Bangladesh crisis: A play of invisible Chinese hand?

A month before she was forced to resign, things were not going well between China and Bangladesh’s democratically elected prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. It is reported that Hasina received the cold shoulder in China and cut short her visit. This implies that China may have had concrete intelligence of an upcoming coup against her or was directly involved in organising it. Probably both.

It isn’t just a case of cui prodest? I write this as it is reported that Hasina has fled Dhaka for “a safer place”, possibly India, and that a mob has broken security to enter her house, as had happened during the revolution in Sri Lanka.

The history of united Bengal is peppered with army chiefs’ supporting foreign powers against their sovereigns. Even in this case, the army has announced an interim government. Is Bangladesh army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, repeating history for China, much as Mir Jafar did at the Battle of Plassey against his sovereign Siraj-ud-Daulah, handing over Bengal to East India Company’s Robert Clive? While China functions on synchronicity, the Indian subcontinent, much like a believer in karma, functions on cyclicity.

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However, my thesis of China’s direct intervention in Bangladesh, potentially with the collaboration of Pakistan’s secret service, ISI, and other Muslim Brotherhood elements, isn’t just based on historical conjuncture.

The basis for my allegation is China’s escalation in the Muslim world. Initially, China’s engagement had been primarily with Pakistan, with the objective of countering India. Pakistan allowed China access to the Indian Ocean, among other things, and also kept India engaged and landlocked in the north. Then there was diplomatic engagement in the Middle East to ensure energy security with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). There has also been a strong relationship with the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), which invites China as a special guest while keeping India, with the world’s third-largest Muslim population, out.

Chinese engagement with Islamic extremism has increased lately. Be it coordinating with Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in Kashmir during its troop movements and skirmishes with India or recognising the Taliban in order to suppress the ISIS-K and armed East Turkistan rebels, China has moved from engaging state actors to patronising extremist non-state terrorist groups.

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This escalation can also be seen in the Middle East. First, China attempted to play a peacemaker between Iran and Saudi Arabia, resulting in a historic agreement. Then, Chinese support escalated to openly supporting Hamas, gathering 14 Palestinian groups in Beijing, many of which are officially terrorist groups, to try and give them legitimacy without recognising the terrorist attack of October 7, Israel’s security concerns, or making them reciprocally accept Israel’s right to exist. Essentially, it was a Chinese coup to get Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad into the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which controls the Palestinian National Authority.

There have been rumours in intelligence circles about Chinese assistance to Hamas, which led to the October 7 attacks; however, China has been careful to keep its engagement at arm’s length to avoid complications with the west. This explains China’s patronage of Hamas and its attempt to garner legitimacy for its client.

Coming back to Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina was not popular with the Islamists. She is the daughter of the founding father of Bangladesh, Mujib ur Rahman, who spent over 12 years of his political life in prison during British and Pakistani rule. She recently banned the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (Jamaat) and its student wing, Chhatrashibir, for having hijacked the student protests and started a campaign of political violence. The Jamaat is pro-Pakistani, continues to have strong links with other Muslim Brotherhood organisations to which Hamas also subscribes, has close links, and its men have infiltrated the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and probably the armed forces as well.

Hasina has spent years of her exile in Delhi, where she seems to be headed in these hours. She is seen by China as pro-India, despite having done her best to balance her relationship between India and China. It is obvious that Beijing does not trust her and would rather have a puppet government in Dhaka, which not only allows it access to the Indian Ocean but also complicates India’s border problems. With Myanmar at constant civil war and now Bangladesh heading into a political flux, India’s new trade route attempts in the East with the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and West with the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) are put on ice due to essentially Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, Jamaat to the East and Hamas to the West.

Having a government hostile to Delhi in Dhaka compounds India’s security concerns with unchecked Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, increasing violence in the North-East and a weaker position in the Bay of Bengal. What started as China’s appeasement of Muslim organisations world-wide to deflect its Uyghur genocide and ethnic replacement of its Muslim majority Uyghur population has now become a strong alliance with Islamic extremist non-state actors to disrupt democracies and accelerate geopolitical change. China must be careful, as the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) is no one’s friend; the invention may turn against the inventor.

The author is a writer, who has worked closely and continues to advise various governments in Europe, Middle East and Africa. He is the founder of the Dialogue on Democracy. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.