Between January 2009 and August 2024, Bangladesh had four foreign ministers who served alongside Sheikh Hasina when the Awami League reigned supreme for 15 consecutive years.
Barring Dipu Moni, the one common characteristic among these foreign ministers was that they were extremely talkative. The second common trait was that all of them held – and continue to hold – dual citizenship.
Today, these once garrulous former foreign ministers – barring Dipu Moni who was arrested after the Mohammd Yunus-led interim authority captured power on August 8, 2024 – have all fallen silent. There has not even been a squeak.
The last foreign minister Hasan Mahmud, who had previously served as the information minister, holds dual citizenship. Besides possessing a Bangladeshi passport, Mahmud is a Belgian citizen.
He was among the first tier-1 Awami League ministers to flee the country to take shelter in Brussels. He is ensconced there safely, well beyond the reach of Bangladeshi authorities.
The next in line was A K Abdul Momen who, before being appointed foreign minister in January 2019, held an American passport – and did his wife – which he relinquished once he was appointed to the hot seat.
One of Momen’s last images of brushing shoulders with top American leaders was during the then US President Joe Biden’s visit to New Delhi in September 2023 when global leaders gathered for the G20 Summit.
At that time, the loquacious foreign minister appeared before television news cameras, gladly giving bytes while also taking steps to get Sheikh Hasina and her daughter Saima Wajed Putul to pose with Biden for photographers.
Momen was touring a few countries in the West when disaster struck the Sheikh Hasina regime.
Indeed, towards the end of July 2024, when much of Bangladesh was in turmoil and the Awami League leadership was besieged in Dhaka, he had bumped into a senior Indian minister who had shared some “political advice” that was meant for Sheikh Hasina.
Today, Momen spends time with his wife in Washington DC with not even a chirp.
Momen’s predecessor was Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali who held sway over the foreign ministry between November 2013 and January 2019. Mahmud Ali had briefly served as disaster management and relief minister for just about a year (2012-2013).
Mahmud Ali has been living in New York for several years now. Suffice it to say that Mahmud Ali was a career diplomat before he took to politics after retiring from service in 2001.
He joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1966 and two years later was posted as undivided Pakistan’s vice-consul in New York.
Like his successors, he has preferred silence over being vocal about the manner in which Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League were overthrown from power in August last year.
Mahmud Ali’s predecessor was Dipu Moni who served in the capacity of Bangladesh’s foreign minister between January 2009 and November 2013.
Allegedly in profiteering from illegal sand mining in Bangladesh’s Chandpur district, from where she hails, Dipu Moni holds a British passport besides being a legitimate Bangladeshi citizen.
Dipu Moni’s story is interesting. When she earned an LLB degree, she was a resident of Dhaka’s Kalabagan neighbourhood where she had a dalliance with a married man about 20 years elder to her before the two got married.
This person, a practicing lawyer at that time, is Tawfique Nawaz who now lies bed-ridden in his Dhaka residence while Dipu Moni spends time in prison as an undertrial, faced with corruption charges.
