Kanwal Sibal, retired Indian Foreign Secretary and former Ambassador to Russia between 2004 and 2007 and Deputy Chief of Mission in the United States, published a lengthy analytic piece in RT on Aug. 9, which laid out the thinking of significant policymaking circles in India about the recent overthrow of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, a neighbor and long-standing ally of India on the subcontinent.
Sibal—whose analysis was also published in his “View from New Delhi” column on Aug. 12 in the Russian Foreign Ministry publication International Affairs—began by stating that “a serious crisis is brewing on India’s doorstep, and the West has a role in it.” He continued: “The U.S. played a role in de-legitimizing Sheikh Hasina’s rule with many of the steps it took, which no doubt indirectly encouraged her overthrow…. Bangladesh was not invited to the Summit for Democracy in Washington, D.C. in 2021…. The bad blood between Sheikh Hasina and the U.S. has been quite open. The former prime minister went to the extent of recently accusing Washington of seeking to carve a small Christian state out of parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar, and India’s Manipur (where the U.S. has been provocative in its comments on the internal ethnic turmoil there) on the Timor-Leste model. It would be relevant to remember that the U.S. opposed the creation of Bangladesh and militarily threatened India at that time.”
Hasina, herself, recently reported that the U.S. had “offered” to exchange permission to build an airbase on St. Martin Island off the coast of Bangladesh, for assurances of an easy re-election—an offer she declined.
