert blessings from the West. Care Bangladesh was especially designed to break the backbone of the pro-Soviet activist network in Bangladesh by handing the activists big salaried positions. The success helped in the mushrooming of NGOs in Bangladesh. Presently, there are 2,254 NGOs functioning in Bangladesh, including 70 from the US, the highest from a single foreign country. NGOs from UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, France, Sweden, Germany and Qatar are also working in Bangladesh.

Engineering Color Revolutions

From the very beginning, the foreign-linked NGOs in Bangladesh were actively working to push the ethno-religious harmony of Bangladesh into jeopardy, which is a strategy of the unipolar globalist empire to disrupt the harmony of any society not in league with them. The NGOs started their journey in Bangladesh with social engineering and culminated with their entrance into political engineering. The world witnessed the Arab Spring and the Maidan in Ukraine, but one of the earliest modern color revolutions engineered by the West started in Bangladesh in 1983, which ended up in the overthrow of a military dictator. That particular color revolution was run by the activist network bought by George Soros from the pro-Soviet network. The incident had each and every ingredient of a color revolution: continuous propaganda, mass mobilization, rumors, civil disobedience, arranged sniper firing and the subsequent managing of the military, all leading to the fall of the government. And who financed the mechanism? Embassies and NGOs!

The primary objective of the globalist elements in Bangladesh is to keep it away from a resurgent multipolarity led by a resurgent Russia and a rising China. After the restoration of the multiparty parliamentary system, Dhaka slowly started inching towards Beijing, which was not the goal of the West-backed restoration. Hence came another intervention in 2007, when the military launched a coup and installed a government led by a former World Bank official. However, it failed to contain the nascent political atmosphere in the country and had to step aside. Yet the precedence it left, the blatant and open activism of the Western embassies in Dhaka, particularly of the UK and the US, for the changeover, emboldened a quarter of the country’s civil society to encourage the military for the putsch.

The new government, though it had understandings with the West, felt the gravity and tenacity of the strategic depth of the pro-Eurasianist outlook and embraced it. The Machiavellian game plan employed by the Bangladeshi government significantly unnerved the globalist entity in Bangladesh. After failing to pressurize the defiant Dhaka by canceling a loan for a big infrastructure project, the West started infiltrating the nationalist and Islamist opposition of that time. The nationalist party known as BNP got a policymaker who is close to the USAID and having business ties with Monsanto, while the Islamists were constantly in touch with Qatar-linked NGOs and global activists, who were the architects of Arab Spring.

The fiery agitations staged by these two entities pushed Bangladesh to the brink of conflict in 2014, but unflinching support from the military helped Dhaka to wrest control.

The failure of the political entities forced the now neoliberal elements, the prominent NGO activists to join forces with the nationalists, Islamists, and other student activists into a joint combine for a final push against the pro-Eurasianist government in Dhaka: a color revolution.

Using the most recent student demonstrations which were marred with clashes, the elements of color revolution started planting fake/doctored images in social media and rumors and misleading statements in the media, calling in international media for coverage, prompting statements from Western embassies in Dhaka, creating panic and total confusion for inciting a mass upsurge in the country.

But, with the lessons learnt and active cooperation from Eurasian allies, Dhaka swiftly acted to thwart any attempt at disruption.

The threat remains

Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia focused the US’s grand strategy of countering the rise of China and a Eurasian world order. With the ascendance of Donald Trump, the confrontation with China only heightened. The Rohingya crisis has once again revealed the never-again thirst of the empire for maintaining a status quo in the unipolar world order, which is ceaselessly being challenged by the rising East.

The incumbent government of Bangladesh rose to power while maintaining close ties with India and a positive understanding with the West. However, the rapid gain of confidence of Beijing and its historical ties with Russia has strengthened the Bangladeshi leader’s position against the West.

The activist network of the NGOs still maintains a strong and influential presence over the Bangladeshi media and civil society despite Dhaka’s strengthened vigilance, which thwarted color revolution attempts in the country prior to the election of 2019. The presence of foreign NGOs and their activities have broadened due to the Rohingya crisis and in the southeastern hilly regions of Bangladesh. Their presence amidst one of the world’s largest refugee crisis could start a new hybrid war in the region, which could paralyze the rising Asian economy. 

USA Really