Sometime in November 2023, a meeting was held in Washington DC under the aegis of a small section of the US State Department.
This meeting was attended by individuals from Right to Freedom, a US-based non-profit human rights organisation, representatives from a Dhaka-based think tank, a Bangladeshi academic, head of an NGO, a few others from Bangladesh and at least one academic. Donald Lu, the then State Department Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, was said to have briefed the gathering.
More importantly, ‘Chatham House’ rules applied to all the participants. This meant that while open discussion was allowed in the meeting, all participants were forbidden to discuss the issues and topics in public.
The main takeaway of the Washington meeting was that the State Department and all key Bangladeshi interlocutors would desist from speaking out any further on “free and fair elections” in Bangladesh and that there would be suspension of open anti-Sheikh Hasina statements.
By this time – and unknown to the meeting participants (barring Donald Lu, of course) – small groups of Bangladeshi university students were already undergoing clandestine ‘training’ by American officials (in all likelihood from USAID).
Between April and September 2023, these students’ groups met with US and Pakistani handlers in Pakistan and in West Asian cities such as Dubai and Doha. That US security and USAID officials had already begun working on ‘recruiting’ Mohammad Yunus is evident from a March 7, 2023, office order issued by the Grameen Group.
This order declared that while Yunus would step down as the Grameen Group chairman, three other senior functionaries of this organisation were appointed as “co-group chairpersons”. One of them – former Grameen Bank Executive Vice-President – is now Health Ministry advisor Noorjahan Begum.
The March 7, 2023, the Grameen Group office order is among the earliest pieces of evidence that indicates the then US administration’s mission to launch an operation to unseat Sheikh Hasina.
The call for ‘free, fair and participatory election’ in Bangladesh, by then US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Donald Lu and the then American Ambassador to Dhaka Peter Haas, was surround sound as the clandestine operation to use the students was already underway.
That the operation succeeded is no more a secret now. Led by a chief advisor – Yunus – an interim authority was put in place in Dhaka. What makes for interesting observation is that almost seven to eight persons who are directly or indirectly involved in the interim authority are US or UK passport holders – an indication that sections of the American machinery continue to guide and lead government business in Dhaka. Suffice it say that Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating at least 15 former Awami League MPs who held foreign passports.
One of the main participants of the November 2023 meeting, William B Milam, who was the US ambassador to Dhaka between 1990 and 1993, is now in Dhaka. Along with a fellow American colleague and a former diplomat, Milam met Yunus a few days ago. They have been meeting others in the interim authority, the students who led the July-August movement that ousted Hasina and a range of other Bangladeshis, including those who run think tanks.
Bangladesh security agencies have now been able to figure out that on August 6, 2024 – two days before Yunus arrived in Dhaka to take charge of the interim authority – a secret meeting of at least four Bangladeshis was held at the American embassy in Dhaka. The four individuals are now advisors in the interim regime: Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Brigadier (retd) Shakhwat Hossain, Asif Nazrul and Adilur Rahman.
A key advisor to Yunus is Khalilur Rahman who was appointed as High Representative on Rohingya Problem and Priority Issues Affairs. Khalilur Rahman is also a US passport holder. He is scheduled to meet UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres when the latter arrives in Dhaka for a four-day visit (March 13-16).
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“We have to see whether Guterres holds out a threat to discontinue the practice of sending Bangladesh army personnel as UN peacekeepers, on the lines that Volker Turk said a few days ago in the context of the pre-August 8, 2024 situation,” a Dhaka-based political observer said.
