US Military Presence in Bangladesh Worries India

SALEEM SAMAD

In 1996, Bangladesh agreed to the “war on terror” against the rogue Jihadist regime in Afghanistan, officially the Global War on Terrorism, a global military campaign initiated by the United States following the 11 September attacks in 2001, and is one of the most recent global conflicts spanning multiple wars.

The US military arrived for three joint military exercises with its counterpart, the Bangladesh military. The US officers checked into a Bangladesh Army-affiliated Radisson Blu Hotel in Chattogram (formerly Chittagong) on September 10 for an exercise in the coastal region of the south.

For the fourth year in a row, the Bangladesh Army and US Army Pacific conducted Exercise Tiger Lightning for preparedness on counterterrorism, peacekeeping, jungle operations, medical evacuations, and countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs), says the US Embassy in Dhaka on 20 July.

Since 2009, the ongoing exercise will feature patrol boat handling and small arms marksmanship, strengthening warfare diving and salvage, as well as the para-commandos’ ability to respond to crises.

In  the hallmarks of defense relationship between the two countries, the US built C-130 fleets that are critical in disaster response, airdrops, and air mobility operations. The exercise included Search and Rescue (SAR) and Aero-medical operations, further developing Bangladesh’s ability to respond to humanitarian disasters.

The United States, with Bangladesh’s Army and Navy, develop an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) capability for Bangladesh, and operated the new RQ-21 Blackjack system. The effort enabled Bangladesh to monitor its maritime domain, secure its borders, and conduct peacekeeping missions.

Whereas, hundreds of social media accounts loyal to the ousted regime of Sheikh Hasina burst into outrage, deep into conspiracy theories that the Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus Interim Government has opened the floodgate for “clandestine operation” to enable Bangladesh military forces to militarily strengthen the Myanmar rebels to oust the military junta in the capital Naypyidaw. The social media was abuzz that the US military officers had “secretly” arrived in Bangladesh and did not register their names at the hotel.

The second conspiracy theory, which was widely floating in social media and many suggests that the US military presence was to determine a suitable base which would make their presence felt in South Asia and also monitor South-East Asia. Well, the Bangladesh authority did not bother to counter the conspiracy theories that attempted to undermine the joint military exercise.

In August 2016, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, during a meeting with former Secretary of State John Kerry in Dhaka, expressed a “very clear” desire to cooperate with the U.S. “very, very closely” on fighting terrorism. Kerry announced the two countries had agreed to “additional steps by which our intelligence and law enforcement will work together to try to get ahead of this.”

Secretary of State, said the US and the West are deeply worried after evidence of the presence of Islamic State jihadists operating in Iraq and Syria has sleeping cells in “eight entities around the world, and one of them is in South Asia.” He deliberately did not mention the name of Afghanistan. He, however, disclosed that Islamic State extremists are in contact with some operatives in Bangladesh, and there was no argument about it from the government officials he met with here, including the prime minister.

Hasina’s government was blamed by scores of terrorism analysts and security experts for ‘having its head in the sand’ about such links, repeatedly terming the attacks as homegrown. Meanwhile, popular India Today media published a documentary titled: Strategic Drills In India’s Backyard: US Footprint In Bangladesh Rising.

Another media News Arena India on 15 September wrote in an article that India’s intelligence circle, the US troops’ arrival has fueled speculation amid a noticeable uptick in American military activity in Bangladesh following the fall of the Hasina regime. The same article was widely quoted on social media that the US military officers refrained from registering their names with the front desk and slipped into pre-booked rooms.

“The purpose of the exercise remains vague, with officials mentioning Cox’s Bazar as a likely location. The Bangladesh Army has largely remained cagey about the presence of US forces, apart from acknowledging formal collaborations such as Operation Pacific Angel and Tiger Lightning-2025,” wrote News Arena India without mentioning the source of information. The presence of C-130Js has reinforced speculation about the scope of US military activities in Bangladesh, etcetra, etcetra.

In the mid-60s, the radical left students to imbibe dissent against the military dictator General Ayub Khan of Pakistan said that he had leased Saint Martin’s island in the southeast tip of the country to the United States to build a military base to counter India.

The conspiracy theory of St. Martin given away to the Americans has cropped up several times since its independence in 1971. They were deliberately blamed for different regimes for facilitating inroads for America to counter the regional influence of India and China.

Bangladesh’s only coral island, Saint Martin, the Department of Environment (DoE) in 1999 declared the 8 Sq Km isles an “Ecologically Critical Area (ECA)”. It warned that the geo-class of a tiny island cannot be changed without the permission of the DoE. A British team of surveyors in 1900 included Saint Martin’s island as part of the British Raj in India and named it after a Christian priest, Saint Martin.

Green activists and environmentalists say the island is home to several globally endangered marine turtles and birds, including the rare Pacific reef-egret, red crab, dolphin, and vulnerable olive Ridley sea turtles, which are also on the verge of disappearance.

