IN SOUTH Asia, power rarely wears the mask of neutrality. It either comes cloaked in populist nationalism or camouflaged in a strategic alliance. Bangladesh, wedged between two troubling neighbours — India and Myanmar — is increasingly a frontline state, not just in terms of geographic vulnerability, but as a theatre for the contest between sovereignty and subservience.
India’s recent actions, particularly during Operation Sindoor, offer a sobering lesson in how states enjoying the favour of dominant global powers often act with impunity. The unilateral abrogation of treaties like the Indus Waters Treaty, unprovoked military aggressions without a declaration of war and the targeting of civilian infrastructure all reflect a deeply embedded pattern: international law and diplomatic norms are invoked only when they serve the interests of the powerful.
India has mastered a cynical formula — externalising internal decay by manufacturing military confrontations. The Pahalgam episode, purportedly designed to appeal to domestic constituencies in Bihar, appears less a security operation and more a political performance. Despite limited public documentation, emerging evidence from independent media and social platforms reveals India’s overestimation of its military superiority and its underestimation of Pakistan’s strategic acumen.
In a paradoxical reversal of liberal democratic theory, Pakistan responded not through institutional civilian supremacy but by allowing the military full operational autonomy. This was not a breakdown of civilian control — it was a conscious political delegation. The result? A demonstration of military competence, swift response and public confidence — traits increasingly absent in the fragmented civilian leadership of South Asia.
This brings us to a disturbing broader trend: the alignment of nationalist militarism with global complicity. India’s cosy ties with states like Israel and the strategic silence of Western actors resemble a now-familiar pattern of selective outrage. When powerful nations or their proxies violate norms, there is no Geneva Convention — only Geneva conveniences.
The most egregious illustration of this was the post-ceasefire attack on a Pakistani airbase — a move that undermines any faith in negotiated peace and reflects an operational doctrine rooted in coercion and spectacle. When militarism becomes diplomacy, sovereignty becomes a variable, not a constant.
In the east, the threat is less visible but no less real. The escalating war in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has now extended its tentacles to the maritime domain. The Rohingya crisis, long framed as a humanitarian catastrophe, has metastasized into a security dilemma. As the Arakan Army grows in confidence, the Bay of Bengal may soon see piracy, smuggling and grey-zone tactics from non-state actors capitalising on the Myanmar Navy’s collapse.
Bangladesh, astonishingly, appears unprepared. There is no comprehensive national defence strategy for the eastern frontier — not for the Chittagong Hill Tracts, not for the Bay of Bengal coastline. Yet foreign intelligence footprints in Rohingya camps continue unabated, hinting at deeper, more sinister layers of strategic encirclement.
It is against this backdrop that Bangladesh’s internal contradictions explode into view. The events following the July-August 2024 uprising revealed not democratic renewal but a reconfiguration of authoritarianism. The Hasina regime had long turned elections into a ritual and dissent into criminality. In that moment of historic inflection, when the military was once again summoned to act as state enforcer, General Waqar refused to become a tool of repression. His words — ‘Ami sob dayitto nicchi’ (‘I take full responsibility’) — were an act of institutional defiance, not against the state, but in service to its republic.
This echoes the moral dilemma of Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian: when obedience turns to complicity, moral rebellion becomes duty. Waqar’s choice was not mutiny — it was a retrieval of professional honour in a time of political betrayal.
But power, as Chomsky reminds us, has a remarkable ability to rebrand. The same elite networks that once glorified military crackdowns now pivoted to weaponizing social media narratives. In a classic propaganda manoeuvre, disinformation campaigns targeted the very institutions that refused to be co-opted — the army chief, the foreign secretary. Dissent was not engaged but defamed. The principle was clear: destroy the credibility of those who resist foreign-scripted agendas.
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The quiet loyalist and the theatre of manufactured consent
KHALILUR Rahman — newly minted security adviser, gatekeeper of Bangladesh’s defence and diplomacy — sits not with conviction, but calculation. His silence isn’t stoic; it’s strategic. As reputations are shredded and national institutions are reduced to echo chambers, he remains conspicuously untouched. No scrutiny. No resistance. Only applause. Not because he belongs to us — but because he belongs to them.
