US efforts to rein in Bangladesh govt add to India's growing eastern worries

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US efforts to rein in Bangladesh govt add to India's growing eastern worries​

Subir Bhaumik
Update: 2022-02-14 16:16 IST

Perceived US hostility towards the Sheikh Hasina govt complicates India's diplomatic efforts to maintain good relations with Bangladesh. (Photo credit: PTI)

India cannot lose focus on the challenges it faces in its eastern neighbourhood​

Highlights​

• For India, its eastern neighbourhood has looked more secure, compared to its west
• Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh is a friend, and so has been Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD
• US hostility to Hasina and the coup in Myanmar has complicated things for New Delhi

India has good reasons to be worried about the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Russia's growing bonhomie with China and with relations between them and the US hitting an all-time low. These pose huge challenges for Indian diplomacy in months to come. China's continued intransigence on the disputed Himalayan border and it is raising the Kashmir issue with Pakistan during Imran Khan's recent visit to Beijing would surely worry Delhi. But there is no reason for the Modi government to get carried away by these issues and overlook what is happening in India's eastern neighbourhood.

Myanmar's descent into chaos and civil war and fresh US encouragement for regime change in Bangladesh pose very tricky questions for India's much-vaunted 'Act East' initiative to connect to the Tiger economies of Southeast Asia and also raise some critical security issues in India's long-troubled Northeast. Deep Chinese inroads into both these countries and Nepal in the Himalayas do not augur well for India.

In Bangladesh, India is no longer in a position to sit back and reflect with complacency the substantial gains made during the last decade of Awami League rule. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has delivered on all major security and connectivity concerns of India, from pushing out north-eastern rebels and cracking down hard on Islamist terrorists to granting transit rights through its territory to connect the Indian mainland to its northeast and allowing its ports and rivers for the same purpose. The sailing of an Indian cargo ship from Patna to Guwahati through Bangladesh waters in February is like a dream come true.

But India's failure to deliver on Teesta river-water sharing and Bangladesh's worries over NRC-CAA issues have been compounded by senseless diatribes by senior BJP leaders (particularly Amit Shah's "termites" remark). And now US sanctions on seven senior Bangladesh security officials, following on Washington refusing to invite Dhaka to join President Biden's Democracy Summit in December, and the raising of enforced disappearances in this month's UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva has got the Hasina government worried.

The Awami League and Sheikh Hasina have always been uneasy about US policy since Washington's alleged involvement in the 1975 coup that killed almost her entire family. The US has been openly critical of the Hasina government's human rights record and her staying in power through elections Washington considers as less than fair. Hasina's inner circle feel Washington is "weaponising" these issues to bring about regime change.

India has strongly defended Hasina's government for good reasons. The slugfest between Indian and US diplomats in Dhaka in the rundown to the 2014 polls made headlines in the country. But if India cannot shield Hasina now from Washington's needling, Delhi may have to contend with losing its most trusted ally in South Asia to China. Like the Myanmarese generals next door, turning to Beijing may be the only option left for Hasina.

Delhi has tried convincing Washington in the past that raking up the human rights issue to needle Hasina will only demoralise Bangladesh security forces and weaken the fight against Islamist terror. But even if the border conflict with China on the border has made India too dependent on the US, Delhi will have to find a way to manage Washington's hostile intent against the Hasina regime. China is already deeply entrenched in the country's economy through its massive infrastructure spending — Washington's needling and Delhi's failure to counter it will give Beijing political clout it is yet to enjoy in Bangladesh. The reality is India is yet to find a better option than Hasina in Dhaka and Vajpayee's failed outreach to Khaleda Zia's BNP is not distant memory as yet.

In Myanmar, Indian diplomacy swung from extremes — from Rajiv Gandhi's open support to the 1988 pro-democracy uprising to Vajpayee's reaching out to the Burmese military junta. Modi balanced India's support for Suu Kyi's NLD government with a military level outreach to the Burmese army Tatmadaw.

But last February's sudden military takeover and the unprecedented escalation of popular resistance has nullified the possibility of balancing support for democracy with a silent outreach to the army. With the emergence of the broad-based National Unity Government (NUG) that has representation from NLD and the ethnic parties, civil society and working-class groups, Myanmar is heading for civil war. The NUG is determined to use all means including violence to bring down military rule because the generals seem to be in no mood to negotiate a return to democracy.

That leaves India will little room for manoeuvre. The military junta is eating out of China's hands and resistance groups are attacking Chinese interests (factories and mines) because they see Beijing as the main backer of the military.

Foreign secretary Harshvardhan Shringla rightly underlined return to democracy as India's priority in Myanmar, but it is not yet prepared for proactive support to mediate a return to democracy and would rather wait to see how ASEAN fares in its efforts to achieve that through implementing its Five-Point Consensus.

Without peace and stability in Myanmar, India's 'Look East' through the northeast comes a cropper. India's major connectivity projects like the Kaladan multimodal transport project and the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway are way behind schedule and lack of peace will further delay them and escalate costs.

And without a return to democracy, Myanmar's beleaguered generals will have no option but to survive as Chinese surrogates. That raises fresh questions for the security scenario of India's northeast because the hilly jungles of Myanmar's Sagaing Region continue to be the last transborder base area for separatist rebels of the region. Apart from a fresh boost to insurgency, a Myanmar in durable disorder mode means more narcotics and illegal weapons flowing into the northeast. And surely more refugees from the Chin, Rakhine and Sagaing regions, where the Tatmadaw has ferociously unleashed its firepower to quell popular resistance.

(The writer is a former BBC correspondent and author specialising in north-east India.)

US efforts to rein in Bangladesh govt add to India's growing eastern worries

India cannot lose focus on the challenges it faces in its eastern neighbourhood

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[Bilal9]

The Awami League and Sheikh Hasina have always been uneasy about US policy since Washington's alleged involvement in the 1975 coup that killed almost her entire family.

I think whoever acted then (not the US, but mainly Indian RAW) acted on the principle that Mujib had gotten too independent-minded and out of bounds to eat out of Indian hands, despite forming Rakkhi Bahini (formed using RAW advisers) and surrounding himself with India-shill appeasers. This wasn't acceptable at all to Indians - they wanted essentially a full India-friendly Indian state next door, sovereign country in name only. But - as we say in Bengali, too bad so sad (Bidhi Bum). Their unholy effort to manipulate us went out the window.

Hasina's inner circle feel Washington is "weaponising" these issues to bring about regime change.

The US does not always do what India wants nowadays, it has its own interests and this time they did not align with Indian ones. A long-term one-party state sliding toward dynastic dictatorial rule was not what the US wanted to see here.

The sailing of an Indian cargo ship from Patna to Guwahati through Bangladesh waters in February is like a dream come true.

Of course Indians would just love transit through Bangladesh territory, even if it takes more than a month because of all the dams they have used in every river entering Bangladesh. Have their cake and eat it too.

There is nothing in Bangladesh' interest to allow any transit, when the whole NE Indian region is a natural Bangladesh-supplying hinterland. These Indian Sanghi burbaks don't understand it.

If they had any sense, they would set up value-added processing in Bangladesh to supply the rest of India with NE forestry and mineral assets.