Professor Kawser Ahmed, dean of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty of Dhaka University, in his article published in Ocean Science Journal in 2020, predicts that coral species will completely disappear by 2045.

Earlier, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, environment adviser to the Interim Government, doubted whether an ecologically threatened island would be suitable for any military purpose. Political historian and researcher Mohiuddin Ahmad, quoted in the largest circulated Bangla newspaper, Prothom Alo that he first heard in February 1971 about leasing Bhola’s Monpura island out to the USA.

The rumor took wings after the then fiery opposition leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had parley with the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Joseph Simpson Farland, on 28 February 1971 – a month before the genocidal campaign ‘Operation Searchlight’ launched by the Pakistan military, which sparked the liberation war.

Indian media quoting Hasina from a press conference in July 2023, she asked, “How did [opposition] BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) come to power in 2001?”? She continued that they came to power by pledging to sell [natural] gas [to India]. Now do they want to sell the country [to the United States] or come to power by pledging to sell Saint Martin’s island,” she told loyalist journalists. Her words spread like wildfire and were injected into the minds and hearts of millions of supporters that Americans have an interest in the ‘critically endangered’ tiny island.

She blames BNP for negotiating with Washington, DC, to give away the ‘critically endangered’ coral island to America for a military establishment to watch over a huge swatch of the Bay of Bengal, which merges with the Indian Ocean in the far south. BNP countered her statement and said, “No country signs a deal with the opposition; it is signed with the government.”

On the other hand, the United States State Department’s former spokesperson Matthew Miller scoffed at the rumor centering on the island and the USA. In a press briefing in Washington, DC, he confidently said, “We have never engaged in any conversations about taking over Saint Martin’s island,” he remarked. Despite the denial by the US official, the loyalist of Hasina still blows the horn that the American military presence is interpreted as the establishment of a strategic naval base in the ocean of Bangladesh.

First published in the Stratheia Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan, 24 September 2025

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist based in Bangladesh and a media rights defender with Reporters Without Borders. He is the recipient of the Ashoka Fellowship and the Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleem.samad.1971@gmail.com>; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad

Bangladesh Denies India Thwarts Pakistan’s Engineered Coup!

SALEEM SAMAD

An Indian news portal, Swarajya, published an exclusive article with the headline “India Helped Thwart a Coup Against Bangladesh Army Chief by Pro-Pak Islamist Generals,” written by journalist Jaideep Mazumdar. Swarajya periodical was launched in 1956. The media boasts of ethical clarity, intellectual honesty, and the ability to speak truth to power, accentuating his reputation as a bold journalist.

The question is how ethical and honest the article carries on conspiracy to a coup plot by Pakistan which is fortunately unearthed by Indian hawks at the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), a spy agency that claims to have shared encrypted Intel to alert Bangladesh armed forces headquarters. There are several issues which need to be put on the table. First, why would Pakistan’s dreaded spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) go for a half-baked coup plot, which eventually did not see the light of day?

Second, why would Bangladesh’s military headquarters in the capital Dhaka take the crucial Indian military information seriously, when nearly 1400 students and protesters were shot and killed during the July-August revolution to topple the autocrat Sheikh Hasina and India and Indian media remained tight-lipped?

Let’s presume that the plot was successful. Millions of students and protesters would pour into the streets of Bangladesh protesting the illegal coup d’état, which goes against the spirit of the Monsoon Revolution. The nation would plunge into a bloody civil war. Bangladesh Army is divided into several regional commanders based in 31 cantonments distributed among the infantry, artillery, armored corps, and other vital units.

Mazumdar, who writes on Indian current affairs and India’s neighbors does not know it will be very difficult to muster the allegiance of 10 regional commanders to join the mutiny, which they will be able to understand in an hour that the plot would not serve their purpose. To stay in power, the mutineers will have to slaughter thousands of protesters in the streets and arrest tens of thousands, which will turn into a massive headache for the soldiers to contain them in the long run.

The mutineers know that the people do not listen to state broadcast radio. It will be difficult to ventilate their crucial messages. The alternative would be to create a social media channel to keep their propaganda kicking. As Mazumdar writes the coup engineered by Pakistan military establishment will usher in pro-Pakistan elements in power with the moral support of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Isami.

Several senior retired officers, who have privy to military affairs have confided that the story by Mazumdar is fictitious and has several flaws in information of name, ranks, and position. Most importantly the alleged plotter Lieutenant General Muhammad Faizur Rahman, who was supposed to replace the current COAS is still in service.

The other half a dozen Generals who reportedly supported Rahman are still in service and have been reassigned to new positions, according to retired officers. Well, Jamaat-e-Islami has yet to apologize for supporting and abetting the marauding Pakistan military during the liberation war in 1971. The Jamaat-e-Islami youths were recruited to raise an Islamic militia and Al Badr, a secret death squad responsible for abduction and execution without mercy.

