Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won re-election earlier this year despite America’s attempts to meddle in the vote, told her political allies last week about a new regional plot. According to her, a “white man” requested that her country give their unnamed one an air base in exchange for making its problems disappear, which she rejected because of suspicions that it would be aimed against several countries. Given the domestic and regional context, Hasina is likely referring to the US.
She also said that “Like East Timor … they will carve out a Christian country taking parts of Bangladesh [Chattogram] and Myanmar with a base in the Bay of Bengal”, adding that “Many have their eyes on this place. There is no controversy here, no conflict. I won’t let that happen. This is also one of my crimes [in their eyes].” The Bangladeshi premier then warned her allies that “There will be more trouble. But don’t worry about it.”
Despite her reassurances, there are definitely plenty of reasons to be concerned, though the worst-case scenario of a pro-Western Christian proxy state being carved out of Bangladesh, Myanmar, and possibly also their mutual Indian neighbor too is unlikely to materialize. To explain, India’s Northeastern State of Manipur was briefly rocked by unrest last year after narco-trafficking Christian Kuki separatist gangs went on a rampage against the Hindu Meitei, which resulted in mutual accusations of ethnic cleansing.
The US subsequently politicized this local conflict as a pretext for ramping up information warfare pressure against India as part of its campaign to punish that globally significant Great Power for refusing to subordinate itself as a vassal in the New Cold War. The latest manifestation of this was American Evangelicals spinning India’s border fence with Myanmar as anti-Christian in order to rally Republican support for the Democrat-led administration’s threats to sanction India on Iran-related pretexts.
Other aspects include meddling in its six-week-long elections that’ll end on 1 June, having anonymous intel sources gossip about the claim that India wanted to assassinate a Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist with dual US citizenship on American soil, and fearmongering about its ties with Russia. In parallel with this pressure campaign against India, the US is also meddling in the latest phase of Myanmar’s civil war, mostly recently by returning to the emotive Rohingya issue.
Altogether, the US has problems with Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar, all of whom have Christian minorities in their border regions. The first’s are located in the Chittagong Hill Tracts semi-autonomous region where foreign missionaries are very active, the second’s are in some of the Northeastern States like Manipur, while many of the last’s are in Chin State. These populations are part of the Chin-Kuki-Zo tribes, which have a shared culture and similar but mutually unintelligible languages just like the Kurds.
Likewise, some Chin-Kuki-Zo have also waged wars against their respective governments for more autonomy and even independence, though they struggle to unite owing to their separate historical experiences and intra-group differences. Nevertheless, the Chin National Army’s battlefield successes and formation of the “Chinland Council” could embolden related tribes in Bangladesh and India, which might more closely coordinate via drug trafficking groups and foreign intelligence missionary fronts.
Those two neighboring countries have stepped up their border security in response to the latest military-political developments in that Myanmarese state and both are highly suspicious of the Western missionary groups operating in their frontier regions. They’re thus expected to contain these threats to their security. Moreover, there’s no significant Chin-Kuki-Zo/Christian presence in either Bangladesh or Myanmar’s coastal regions from which a separatist state’s foreign patrons could one day obtain a port.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts are mostly Buddhist, while Muslims live in the lowlands that comprise the rest of Chittagong District. As for Myanmar, its Rakhine State is a mix of Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Arakanese, the latter of whose Arakan Army is one of the armed opposition’s most formidable groups and is fighting for wide autonomy but also has separatist inclinations. These demographic factors greatly impede the creation of a Western-backed Christian proxy state in the Bay of Bengal.
It should also be mentioned that while the Arakan Army and the Chin National Army are formally allies against the Tatmadaw, which is the name of the Myanmarese Armed Forces, there are tensions over the first’s operations in the second’s region. These could be patched up in theory via the formation of a carefully crafted ethno-religious confederation that could see their home states unite as an independent nation if Myanmar “Balkanizes”, but it’s difficult to imagine that happening, let alone being sustained.
For these reasons, it’s much more likely that the Arakan Army carves out its own country in Rakhine State that then provides the US with bases in the Bay of Bengal than Christian separatists becoming powerful enough to ethnically cleanse Bangladesh’s coastal Muslims and Myanmar’s Buddhist ones to that end. Both are serious threats in their own way, but the first is much more dangerous than the second, though its success can’t be taken for granted since Myanmar’s civil war is still far from over.
From an American perspective, obtaining bases of any sort in the Bay of Bengal would be a hegemonic masterstroke since it could enable the projection of power against the three previously mentioned countries as well as nearby China, including the latter’s pipelines and trade routes through Myanmar. Those projects’ terminal points lie within Rakhine State, thus elevating the importance of the Arakan Army with respect to the US’ geostrategic interests, ergo why more attention should be placed on them.
Armed Chin-Kuki-Zo movements do indeed pose a transnational threat in the Bangladeshi-Indian-Myanmarese border region, but they’re too disparate and divided to coalesce into a powerful force like the Arakan Army, plus it’s not easy for their foreign patrons to supply these landlocked groups. Evangelicals on the right and “human rights” activists on the left are coming together to promote their cause as part of the larger “Zomia” scenario, but there’s a long way to go before anything comes of this.
Returning back to Hasina’s warning, she was right to raise awareness about this Western-backed Christian-separatist proxy state plot in the region, but her country and India would do well to turn their focus more towards the Arakan Army instead since it represents a much greater threat. Looking forward, it’s expected that more tangible progress might soon be made on implementing this plot, but it’s premature to predict that it’ll succeed since a lot can still happen to offset it.
