Sheikh Hasina was welcomed by the Indian spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), in 1975 and again in 2024. On both occasions, Sheikh Hasina fled to India and was politically and culturally indoctrinated by a spy agent of the Indian RAW in favour of Hindu nationalism.
In 1975, Sheikh Hasina had little presence in politics before her father’s assassination in August 1975. Afterwards, she sought asylum in India and became involved with the Awami League, where she was elected as its president, a position she continues to hold to this day while residing in India.
The anti-American suspicion was seeded by the Indian RAW when she was in exile in India in 1975, and the Indian RAW brainwashed her to adopt Hindu nationalism. In Hasina’s mind, the US was ultimately responsible for the uprising against her father, former dictator of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and could create another rebellion against her political party, the Awami League.
Sheikh Hasina’s Schizophrenia was driven by fear that the US was hunting her like her father and about to take her political dynasty down.
For 15 years, Hasina was openly oppressing freedom of speech, curtail media freedom, killing opposition politicians, and demoralising the military by offering private businesses to senior military officers to stay in power. Sheikh Hasina, her family members, and former ministers allegedly embezzled, siphoned, and laundered more than $250 billion in the USA, the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, Qatar, and the Cayman Islands.
The interim Bangladesh government has provided sufficient evidence to prove that Sheikh Hasina was keeping her master in Delhi happy while remaining in power and exercising corrupt practices to embezzle and siphon billions of dollars from the country.
Now that Bangladesh’s interim government chief advisor, Mohammed Yunus, is strengthening democratic institutions and promoting free speech in Bangladesh.
Resentment and suspicion against the US
There had been yet another event that caused Hasina to question U.S. intentions toward her. Back in the mid-1980s, neither the Awami League nor the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the two major opposition parties, wished to participate in an election or do anything that might lend legitimacy to the military regime of General H. M. Ershad, who had assumed power in 1982. Ershad was mounting efforts to return to a constitutional government under his leadership.
The United States was interested in fostering constitutional government. The U.S. Embassy in Dhaka urged all political parties to participate in the political process. Ambassador Howard Schaffer fostered a trusting relationship between the embassy and the government, as well as between the embassy and the opposition parties. Both the major opposition parties, however, thought the Americans were in Ershad’s camp.
“In addition, the leader of the Awami League believed that the U.S. government was particularly opposed to her party. Indeed, sometimes in her darker moments, Hasina felt that the assassination of her father in 1975 was in part due to our involvement,” according to Schaffer, who was in Dhaka until 1987.
Still, he managed to develop personal relationships with both Khaleda Zia, chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and Hasina, leader of the Awami League. This helped him persuade them that the U.S. government was not favouring Ershad, despite maintaining proper diplomatic contacts with him.
One of the things the envoy did to support a return to constitutional processes was to persuade the Awami League to participate in the 1986 parliamentary elections. Schaffer proceeded with this very quietly against the advice of his political counsellor, who thought that the ambassador was taking too active a role.
Complex relationship between Sheikh Hasina and the US
The United States has had a complex relationship with Sheikh Hasina’s government, characterised by frequent tension and mutual suspicion. For years, the U.S. appeared to be at odds with Hasina, challenging her government on various fronts. A series of incidents in recent years only exacerbated these tensions.
In May 2023, the U.S. introduced a new visa policy, purportedly aimed at supporting Bangladesh’s goal of holding free, fair, and peaceful parliamentary elections. Under this policy, the U.S. reserved the right to impose visa restrictions on any Bangladeshi individual believed to be complicit in undermining the democratic process. While the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) welcomed this move, Hasina openly questioned the U.S. motives, expressing her concerns in an interview with Voice of America.
Hasina severed military ties between the US and Bangladesh
The friction did not stop there. In December 2021, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Bangladesh’s elite paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), accusing it of human rights violations. The U.S. also excluded Bangladesh from its Democracy Summit in both 2021 and 2023, further straining relations.
Adding to the tension, the U.S. had been pressuring Bangladesh to sign two defence agreements—the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). However, Hasina resisted these efforts, a stance that reportedly irked Washington.
On May 21 of this year, the U.S. State Department enacted visa restrictions on former Bangladesh army chief Gen. (Retd) Aziz Ahmed, accusing him of “involvement in significant corruption” and “undermining… Bangladesh’s democratic institutions.” He became the first Bangladeshi national to be publicly sanctioned in this manner by the U.S. administration.