They were trained and also provided weapons and logistics to hunt and eliminate suspected Mukti Bahini guerillas and independence sympathizers. The victims were mostly Hindus.

Most political analysts argue that the Jamaat will not make such a suicidal decision, which will destroy their political career. They did make a political blunder in 1971 and took four decades to stand on their feet. Next time if the Islamist party supports an illegal military junta, the party will opt for self-destruction.

Salauddin Babar, editor of pro-Jamaat newspaper Dainik Naya Diganta says Jamaat-e-Islami is a political party and has learned to keep their heads above the water during the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina’s repressive regimes.

Thousands of the party leaders and members had been in prison on charges of Islamic terrorism and destabilizing the country. Jamaat has been able to stand firm on their political indoctrination. Babar believes that Jamaat will never take a shortcut to power on a piggy-back of the military. Instead, they would demand the mutineers to hold a free and fair inclusive election. This will irk the plotters.

Then who is the alternative Islamist party? Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh is a madrassa-based platform that has millions of students and followers in small cities and rural areas. The organization opposes Deoband’s Islamic theology of liberalism, and respect for others’ religious practices, culture, and tradition.

The military leaders will have to rely on the support of Hefazat-e-Islam. The armed militia will eventually turn the country into Talibanism. Which will be chaotic and would be difficult for the rogue military to bridle them.

The tide has turned around. India as a victorious army in 1971 was a catalyst in the historic surrender of the marauding Pakistan military to protect the sovereignty and integrity of the eastern province. The Indians had fondled Bangladesh since its independence. It cannot be ignored that India is the largest neighbor and its borders are wrapped around Bangladesh.

Pakistan, to avenge the humiliating defeat is expected to fiddle Bangladesh which was not friendly with Islamabad. The country’s three regimes, out of five were not hostile to Pakistan. Islamabad should be contended with the diplomatic relations. Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus extended warm hearts to Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif when the two met at a summit in Cairo. The meeting turned the relations from cold to warm.

After the Mujib-Bhutto official meetup in February 1974, the relations apparently became warm. When Mujib attended the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Lahore, Pakistan and later Bhutto paid an official visit to Bangladesh and planted a tree sapling at the National Martyrs Memorial for those killed during the brutal birth of Bangladesh. Everything went well.

Trade and commerce between the two countries resumed and hatred on both sides significantly thawed. Meanwhile, scores of Pakistani industrialists and business entrepreneurs have relocated their textile factories in Bangladesh since 2000, according to Express Tribune newspaper. The textile products were destined for European and American markets.

The production by Pakistan industrialists in Bangladesh will further multiply when the Trump administration enforces a trade embargo with China. Export analysts say the Bangladesh market for ready-made garments (RMG) will be able to make a dent in garments sold to Walmart, Amazon, Gap, Levi Strauss, Macy’s, Nike and several other giant clothes retailers in the United States.

Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, a professor at Dhaka University and a political scientist said Pakistan will not jeopardize such an ongoing opportunity which will lead to the Trump administration’s imposing trade sanctions on a military administration in Bangladesh after the takeover of the country through an unconstitutional method.

Most importantly, the Bangladesh Army is trained in defensive combat tactics and crowd control. Bangladesh has negative threats of war from its neighbors (India and Myanmar). The military is trained to be deployed in the United Nations peacekeeping missions. Several contingents are readied to be deployed in several war-torn countries in Africa and Haiti, in the Caribbean.

Bangladesh is a significant contributor to UN peacekeeping missions, having deployed over 160,000 peacekeepers to 54 missions in 40 countries, with 6,802 currently deployed in 9 missions.

A foot soldier’s lifetime income comes from peacekeeping. The soldier invests in housing, buying arable lands, and setting up trading stores in their hometown. With military wages and benefits, it is not possible to live a life free from poverty.

If the peacekeeping mission is jeopardized, the soldiers will revolt against their commanding officers and there is the worst possibility that they may take extreme measures, which occurred on 7th November 1975. The soldiers will disobey the commands of their officers performing martial law duties. In such situation, the nation will plunge into a long-drawn civil war.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which advocates Hindutva means ‘Hindu-ness’. BJP’s inherent political ideology asserts that Hindu nationalism as an Indian national identity is not at all happy that their all-weather friend Sheikh Hasina has been ousted and sent to India to live in exile.

The South Block in New Delhi could not ascertain that the United States, Great Britain and Schengen (European Union) visas would be denied and stamped visas would be revoked.

For now, Delhi had taken a rat in their throat, which they cannot swallow nor vomit. They are in limbo with their guest Hasina. Admitted a senior Indian diplomat based in Dhaka.

Muhammad Yunus, the present head of government has reiterated that Bangladesh wants to have good relations with India. Possibly BJP explicitly does not believe and South Block has some reservations about improving bilateral relations.

For the time being, Bangladesh and India have developed love-and-hate relations. Both countries cannot avoid it but have lots of distrust, suspicion, and pessimism.

First published in the Stratheia Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan, 18 March 2025

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad