United States' hand in Bangladeshi coup exposed

Numerous email exchanges indicate that Hunter Biden, a recognised lobbyist besides US President Joe Biden's son, has been involved with a firm engaged by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to further their objective of displacing the Awami League in the election of January 2024 but couldn't quite succeed. For several years, Biden Jr has been linked to a firm that functions as both a consulting and lobbying entity, known as Blue Star Strategies. This firm previously registered its work for the Ukrainian company Burisma under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

Through this same firm, Hunter Biden devised a strategy to lobby the US State Department on behalf of the Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners. Biden’s associations with Blue Star Strategies were leveraged by its client, the BNP, to foster a political climate that is hostile to the Sheikh Hasina government ahead of the elections.

It is widely acknowledged in Dhaka that Western nations, particularly the US, have adopted a critical stance towards the now-deposed Awami League regime, maintaining close ties with the rival BNP. The common Bangladeshi concern was that the January general elections would not be conducted in a free and fair manner.

In 2023, the US issued several directives concerning visa policies, introducing new criteria under which individuals, including politicians, journalists, and other prominent figures, who were perceived as disregarding human rights and democracy, would soon be denied visas. Additionally, multiple delegations visited Bangladesh to assess the political environment and determine whether it is conducive to a free and fair election.

The Hasina government came under scrutiny from the US for its recent cordial relations with the Chinese government, which can be linked to the US pressure on Bangladesh to align with the US stance regarding its strategic interests in the maritime areas near Bangladesh. These pressures coincided with the Awami League’s struggles to address public dissatisfaction over rising prices of essential commodities.

As reported by the Arabian Post last year, the BNP enlisted the services of US lobbying firms Akin Company Associates, Blue Star Strategies and Rasky Partners while Jamaat made agreements with an organisation called Peace and Justice.

The report also noted that on 17 January 2022, Bangladesh’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, M Shahriar Alam, informed reporters that the BNP had spent $3.75 million on a US lobbyist firm as part of their campaign against Bangladesh.

According to details obtained by the Arabian Post, the BNP engaged Blue Star Strategies through Abdus Sattar, a UK-based leader of the party, in August 2018. The purpose of appointing Blue Star Strategies was to "advance the objectives of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for the upcoming general elections in Bangladesh".

Blue Star Strategies formulated a strategy “to educate officials, policy influencers, and the media [in the United States] about the BNP and its commitment to free and fair elections,” and prepared a “narrative to convey the BNP’s objectives”.

Sattar signed the contract in a personal capacity, but the documents indicate that he was acting on behalf of the BNP. In the section of the form that identifies the “foreign principal,” Sattar was seen as representing a “foreign political party”, namely the BNP.

Moreover, in the part of the submitted documentation that inquires whether the foreign principal is a foreign political party, Blue Star Strategies specified: “Bangladesh Nationalist Party, 28, 1 VIP Rd, Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh.”

The documents also revealed that payments to Blue Star Strategies amounted to at least $278,582 over a period of two years. A payment of $10,000 was made to Blue Star Strategies in August 2018, followed by another payment of $197,790 in September 2018 and $70,792 between March and September 2019.

Although the BNP had been making considerable efforts to enlist Hunter Biden as its lobbyist, they ultimately reached an agreement with him through William B Milam. Milam, an influential figure within the Democratic Party and retired diplomat, manages an organisation called Right to Freedom in collaboration with Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey – a former assistant press secretary to then-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey, a staunch anti-India and anti-Hindu figure with connections to jihadist groups and the Pakistani intelligence agency, has been actively working alongside Milam to influence both the United Nations and the US Department of State to unseat the Awami League government through various means. Previously, this pair had advocated to the United Nations and the US Department of State to impose fresh sanctions on more Bangladeshi politicians and civil-military officials using the Global Magnitsky Act.

On 27 October 2020, at the behest of Milam and Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey, 10 US Senators sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, calling for sanctions against RAB officials. In the United Kingdom, the Guernica 37 Chambers law office made a formal submission to the British Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office in August 2021, recommending sanctions for 15 current and former senior RAB officers.

