Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sparked a scandal when she recently told Indian media during her trip to the country that Trump 2.0 is concerned about the persecution of minorities and growing caliphate threats in Bangladesh. That country’s interim authorities predictably denied that either is a problem, which prompted a State Department spokesman to remind them that “We’re watching.” This back-and-forth shows that the future of their ties is no longer as clear-cut as before.
Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, many Indian observers, and a sizeable number of foreign ones believe that the US played a role in Bangladesh’s regime change sequence last summer. Trump claimed that “There was no role for our deep state” when asked about this last month during Modi’s visit, but regardless of whether he’s taken at his word, Tulsi’s comments show that the US is no longer giving Bangladesh’s new rulers a blank check. They might even sanction them if the situation deteriorates.
Their interests in minority rights there might stem from a desire to repair the damage that the last administration dealt to bilateral ties by championing what’s now India’s top cause in Bangladesh, which is in spite of possibly pressuring it on tariffs and trade, while the caliphate one is of more direct importance. Hasina was a heavy-handed secular leader who was overthrown by Islamist-instigated street violence and the “Arab Spring” precedent shows that such regime changes usually end badly with time.
Bangladesh has long struggled to contain radical Islamist sentiment within its society, but the new authorities no longer share their predecessors’ threat assessment of such movements, instead partnering with them to legitimize the new order that came to power after Hasina fled to India. That’s problematic from the US’ perspective and is made all the more worrying by reports that Bangladesh has since improved its ties with Pakistan, including in the military and possibly also intelligence domains too.
Readers can learn more about this from the BBC’s recent article here. Its relevance to Tulsi’s comments is that the caliphate part could be connected to allegations that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has a history of cultivating radical Islamist movements across South Asia, might be plotting to use Bangladesh as a launch pad for waging another Hybrid War on India. If true and anything tangibly comes of it, then this could worsen Indo-Bangladeshi ties, destabilize the region, and complicate US policy.
It’s beyond the scope of this analysis to describe India’s vulnerability to externally exacerbated identity conflicts, which often take terrorist and separatist forms, but it’s enough for casual observers to know that Bangladeshi-based groups have a history of stirring trouble in West Bengal and the Northeast. India also believes that past iterations were tied to the ISI’s activities in Bangladesh that were tacitly approved by its former Islamo-nationalist governments as a means of jointly balancing India in asymmetrical ways.
The way in which last summer’s regime change unfolded and the nature of the interim authorities that came to power have rekindled these concerns, which Trump 2.0 also takes seriously as proven by Tulsi’s comments. So-called “rogue activity” by Pakistan, which includes its long-range missile program and cultivation of radical Islamists in Bangladesh who persecute minorities with impunity, won’t be tolerated. Continued movement in this direction risks further complicating already difficult US-Pakistani ties.
