Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina alleged that the United States played a role in her ouster from power because she refused to allow the establishment of a US Air Force base on St Martin’s Island. This accusation sheds light on a broader pattern of American geopolitical ambitions in the region, which stretches back decades.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time such a claim has been made by a top Bangladeshi leader. In 1971, her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, faced similar pressure. An article titled “Mujib Refused to Allow U.S. Base in Bay of Bengal,” published in the Organiser on September 25, 1971, revealed that the United States had been attempting to secure a strategic military foothold in the Bay of Bengal for a long time.
These parallel incidents suggest that the US has long harboured strategic interests in the region, repeatedly seeking to establish military bases to enhance its presence in South Asia. The historical context provided by the 1971 article in the Organiser underscores the longstanding nature of American ambitions.
September 25, 1971: That the war of liberation in Bangla Desh is not only a struggle against the colonial repression by West Pakistani military junta, but a part of the game of Big Power politics is quite apparent.
It is clear that Islamabad has been successful in luring Washington into the fray by convincing the Pentagon that it very well fits in with American global strategy to dominate South Asia. In fact, Yahya Khan has not hesitated to sacrifice Pakistan’s honour and freedom of action to the overriding needs of his present critical situation.
It is no secret now that Islamabad got the green signal from Washington before the Army action on 25th March. That is why President Nixon did not hesitate framing double-talking and double-dealing in relation to Bangla Desh problem. While the Congress, the intellectuals and the public of the United States are horrified at this genocide in Bangla Desh and are persistently putting pressure on the Nixon administration to stop all kinds of aids to Pakis-tan, President Nixon has shamelessly brushed aside all opposition. He has gone ahead to help Pakistan’s military dictatorship overtly and covertly by sending ship-loads of lethal weapons. He has also helped in arranging tons of money from its satellite governments in the Muslim world to keep Pakistan going.
It is clear that the Pentagon does not consider genocide a crime. It has done it in Vietnam, and it is helping Yahya Khan to do it in Bangla Desh. While world conscience condemns both Yahya Khan and Nixon, both these Nadirshahi leaders revel in politics of massacre. However, Yahya Khan’s brutal understandable action is because free Bangla Desh would Iean dismemberment of Pakistan. But President Nixon’s motives need some probing.
Nixon’s eagerness to befriend the People’s Republic of China and oblige Yahya Khan in all possible ways, goes to show his eagerness to keep the South-East Asian region under U.S. domination. Washington knows that it has lost its war in Vietnam and has to withdraw lock, stock and barrel. The possible detente with Peking is a face-saving device to show to the world that it does so now because it is defeated but because as a result of an agreement with an erstwhile enemy, Mao-Tse-tung.
Once free from Vietnamese tangle, the U.S.A. can concentrate on the South Asia particularly the Indian Ocean region, where everincreasing Soviet Naval challenge prescene is to American supremacy.
So far the division spheres of influence of between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union was an accepted fact in world diplomacy. When the U.S.A. found that Russia had not only stripped America of its naval supremacy in the Mediterranean but was out to do the same in the Indian Ocean, it got scared. Hence its eagerness to woo Peking and to use it to get share in the division of the spheres of influence as the third Super Power.
In this global strategy China will dominate the seas east of Singapore Britain and and America to the west of it. So the new Naval and Air base is being constructed in the Diego-garcia atonlls in the west Indian Ocean. The U.S. needs an other base in the East. Here lies the clue to American involvement in Bangla Desh on behalf of Islamabad.
GRAND U.S. DESIGN
In this grand design, America needs the Island known as biggest Sandwip which lies to the south the Meghna estuary in the Bay of Bengal. Yahya Khan is said to have secretly agreed to hand over the island to America, to be used by it as a naval base. This will help the US Navy to have a greater control and mastery of the Indian Ocean to contain the Soviet naval supremacy in the area. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that the now dismantled American spy air base in Peshawar may now be handed over to the U.S.A. on short-term lease basis to enable US force to peep into Soviet military installations.
As butcher Yahya Khan has no alternative he is prepared to pay any price to salvage him from the, quagmire of Bangla Desh. Whether Yahya Khan can actually save himself is doubtful, but there is no doubt that he and his military junta will be thrown out of East Bengal.
It is interesting to note here that President Nixon’s revengeful attitude is in line with Yahya Khan’s towards Bangla Desh. The reason of it lies in the fact that before the army crackdown on 25th March, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had the guts to refuse to hand over Sandwip island off Chittagong to Washington for the construction of a naval base. Shri Far-lands, U.S. envoy, had met Mutb in Dacca and promised to support Awami League Government if the former agreed to this proposal. If Mujib had agreed to it, Nixon would not have hesitated to throw out Yahya Khan from the Bay of Bengal.
Washington had sent this proposal to Mujib through its envoy to Pakistan.
Five months after Muji-bur Rahman was. thrown into a West Pakistan pri-son, the U.S. Ambassador again tried twice to meet him to place American proposal before Mujib as a price far his liberty. The Sheikh refused to see him again and again on the ground that he would have no truck with those who helped Yahya to commit genocide on his unarmed people. It is even said Kissinger, Nixon’s special personal representative who took off from West Pakistan to befriend Peking. Sought Mujib’s blessings by offering complete autonomy within Pakistan for exchange of the proposed naval base in the Bay of Bengal, but Bangabandhu unceremoniously rejected it. In fact, he did not care even to give a hearing.
Here lies the secret of shameless and despicable U.S. involvement in the operation of butchery and plunder perpetrated by West Pakistani colonial army in Bangla Desh. But the Mukti Bahini has found that in the rivers of blood are floating the flowers of freedom blossoming – they may take time – but they will survive. Washington’s grand strategy to dominate Indian Ocean to withstand Soviet challenge is bound to go awry.
(From Organiser Archives by K.P. Goswami, dated September 25, 1971)
