The ongoing global conflict between the United States and Russia has unexpectedly expanded to include Bangladesh. Since December 20, 2022, the two global powers have been exchanging verbal attacks or criticisms over Bangladesh. However, on December 26, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen stated that the government of Bangladesh does not want interference from any country in its internal affairs.
US-Russia tensions spill over into Bangladesh
On December 15, 2022, the Russian foreign ministry held a press conference in which it accused the United States of interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine. After the briefing in Moscow, the Russian Embassy in Dhaka released a statement on December 20 stating,
“ Russia is invariably committed to its principled stance on non-interfering in domestic affairs of third countries. States like Bangladesh, which shape their foreign and internal policy to serve their own national interests instead of following the lead of external powers, take the similar approach. We fully support the aspiration of these countries to independently determine the ways of their further development and constitute a system not subject to neocolonial methods.”
The following day, the US Embassy in Dhaka responded to the Russian embassy’s comment on Twitter, stating that Washington is opposed to interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. “Does this [principle of non-interference] apply to Ukraine?” read the tweet.
This development prompted the Russian embassy in Bangladesh to tweet a meme featuring birds sitting on four different poles on top of each other, with each bird defecating on the one below it. The top bird, highlighted as American, was the only one not receiving dirt from the others. The birds on the second row were labeled as British, while the birds on the third row represented the European Union, and the birds on the fourth row represented Ukraine.
The same cartoon was also posted on the Facebook page of the Russian Embassy in Bangladesh on December 23, 2022.
On December 22, 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom of attempting to interfere in the domestic affairs of Bangladesh and said,
“We have noted the widely publicised incident with the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, whose security was allegedly threatened by activists from a local public organisation who were against his meeting with the family of a supporter of an opposition political party on December 14, 2022 in Dhaka. In 2013, the supporter went missing.
“This incident is an expected result of the activity of the American diplomat, who, under the pretext of caring about the rights of the citizens of Bangladesh was persistently trying to influence the domestic processes in the country. As of late, his colleagues from the British and German diplomatic missions have been engaged in the same cause and have allowed themselves to openly give recommendations to the local authorities regarding transparency and inclusiveness in the parliamentary elections scheduled for next year.
“We believe that such actions that violate the basic principles of non-interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states are unacceptable.”
The briefing was distributed to Bangladeshi media by the Russian Embassy in Dhaka on December 25, 2022.
It is worth noting that on December 14, 2022, the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, Peter D. Haas, visited the residence of BNP leader Sajedul Islam Sumon, who has been missing for nearly a decade. As the early morning meeting between the team led by the US envoy and Sanjeda, the sister of the missing leader, began at Sanjeda’s house in Shaheebagh, a large crowd gathered outside the venue, escalating tension in the neighborhood.
The ambassador had to abruptly end the meeting due to the deteriorating security situation outside and was briefly surrounded by a rival group that wanted to present a memorandum containing the names of those who were killed in a government crackdown under the leadership of BNP founder Ziaur Rahman in 1977.
After the Shaheenbagh incident, the US ambassador met with the foreign minister and expressed concern about security, emphasizing that human rights are at the core of US foreign policy. Subsequently, the US State Department lodged a protest with Bangladesh.
On December 15, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu discussed the security of the US ambassador to Dhaka with Bangladesh’s ambassador to Washington, Mohammad Imran, and expressed concern
US-Russian conflict: Bangladesh government’s view
On December 26, 2022, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen stated that the government of Bangladesh does not want interference from any country in its internal affairs. ‘We are a mature country. We are a sovereign country. We are an independent country,’ Momen told reporters while responding to questions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to UNB. When asked if his message applied to all countries, Momen replied, ‘Yes, no matter whom.’
Momen also emphasized that other countries do not need to provide guidance to Bangladesh on democracy and human rights, as these values are deeply ingrained in the country’s identity.
It is worth noting that Bangladesh abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on November 15, 2022, on a resolution calling for Russia to be held accountable for violating international law by invading Ukraine.
Dhaka shouldn’t sit idle: Experts
Foreign policy experts in Bangladesh have urged the government to maintain its principled stance of neutrality and request that both the United States and Russia keep Bangladesh out of their conflict.
‘A message should be sent quietly to both countries [the US and Russia] that you should not push us around,’ former foreign secretary Md Touhid Hossain told The Business Standard.
Former Bangladeshi diplomat and President of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, M Humayun Kabir, said that Bangladesh needs to be more cautious about the confrontational stance of the two countries.
‘We should adhere to the motto of our foreign policy – friendship to all, malice towards none – and avoid getting involved in their conflict. Otherwise, the situation could escalate beyond our control,’ he told The Business Standard
We should tell them just to leave us alone on our internal affairs,’ said Dhaka University Professor of International Relations Imtiaz Ahmed.
Prof Imtiaz added that Russia wants to send a message to others that the world is moving towards a multipolar power system, rather than being unicentric.
‘Their call for non-interference in internal issues makes this clear,’ he said.
‘We want to have ties with everyone, but if any country thinks that we must have a relationship only with them… I would say that the world is no longer in that time,’ Prof Imtiaz commented.
He urged politicians to be aware of the changing world order and polarisation.
