Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Not surprised.

Bangladeshi politics still has the scars of their Independence War and the subsequent coups as the families leading both the Awami Party (the ruling party) and the Nationalist Party (the current opposition but formerly in power) have been in a violent struggle with each other since the 80s (eg. The current president Sheikh Hasina literally saw her father shot by the General who's wife is leading the BNP).

This rivalry has been further inflamed by the power struggle between China and India, as the BNP leans closer to China+Pakistan and the BAP leans closer to India. This has incentivized toxic political behavior - check out Nepal for another buffer zone seeing similarly dysfunctional politics.

Over the past few years, BNP multiple activists have been shot and arrested, and the party was essentially banned a couple years ago, and the US has starting placing limited sanctions against the BAP, though I doubt they would have much impact as UAE+KSA+India+Thailand+Singapore haven't enforced sanctions.

Also, from an ideology standpoint (though ideology doesn't really matter in Asian politics), BAP was traditionally center-left and Secular leaning while BNP was traditionally center-right and also Islamist leaning because the pro-Pakistan Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami was banned in 2013 and it's activists joined the BNP.

The politics of violence was really inflamed from the early 2010s when the founders of the JeI was executed after being found guilty of murders, rapes, and torture of Bangladeshi nationalists and Hindus during the Bangladeshi War of Independence, which then hardened the ideological battle lines. This lead to massive riots in retaliation, which had a direct impact on governance in Bangladesh and even India, as the same ethnicities live across the border.

On top of that, the Rohingya refugee crisis has destabilized Eastern Bangladesh as there aren't enough jobs or ability to provide aid, causing some Rohingya to turn to the Drug Trade as Myanmar is a major Opium and Meth (ever heard of Yaba in Thailand?) manufacturing region.

This analysis is accurate, but as someone whose family left the country under General Ershad, I think it misses the forest for the trees. Sheikh Hasina's government, while repressive, is also extremely popular. Her tack to neoliberalism has been enormously successful for the country, and most Bangladeshis do not want to change course. Her approval rating in multiple polls is 70-80%: https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/322206/why-sheikh.... She has the popular mandate.

But in a country with the kind of history Bangladesh has had, minority movements can destabilize the government and overrule the will of the majority. It's hard to have free-wheeling political discourse in a country where people don't have a long history of democracy and aren't above using bombs and assassinations in the political process. (Last time I left the country, I did so under armed guard during a hartal.) Every fledgling democracy in Asia has gone through an authoritarian stage while the country developed and solidified its institutions. Good take from Charlie Munger on this: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8YND31g/. I don't think it's even limited to Asia. The U.S. Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.

The most important thing, I think, is that America should leave Bangladesh the fuck alone, which it has not been doing: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/03/washington-bangladesh-d.... The United States clearly has no idea how to build democracy in the developing world. I'm scared to see this article in the New York Times, and what it might mean for what the neocons have in store for the country.

Thanks for adding this! I didn't want to talk about Sheikh Hasina's popularity because I'm not Bangla.

> I'm scared to see this article in the New York Times, and what it might mean for what the neocons have in store for the country

In all honestly, they can't really do much.

Bangladesh is pretty insulated because most critical services are provided by Chinese and Indian companies working closely with Bangladeshi companies.

Exports aren't drastically impacted either as anything Bangladeshi could be re-exported via the UAE, Singapore, or India, should worst come to worst.

And most critically, the US is a bit player in the region. They have no bases, local allies, or power projection in that region.

See my comment about the Adani PPA downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37286639

Yep! It's one example of multiple key projects in Bangladesh run by Indian corporations (a major reason why India supports Sheikh Hasina and the BAP), though to be fair it's not only Indian corporations.

QatarGas and Gazprom are both the primary partners with PetroBangla, the Padma Bridge (one of Bangladesh's most critical logistics arteries) was constructed by Chinese companies using Chinese originated loans, and the expressway projects in Bangladesh are being built and managed by a major Thai construction company with close links to the Thai govt.

To be fair, American companies don't really touched LDCs anymore - they get better RoI in investing within North America.

Countries like Japan, South Korea, UAE, Qatar, KSA, Türkiye, China, India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Russia fill the financing gap in LDCs and Developing countries as they have more experience operating and executing in those kinds of environments.

The plant is in India, BD is just buying the power at above rack rate (hence the hue and cry)

Ah, makes sense!

That said, it doesn't seem to be that big a deal then. It would be better for BD to build their own, but Jharkhand's electric grid has always been closely connected with Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan because it's always been an electricity export market due to cheap coal and (before de-industrialization) a large manufacturing base.

I'm going to steer clear from Al Jazeera reporting simply because there is some Gulf rivalry going on there (eg. MBZ of Abu Dhabi has a significant voting share in Adani) because Qatar got frozen out of the Indian market by the UAE and KSA.

While I agree that America needs to leave these countries alone, it’s getting a bit tiresome thinking America alone is going to f^%k up Bangladesh.

Bangladeshis are perfectly capable of doing that on their own.

If I were you I would have a read to the books of Naomi Klein, in order to understand how deeply US has ruined everything it touched, from killing of political thinkers who were considered subversive, to funding armies and coups, to closing students for decades in wooden boxes of 1m2.