On 31 August 2021, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a virtual hearing on enforced disappearances in Bangladesh, where several witnesses advocated for punitive actions. The Bangladesh foreign ministry was not informed of the letters sent by the US Senators, and it was later alleged that the Bangladesh high commissioner in Washington DC had previously been a leader in the BNP's student wing.

The Arabian Post report indicated that the son of US President Joe Biden had been tasked with three objectives:

1. to prevent the Awami League from conducting the next general election without the participation of the BNP
2. to pressure Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina into holding the next general election under the direct oversight of Washington, and
3. to halt the import of goods from Bangladesh if the next general election proceeds without the BNP

Additionally, at the behest of Muhammad Yunus, Hillary Clinton tried to sway President Biden through several key officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The BNP engaged a New York-based PR firm as well. This was done to run full-page ads for five consecutive days in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, appealing for obstruction of the general election in Bangladesh if the ruling Awami League proceeds with the election as scheduled.

The BNP also hired journalists and columnists from major US publications while Tarique Rahman planned to orchestrate a similar campaign in major newspapers in Britain. For these propaganda activities, the BNP amassed a significant fund, with contributions from wealthy party leaders and Jamaat-e-Islami, as well as from the families of executed or convicted war criminals.

As though the above were not enough, the United States finally hoisted a puppet

Author, broadcaster and human rights activist based in the UK, Amjad Ayub Mirza, explained how the credentials of Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate micro-finance entrepreneur now seen as Bangladesh's messiah, shows his proximity to the United States.

Drawing a parallel with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in the 1970s, he recalls that on 1 February 1979, Islamic cleric Ayatollah Khomeini boarded a Charted flight from Paris and arrived in Tehran. The Iranian monarch Shah Raza Pahlavi had flown out of the country after facing a long spat of violent protests. Likewise, on August 7 this year, Yunus, 83, the Bangladeshi exile, boarded a chartered flight from the same airport in Paris and headed for Dhaka. The three-time Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had fled the country before that and is now in India.

Like the late Shah of Iran in 1979, Mirza says today Hasina is being denied entry into the United States and she was denied a visa.

On August 5, a few hundred thousand protestors arrived at the gates of Dhaka. It was at that moment that the Bangladesh Army chief forced the prime minister to resign and pack her bags. Within 45 minutes, she was put on a plane that flew the fallen leader to safety in India, Mirza notes. 

Before this, on May 23, Hasina had claimed in a statement that a “white asked her to allow his country a military base in BD, in which case she would not be bothered with her election in January”.

“The US has been trying to get a strong and stable foothold in the region and for this purpose, attempts are underway to carve out a new Christian country by chipping off parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar and India,” Mirza wrote on X. Hasina had warned on more than one occasion of a conspiracy.

Describing the antecedents of Yunus, Mirza recalls he is a Fulbright scholar. The Fulbright program was established in 1946 to train scholars to further US policies and economic programmes in foreign countries. Yunus was admitted in 1965.

In 2006, Yunus and the bank he created, Grameen Bank, received the Nobel Peace Prize for granting small loans to the rural poor to the tune of $100 million.

In 2010, Yunus received a Congressional Medal of Freedom and the highest American civilian, the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Yunus is a US asset, Mirza says. The US State Department spokesperson has, meanwhile, issued a statement declaring, “We welcome the interim government.”

The military coup in BD has all the hallmarks of a coup orchestrated by the CIA. Pakistan’s spy agency ISI assisted in providing Jihadi right-wing street power through its religious proxies.

With an anti-India government in Bangladesh, the US policymakers will no doubt add pressure on India to reverse its economic ties with Russia.

“Today, India is a neighbour to three countries that are undergoing CIA-sponsored violence. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar,” Mirza observes.

By instigating a coup in Bangladesh, the US can block the chain of influence of China’s economic expansion. Further, it may target Indian security from Pakistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east via proxy, Mirza surmises.

The article above is the aggregation of a rephrased version of a piece written by Satyaki Chakraborty for IPA Newspack in 2023 and a post on X by author, broadcaster and human rights activist Amjad Ayub Mirza.