In this new political lexicon, patriotism has been redefined. It no longer refers to loyalty to land or people, but to alignment with foreign embassies, to servility disguised as statesmanship. Allegiance is measured not in courage, but in compliance.
The real danger, then, is not the visible traitor, but the invisible loyalist — the man who doesn’t speak while the house burns, because he’s been promised a room in the ruins.
And so emerges a logic so perverse, yet so effective: oppose India, and you’re branded a Pakistani proxy. Question Pakistan, and you’re accused of singing for Delhi. The idea of a Bangladeshi voice — autonomous, self-respecting, sovereign — is not just ignored. It is targeted, smeared and made invisible.
This is not chaos. It is choreography. A soft coup — bloodless, but brutal — enacted not with tanks and bayonets, but with trending hash tags, pundit panels and performative outrage. Khalilur Rahman’s rise is not about safeguarding the republic; it is about controlling its story.
What we’re witnessing is the slow suffocation of the public mind. Truth is no longer discovered; it is engineered. Think tanks, donor-funded NGOs, and partisan ‘watchdogs’ manufacture consensus, turning patriotism into an algorithm and dissent into extremism. Rumour Scanner and its ilk now function not as truth-tellers, but as curators of permissible opinion.
We are not living under a democracy. We are living inside a theatre of ghost sovereignties — a place where power is staged, not held. Where law is not enforced, but edited. Where enemies are assigned, not identified.
And this theatre demands actors. Enter Pinaki, whose social media spectacle recasts Khalilur Rahman not as a public servant, but as a saviour. His campaign is not journalism; it is narrative warfare. Its goal appears to be simple: isolate the disobedient — like General Waker-uz-Zaman and foreign secretary Jashim Uddin — and sanctify the compliant.
But even saints must choose their silences. Khalilur Rahman’s refusal to condemn the smear campaigns against the military and foreign service is not neutrality — it is betrayal in slow motion.
This is the most dangerous phase in statecraft: when a security establishment fractures — not from outside invasion, but internal orchestration. And such fractures are not without witnesses. Agencies hover like vultures, watching, documenting, waiting for the final crack.
This is how nations die in the 21st century. Not with a bang, but with a broadcast.
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Who gains from our disunity?
LET us not deceive ourselves: our disunity is their opportunity.
The United States watches from the wings, offering security guarantees one day and sanctions the next — testing friendships the old imperial way, through promises wrapped in strings. They will applaud civilian ‘transition’ now, only to backpedal when it suits their broader Indo-Pacific gambit. In the boardrooms of Washington, Bangladesh is a pawn to be leveraged against China’s rise, not a partner to be respected.
India, our immediate neighbour, sees this fracture as a golden chance. By painting General Waker-uz-Zaman as ‘too pro-India,’ it sows distrust in our own ranks — then steps forward with ‘helpful’ joint exercises and defence pacts. Humanitarian corridor and Chittagong Port become bargaining chips in a game where our sovereignty is collateral.
Pakistan will quietly court those sidelined by the current narrative: disgruntled diplomats, sidelined officers, marginalised politicians. It will whisper of shared histories and mutual security threats, hoping to pull us back into a subcontinental rivalry that benefits Islamabad more than it does Dhaka.
China sits quietly, biding its time. When Western and Indian pressures grow too loud, Beijing will offer loans without debate, infrastructure without insistence on ‘good governance,’ and a ‘strategic partnership’ that costs less in public scrutiny. It promises stability — but always at the price of a quieter leash.
Russia, still smarting from its own isolation, sees an opening to rekindle arms deals and energy ties. It will extend a hand to our military brass, offering training and hardware when the West turns a cold shoulder — hoping to anchor Dhaka in a new axis that counters both American pressure and Chinese influence.
In this crowded arena, each power plays to its own script, treating Bangladesh’s crisis of cohesion as their stage. Our choice is stark: remain a fractured prize, or forge our unity and demand that any partnership respect our right to decide our destiny — free from foreign strings.