I understand people would think that their own population is capable of doing stuff, it's not. Having read about the history of US, I'd say that the world would be a better place without it, and would think twice before letting it off the hook with just some sarcasm, I know US it's very good at PR when it comes to funding death around the world, but there are writers who have told us what it actually is

You won’t find anyone who agrees with that more than me, except maybe my mom. My point is simply that the country seems to have found a groove as of late. Any instability could be disastrous at this point. And I just hope America doesn’t fuck it up over Ukraine.

Ha, moms. My Arab mother is the same way. I feel your pain.

That entire generation is incredibly quick to conspiracy.

I was surprised to see US was in the mix there, any idea what the angle is? That article was really something, good ol democracy delivery lol. Could really be destabilizing as always.

Any how I’d like to read more on U.S position, this was new to me. Any recs?

The US is mad that Bangladesh and India are continuing to work with Russia instead of supporting the US and Ukraine: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/05/bangladesh-us-russia-ba.... Bangladesh is doing so because it has close economic ties to Russia and China.

This is a continuation of a position that’s been going on since the Bangladesh independence: https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/when-russia-stunned-us...

> US is mad that Bangladesh and India are continuing to work with Russia

At least with India, the response is annoyed, not mad. Washington wants New Delhi to counter Beijing more than it cares about Russia, especially since Putin’s own goals in Ukraine. In a cynical calculation, Indian industry building up—even on Russian oil—is a net gain. (America and India are also fundamentally aligned on a lot of values, both good and bad.)

Bangladesh doesn’t have similar military potential, so the calculation is less clear. But given its size, its primary value is in respect of its effrct on India, so the same logic (with a bias towards stability at all costs) ports.

If Bangladesh wants to let itself get ripped off by Adani [1] and doesn’t want to listen to anybody else then better to leave them to it.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2023/3/30/bangladesh-i...

The US has no interest in undermining the BAP, do you think they rather the Islamists get in power? Criticising and sanctioning brutal repression, and advocating democratic standards won’t undermine the BAP. As pointed out up thread, they’re very popular anyway.

So one reading of the US actions is just to try and push the BAP into cooling down the political temperature, and not exploit their dominant position so much that it incites further violent backlashes.

I agree with you that the US probably doesn’t have an interest in undermining BAP, but cmon now there is ample precedent for US supporting Islamists and other unsavory groups. e.g Afghanistan, Lat Am and in situations like that US interests take precedence over the future of the said state or free and fair elections.

That’s basically arguing that the US has done bad things before, therefore this thing they are doing must be bad.

It’s an error to assume Americans act according to their rational self interest rather than ideological fancy.

It’s an error to assume that Americans acting in accordance to their rational self interest isn’t their ideological fancy.

That presupposes that Americans are just catastrophically bad at recognizing what’s in their self interest—because so much of it’s foreign policy is bad for America—which seems like an unreasonable assumption.

> Sheikh Hasina's government, while repressive, is also extremely popular. Her tack to neoliberalism has been enormously successful for the country, and most Bangladeshis do not want to change course. Her approval rating in multiple polls is 70-80%: https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/322206/why-sheikh.... She has the popular mandate.

I don't know how connected you are with Bangladeshi politics right now, but poll-hacking through extreme repression is the first trick Sheikh Hasina/her party Awami League mastered. I am not surprised to see such a high approval rating, rather, I'm surprised to see 30% people signal disapproval in an environment with extreme political speech suppression. If you doubt that, read the story we're discussing under again. This is a government that's been jailing people without trial for their Facebook posts.

If you want to know some indication of the true feeling of the people, go check out the Facebook posts of anything related to the ruling party, and check the ratio of "haha" reacts to likes or hearts. Generally, that's 4:1 in my experience.

That polling is conducted by US organizations. I have quite a bit of family left in Bangladesh, and my dad is very political (he was a student activist during independence). I don’t think I know anybody who supports the BNP, including folks who are MAGA when it comes to American politics. But I come from Dhaka so maybe I live in a bubble, who knows.

My Bangladeshi immigrant boss (from Dhaka) in Portland a decade ago supported the BNP and was pretty vocal about it and about how pre-1971 Pakistan was a great country.

Then again, he also complained about dressing up on Diwali maybe turning his daughter Hindu so IDK

Edit: AFAIK (edited because I’m rate-limited for some reason) he did support independence or was at least reconciled to it but was nostalgic for the unified country.

Wow. I’ve never met a Bangladeshi that didn’t support independence (though obviously I knew they exist).

> This is a government that's been jailing people without trial for their Facebook posts.

In this specific case, the woman was likely arrested because of her son's post, which is obviously worse.

But the rest is common even in so-called "liberal democracies": folks are jailed after arrest for months or years before trial, and folks are arrested and jailed for "hate speech" and "causing offense" via online posts -- or the government just creates a pretext for arrest, but it was really because of the person's legal speech.

So, yes, Bangladesh is worse, but the Good Guys™ are increasingly authoritarian. The gap isn't as large as most folks think.

I have seen people claiming Western polls are wrong across al sorts of spheres for decades and almost always I find that the person claiming the polls are wrong has some political motive and the polls are later vindicated with a move to free, fair, monitored elections on the same questions.

Western polls are pretty accurate. Modi is popular, Hasina is popular, Erdogan is popular, Crimeans in 2014 wanted to join Russia... all of these things are likely true.

Erdogan is not that popular. The election was very close and went to a runoff. And that's after the political speech repression that happens on Twitter and Wikipedia bans.

My BNP supporting boss always used to claim that Chhatra league was not far behind Shibbir in killing people.

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