Powell's Dhaka visit: Significance and scenario

In Asia, Mr. Powell's prime focus centered on defusing the nuclear stalemate with North Korea and in combating the Islamic insurgency in the Philippines. He also strove to convince his South East Asian colleagues to tighten their diplomatic nooses against the military junta of Myanmar. On the surface however talks of trade seemed to have dominated Mr. Powell's agenda in all his destinations, although his entourage did not include anyone from the US's departments of Commerce or the Treasury.

Due to this curious backdrop, the Dhaka stop-over of Mr. Powell augurs both significance and suspicion in the same breath. First, the US's anti-terror military campaign is likely to choose the region of South East Asia as its next major theatre. This has been necessitated by the classified information that the US is reported to have received from the suspects hauled from the region in a myriad of post-Bali operations conducted in collusion with forces comprised of regional nation-states. The US's concern over the Myanmar junta's human rights abuses also adds some extra importance to the Bangladesh's anticipated cooperation with the US in this particular regard. Above all, the US wants to ensure that none of the Al Qaeda members -- driven out of Afghanistan, the Philippines and the other hideouts in the Far East -- do sneak into Bangladesh to look for a safe haven and a sympathetic ear.

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However grandiose they may seem, make no mistake that these are indeed the most realistic (and the minimalist) geo-political objectives of the US in the post 9/11 global order. Given that many of the small nations are already dead scared of the US unfettered wielding of military prowess in recent years, commitment of enhanced economic interactions does indeed come as a convenient foil while cementing relationship with nations like Bangladesh. After all, the US is already knee-deep committed in the defence and economic spheres of Bangladesh; the US investment in Bangladesh's hydrocarbon sector alone topping well over the mark of US$ 1.2 bn by now.

That Bangladesh's global stature as a moderate Muslim country is much appreciated by the US can also be discerned from the pattern of mutual trade that the two nations conduct. Bangladesh currently earns over US$ 2 b from its export to the US, shipping out almost 45 per cent of its total exportables to destinations in the US, while the US's own export to Bangladesh is yet to cross the threshold of US$300m. Mr. Powell has brought this issue to the attention of his Bangladeshi counterpart and expected that Bangladesh would buy more from the US to redress this trade imbalance. Bangladesh, on the other hand, expects that barring an immediate increase in the volume of Bangladesh's import from the US, further US investment might get counted as Bangladesh's purchase of goods and services from the US and help redress this yawning trade imbalance in coming years.

Mr. Powell's entourage has also reiterated that Dhaka ought to consent to the signing of a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), the initial proposal for which was made by Washington in February this year. In South Asia, only Sri Lanka signed such an agreement with the US. The urgency of the TIFA's existence and implementation has arisen due to the US's concern over the crucial capital repatriation issue, echoed forcefully by over 200 US companies that currently conduct business in Bangladesh. As well, Bangladesh is learnt to have urged for an increase in the flow of US aid, which currently stands at an yearly average of about US$332 m.

While Dhaka is basking in the glory of having obtained an assurance from Mr. Powell that, the US's latest scheme to cobble together a group of 18 countries (including some 'chosen' Muslim nations) for a new free trade regime will include the name of Bangladesh, observers however believe that the inclusion of Bangladesh's name in this new trading block will be contingent upon her willingness to recognise Israel. This will be a political hot potato for the government of the day, for the enticement of it is likely to be deemed as economically expedient while its political fall-out and diplomatic ramifications might prove difficult.

Little however spewed out of the government's mouth about the military aspect of Mr. Powell's sudden stopover in Dhaka. This discreetness did not preclude the fact that the Powell entourage included a high ranking military official, Vice Admiral James Metzger, who is also a special assistant to the US forces' Joint Chief of Staff and takes care of the carrier-based deployment of the US forces abroad. One is, hence, led to believe that the issue of leasing out the Saint Martin harbour to the US forces might have resurfaced from the back burner during Mr. Powell's recent visit to Dhaka. Given that the US forces are on the verge of completing their withdrawal from the Subic Bay and Clerk bases in the Philippines, and the forces in the Middle East, Horn of Africa and Afghanistan are facing increasing threats of terrorism and resistance, the Saint Martin does seem to fit the US's strategic need as it straddles the waters between the Gulf of Thailand to the east, and the Arabian Sea to the west.

The most potent aspect of the Bangla-US discussion on defence stemmed from the US desire to induct Bangladeshi combatants into the US's ongoing war in Iraq. This discussion took place on the heel of the Indian polite refusal to send its troops to Iraq, and the Pakistani decision to defer such a request to the cabinet and to the parliament for debate and approval. Bangladesh thus became an obvious choice to meet the US's immediate need to hiring of troops to surmount the exacerbated security situations in Iraq. Despite foreign minister Morshed Khan's insistence that Bangladesh is willing to contribute troops for Iraq 'only' if the UN mandates to do so, Bangladesh might succumb to the US's pressures eventually.

At the US behest, Bangladesh decided to send troops to Haiti in September 1994 following the US invasion of that country in 1994. The decision lacked any mandate from the UN, hence was challenged in a domestic court (Dhaka Law Report 47(1995). Similarly, the government's decision on September 19, 2001 to grant air and sea ports facilities to US forces during the US Afghan war faced a similarly protracted litigation in a local court, resulting in the issuance of a show cause to the government by the country's judiciary.

Over the past decades, Bangladesh-US bilateral military cooperation witnessed a gradual ascendancy to the level of mutual interdependence. A major milestone in such a cooperation was erected in 1986 when the US Senate debated Bangladesh's security needs in a Senate hearing and recommended that "Bangladesh's genuine security concerns must receive sympathetic hearing in the US". The context has changed since, the Cold War era threat perceptions having been supplanted by Bangladesh's brilliant performances in the countless peace keeping missions around the world. However, amidst this, another major watershed event in the litany of such collaboration was marked by a major joint exercise between the two forces (operation Shantidoot) in 2002 in the vicinity of Bangladesh's Rajendrapur garrison.

The two nations have come a long way ever since the US administration, but not the people, stood opposed to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Yet, while such collaborations multiply, the scenario -- quite paradoxically -- gets more confusing and incomprehensible due to the US insistence on following a policy of national security that seems so dangerous and irresponsible to the rest of the world.

M. Shahidul Islam is author of Politics of Soldiers (1988), and Strategic Issues in Bangladesh Politics (1996). His latest book, Geopolitics of Islamic Revival, is being reviewed by the University of Toronto Press for publication.