Hasina’s paranoia.
During a meeting, she mentioned a proposal from “a white man” to build an airbase in Bangladesh for a particular “foreign country.” In return, Hasina said, she would receive guaranteed support for a smooth re-election in the January 7 2024, polls.
The conversation surrounding Saint Martin’s Island, located in the northeastern part of the Bay of Bengal, is also nothing new.
In a press conference at Ganabhaban in January last year, Hasina claimed that her party, the Awami League, did not seek to come to power by selling any national resources. In contrast, she alleged that the opposition BNP wanted to gain power by promising to sell Saint Martin’s Island.
Hasina’s government speculated that the United States sought Saint Martin’s Island to establish an air base, and that Bangladesh’s potential participation in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) – a strategic Indo-Pacific alliance comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – was a factor in this interest.
The United States, however, has consistently declined such claims. Miller, the State Department spokesperson, asserted that the United States had never engaged in any discussions regarding taking control of the island, nor had it any intention to do so.
Michael Kugelman, the deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Washington-based Wilson Centre, claimed otherwise in an interview with the Bangladeshi daily The Daily Star in March 2022.
“I can’t imagine the U.S. wants or expects Bangladesh to join the Quad. There are presently no plans to expand the number of Quad members,” he said. Quad members are the US, Japan, Australia and India.
U.S. rival Russia was quick to take the opportunity to accuse the USA of planning to replace Hasina’s government. On December 15, 2023, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova predicted at a press briefing that if Sheikh Hasina were to come to power in the upcoming election, the United States would use all its resources to overthrow her government.
How did Maria Zakharova know that Hasina would be re-elected without the election being held? Does it provide further evidence that Russia and India were backing Hasina to keep her in power?
The Saint Martin Islands conspiracy theory was the brainchild of Sheikh Hasina.
Sheikh Hasina used an anti-US stance and spread fear that the US wants to occupy Bangladesh and make it Afghanistan or Iraq.
During the turbulent days of 2024, pro-Indian dictator Sheikh Hasina stated several times that a the US was trying to unseat her from power as she rejected its proposals to set up an airbase in the Bay of Bengal (Saint Martins Island), signing a defense deal, allowing to create a Christian state in the southeast region, and giving the deep-sea blocks to a US company without tender, among other demands.
However, the US has denied any request made to Bangladesh to establish a military base or deep-sea port. On the contrary, the US offers Bangladesh’s armed forces advanced training and modern weapons to help maintain peace and democracy in the country.
Love the dollars, Western lifestyle, hate the West.
Sheikh Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, lives in New Jersey, USA; her daughter, Saima Wazed, lives in Toronto, Canada; and all the family members, including her niece, British MP Tulip Siddiq, and sister, Sheikh Rehna, live in London, the UK.
Sheikh Hasina, her family members, and former ministers of the Hasina regime have siphoned more than $250 billion from Bangladesh to the USA, the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Cayman Islands over the past 15 years.
If Sheikh Hasina and her family truly loved Bangladesh, they could have kept their corrupt money in Bangladesh, but they preferred Western banks and assets as the safe haven for their extorted money.
Bangladesh’s military also siphoned more than $5 billion from military-owned businesses, Sena Kallan Segsta, Trust Bank, and VDP banks, to the USA.
Sheikh Hasina and her family members enjoy a Western lifestyle at home and abroad. Still, her hatred towards the USA and the West is founded on suspicion that the West was hatching a plot to unseat her from power in Bangladesh.
The US has no role in student protests.
The United States had no role in ousting Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who recently quit her position and fled the South Asian nation, the White House said on Monday, calling allegations of U.S. interference “simply false.”
“We have had no involvement at all. Any reports or rumors that the United States government was involved in these events is simply false,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing when asked about reported claims of U.S. involvement.
“We believe that the Bangladeshi people should determine the future of the Bangladeshi government and that’s where we stand,” the White House added.
An interim government in Bangladesh, led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in to hold elections in 2026.
Bangladesh was engulfed by demonstrations and violence after student protests last month against quotas that reserved a high portion of government jobs for certain groups escalated into a campaign to oust Hasina.
She had won a fourth straight term in January in an election that the opposition boycotted and which the U.S. State Department said was not free and fair.
Hasina went to New Delhi after leaving Bangladesh, marking the end of her 15-year uninterrupted rule.
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