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The long betrayal of institutions
WE HAVE allowed complacency to corrode our core institutions. In pursuit of personal gain — whether the promise of a new pay scale in 2014 or subsidized car loans in 2018 — our military and civil service traded professional duty for political expediency. Such transactional loyalties have hollowed out our moral compass and weakened the very structures meant to safeguard the nation.
This is not a rallying cry for martial rule — far from it. We have witnessed too many uniforms in corridors of power, and medals are no guarantee of merit. Yet neither can we sustain a military so muted that it is sidelined in strategic deliberations and only summoned when disaster strikes. Once respected by friends and feared by adversaries, our armed forces now risk becoming little more than ceremonial guards — praised in parades, ignored in policy and blamed in calamity.
The central question is stark: can Bangladesh be secure if its military is institutionally silenced? Can its foreign policy retain genuine autonomy when diplomats are denounced for exercising neutrality? We may march in uniform, but we have no uniformed voice in the planning rooms where our fate is decided.
If we are to restore resilience, we must revive the principle that professional armed forces and bureaucracies exist to serve the nation’s interests, not those of transient political patrons. Only then can Bangladesh reclaim the strategic coherence it so urgently requires.
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The dream that we forgot
SOMEWHERE along the way, we stopped dreaming. Not because our hopes dimmed, but because we were taught to fear our own strength. Procurement replaced purpose. Slogans replaced strategy. We confused mere survival with submission.
And in that long silence, the vultures returned.
Today, Bangladesh teeters on the edge of a manufactured crisis. Our statecraft lies captured by bureaucrats-turned-technocrats. Our diplomacy spins in circles. Our armed forces — one of the most disciplined institutions in the country — find themselves targeted in a campaign of deliberate destabilisation.
If this is a battle for the republic’s soul, then neutrality is no longer an option. You are either standing for strategic sovereignty — or enabling its dismantlement.
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A silent coup by other means
IN THE aftermath of Sheikh Hasina’s ouster and the ascent of Muhammad Yunus to an interim stewardship, the country appeared, momentarily, to embrace a rare institutional maturity. The armed forces, under General Waker-uz-Zaman, Admiral Nazmul Hassan and Air Chief Marshal Hassan, displayed a restraint that, in less studied quarters, might have been mistaken for hesitation. It was no such thing.
Despite the cacophonous chants from the streets — ‘Sena Bahinir Sarkar!’ — and the usual provocations from meddling neighbours, the military stood its ground. Not in silence, but in quiet fidelity to constitutional order. It was not inertia. It was discipline anchored in strategic self-confidence.
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Yet equilibrium, as ever, draws the jackals
A WHISPER campaign — insidious as damp Kurigram’s fog — now seeks to destabilise the very institutions that upheld the peace. One Pinaki Bhattacharya, a flamboyant provocateur with a talent for digital theatrics, appears at the centre of it. He claims, quite brazenly, that Dr Khalilur Rahman — now curiously installed first as high representative, then as national security adviser — was elevated at his own recommendation. That is not reform. That is infiltration.
Simultaneously, within the armed ranks, genuine grievances smoulder — cases of deprivation that warrant redress. But some disciplined officers have seized upon these wounds not to heal them, but to inflame them, rallying in the streets under banners of false patriotism. They are joined by a small band of retired officers, many of whom are nursing personal vendettas or are merely chasing applause in the gladiatorial arena of social media — driven by ‘likes,’ ‘shares,’ and the cheap currency of virality.
Let us not mistake this for healthy dissent. This is perception warfare, waged not with tanks but with trending hash tags and weaponised narratives. Its aim? To fracture the military’s unity. To discredit a commander who refuses to bow. To install a pliable alternative — one who would reopen the gates to foreign basing rights, mineral extractions and the return of technocratic overlords, all paraded under the virtuous banner of ‘reform.’
And here lies the paradox of General Waker-uz-Zaman. He did not arrive on the scene through conquest, but through crisis. He could have seized power — indeed, many expected he would. But instead, he stood for elections within eighteen months. He rejected martial law. He chose continuity over coronation.
