'Democracy' In Dhaka, Army In Islamabad — US Hypocrisy Doesn't Help Anyone, Including Themselves

Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir is in the United States, where he met US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

It is understood that in the meeting, General Munir discussed India's Supreme Court verdict on the amendment of article 370 of the Constitution, as well as situation in Afghanistan.

Asim Munir's visit comes just a week after an attack on a Pakistan security forces checkpoint in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Dera Ismail Khan district by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that killed 23 Pakistani soldiers.

Blinken had condemned the attack and expressed support for Pakistan in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

Earlier this year, Pakistan was also able to secure an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan worth $3 billion, while simultaneously getting out from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, all of which would have been impossible without US' tacit support.

This comes as Pakistan is preparing to hold elections next year, in which a party of Pakistan Army's choice is likely to sweep.

With former prime minister Nawaz Sharif returning to the country after years of exile and all legal hurdles in his path to contesting elections again getting cleared, that choice will quickly become apparent.

An audience for the Pakistan Army Chief with Blinken and Lloyd, in this context, seems to be a green signal for what the Pakistan Army is trying to engineer in Islamabad — propping up a regime it can control from Rawalpindi.

At the same time, in Bangladesh, the US is going full steam ahead with a campaign to target Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has, unlike the Pakistan Army, not just delivered outstanding economic growth for her country but also managed to keep a check on the Islamists.

The US has repeatedly asked Hasina to concede space to the Islamists, led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia, and even threatened her with sanctions, lecturing Bangladesh on the importance of "free and fair elections" at every opportunity.

The US and and its Western allies are intent on making the same mistake that they did in 1971, when they intervened on Pakistan's side as a genocide unfolded in what is now Bangladesh.

By asking Hasina to concede space to the opposition party, the BNP, the US might end up propping a regime in Dhaka that would be worse not just on issues of human rights, something that Washington pretends to care about deeply, but also cozy up with China, creating problems for India.

Indian officials, over the past couple of months, have cautioned their US counterparts about the pitfalls of undue pressure on Bangladesh. However, given that the US continues on the same path, it appears that India's caution has fallen on deaf ears in Washington.

US interference could not only lead to a change in the security dynamics of the region due to the rise of Zia-led BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami's radical Islamist forces but could also push Bangladesh closer to China.

Zia, along with her Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami, wants the next elections, scheduled for 7 January, to be held under a neutral caretaker government.

The US and its Western allies have joined this bandwagon, exerting indirect pressure on Hasina. They have threatened to impose sanctions on key Bangladeshi government employees and politicians.

From the current trajectory of these events, it appears that the US and its Western allies are intent on ensuring an electoral advantage for the opposition party in Bangladesh, virtue signalling others on how they are on the right side of democracy, while it flirts with the Pakistan Army as it props a regime of its choice in Islamabad.

And this comes just two years after US President Joe Biden oversaw the humiliating and disastrous withdrawal of US-led forces from Afghanistan as Pakistan Army watched the forces it had once propped up using US funding take over the streets of Kabul.

No lessons appear to have been learned in Washington from the disastrous bets it made in the 1970s.