And it is precisely because he did not seize power that he has become a threat.
To those abroad, and their domestic auxiliaries, an independent military commander — one neither for hire nor for flattery — is a dangerous anomaly. Far better, they reason, to tarnish him through innuendo, to encircle him with ambitious civilians like Dr Rahman, whose loyalty lies less with the republic than with the faction that elevated him. No mandate, no chain of command, and no institutional anchor — yet thrust into the heart of security architecture.
We have seen this opera before. In Libya, where civilian technocrats whispered while generals fell. In Egypt, where proxies wore suits, not uniforms. In Iraq, where ‘reform’ was another word for disintegration. The final act is always the same.
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Strategic alignment is not subjugation
BANGLADESH sits at a geopolitical crossroads, yet its political discourse still clings to Cold War binaries — alignment versus non-alignment, East versus West. That kind of thinking belongs to another era. The map today is fluid, not fixed; strategy is about manoeuvre, not ideology.
Take a cue from the Asian tigers. Japan and South Korea have long walked the strategic tightrope — trading with China while sheltering under the US security umbrella. It’s called strategic hedging, and it’s what prudent statecraft looks like.
Closer to home, India embodies this well. With roots in non-alignment, it now engages the US while preserving its defence ties with Russia. Pakistan, though more erratic, still plays both sides — accepting Chinese capital and American security cooperation. Even Sri Lanka and Nepal understand the power of leverage — courting China, India and the West to their own advantage.
The message? Binary choices are a losing proposition. Power accrues to those who keep their options open.
For Bangladesh, this means shedding strategic naïveté. Build resilient institutions. Keep the military professional and apolitical — its strength lies in discipline, not in politics. Bolster the diplomatic corps, create mechanisms for structured dialogue, and empower technocrats over partisans.
In short: play the long game. Chart your own course through contested waters. Autonomy is not given; it’s earned — through competence, credibility and careful navigation.
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Conclusion: the anatomy of manufactured consent
TO EXAMINE the present decay in Bangladesh’s military and strategic posture is not merely to point fingers at individuals. It is to trace the deeper architecture of control — where media, foreign influence, donor-driven policy frameworks and local elites operate in silent consensus.
Pinaki Bhattacharya, for all his posturing, is not an aberration. He is the symptom of a larger malaise: the commodification of dissent, the algorithmic engineering of opinion and the soft outsourcing of sovereignty. His rise is not a story of bravery, but of permissibility — he exists because the system, as designed, allows him to.
This is how power operates now — not through coups, but through erosion. Not by tanks on the streets, but by narratives online. Not by censorship, but by selective amplification. And the institutions that resist — those that demand strategic coherence, national memory, or even minimal dignity — are not debated. They are discredited.
General Waker-uz-Zaman and Jashim Uddin, through their silence, may believe they are preserving the neutrality of the institutions. But neutrality, in the face of systemic subversion, is not impartiality. It is abdication. And nature, as always, abhors a vacuum.
Into that vacuum steps the unelected, the unaccountable, and the unrooted — figures like Khalilur Rahman, floated into prominence not by merit, but by manufactured consensus. In the absence of institutional clarity, these ‘alternatives’ are elevated not to serve, but to disrupt.
And so, we arrive at the real tragedy: a republic not destroyed, but repurposed. A military not defeated, but sidelined. A public not repressed, but numbed — taught to forget its own history, its own capacity, its own right to ask: Whose interests are being served? And at what cost?
From the fractured politics of Dhaka to the contested waters of Naaf river and St Martin’s, from the exiled dissidents to the emboldened intermediaries in foreign capitals, the question is no longer whether sovereignty is under threat. It is whether we even recognise what sovereignty looks like anymore.
Bangladesh will not fall with a bang. It will dissolve through consensus — carefully constructed, endlessly repeated and never examined.
Unless, of course, people begin to remember.
Not the myths.
Not the slogans.
But the structures.
And who benefits when they collapse?
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Abdul Monaiem Kudrot Ullah is retired Captain of Bangladesh Navy.
