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American intelligence agencies are often the pinnacle of self-assured victory as they were over the weekend when Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina hastily evicted her from her lavish residences in favor of a more modest government guest house on the outskirts of Delhi.

In a matter of a few hours, the former” Iron Lady” of Dhaka found her position, and perhaps prospects for her life itself, quite unviable, when the head of the armed forces ( who happened to be her niece’s husband ) communicated the troops ‘ refusal to fire at” student” protestors who were gathering in force across the country.

Following the events that brought Muhammad Yunus, a former chief of Grameen Bank and Nobel Prize winner, to power as interim prime minister, several democracies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, refused or revoked her visas.

Such epochal events in a country of nearly 175 million have hardly raised much more than a shrug even amidst a relatively slow ( political ) news cycle in August across the Western world.

If violence, which already targets the government’s majority Hindus, were to spread out into a full-fledged civil war, the internet might be more focused on the summer Olympics, but it would be clear that the events in Dhaka would have much greater significance.

In particular, the side of the US government is evident in the rapid unfolding of events since the middle of June when student protests around a new job quota system of descendants of the country’s freedom struggle immediately erupted into broader protests by a population that had grown increasingly tired of high inflation and higher unemployment of educated younger people.

Massed continuous protests erupted around Bangladesh in accordance with the kit used in” Spring Revolution” nations like Tunisia and Egypt ( which is viewed as more diplomatically aligned to Hasina’s Awami League group ).

The officers and the military were called to help but proved wholly inadequate against the humongous crowds gathered. Empowering crowds had threatened to march on the capital this week, causing Hasina’s ignominious exit despite numerous instances of tear gas and also shoot-at-sight orders ( which were rarely carried out in training because authorities preferred to fire at protest immediately ).

Why would the US bother?

The main inquiry for readers would be why the US even bothers to start a coup in the country given the country’s relatively small geographic presence, which belies its population and lack of substantial resources.

The answer lies in the country’s location, in the strategic eastern part of India with significant proximity to China. The country’s ports have long attracted naval powers from the British, Japanese, Russians, to more recently the Chinese and Americans at various points in time because the country is essentially a riparian state served by two of the world’s biggest rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, which together form one of the world’s most fertile deltas ( explaining the population density ).

At the moment, the primary US interest in the country is to establish a service port for mid-size US naval vessels that could help America manage naval operation risks caused by China’s access to ports in neighboring Myanmar and offer logistic services to friendly powers in the region without needing any approval or participation from India.

In the long run, Bangladesh’s taming and managing its riparian economy will have a significant strategic geopolitical advantage because the country’s northern regions are ideal for landing planes into the soft underbelly of China in the Tibetan-Sichuan region, which China has ruled to the point of being completely complacent about potential military risks.

An inkling of those political and military risks has come from India since the failed Doklam incursions of 2017, that has in turn triggered significant geopolitical activity around Bhutan and Nepal by the Chinese as they continued to intensify pressure on India before effectively achieving unparalleled superiority by the beginning of 2022.

If Delhi-based observers are to be believed, the US clearly feels the need to step in because India is on the back foot.

So what makes it a color revolution?

In that regard, Bangladesh’s events roughly correspond to those of the” Spring” movements and the various color revolutions in Europe:

• Mass protests triggered by a specific issue that the host government would normally have considered a minor, niche item
• Active involvement of a number of social groups, typically led by younger people, soon spreading to previously unpolitical groups in society.
• Significant use of technology, in particular secure communication apps ( which may or may not have been assisted by a foreign state actor to ensure encryption upgrades beyond the host country’s ability to monitor or disrupt )
• Generous and unexplained funding, typically coming from brand-new bank accounts for organizations and NGOs that have recently established
• Random news designed to incite more participants and in particular the use of graphic images of rape involving young women and images or videos of authority figures causing grievous bodily harm or even dismembering human bodies.

A number of these requirements have been met, based on what this writer has examined as raw data over the past 72 hours, despite the fact that it has so far been challenging to confirm or refute much of the information to the accepted criteria for evidence-based documentation.

What’s the background?

The Bangladesh that entered 2024 was a sprightly young adult in the world, with reasonable infrastructure, public payments systems, and a marked competitive edge in labor-intensive mass industries like textiles, ranging from low-cost items to higher-end fashion items, boasting rapid economic growth, GDP per capita that had passed South Asian peers including India ( having left fellow Muslim carve-out in the dust many years ago ), and a sprightly young adult population.

In addition, many social indicators including the participation of women in the formal economy and health metrics of average school-going children all were the envy of the region.

The enormous strides made over the past 15 years are generally appreciated by anyone who is familiar with the country’s bloody history since the 1960s. An attempt at democracy that led the elites of ( western ) Pakistan fearing rule by the” Bengalis” led to an attempted genocide that was only stopped by the timely intervention of the Indian army that helped armed local guerillas take down Pakistan armed forces in a matter of a few days in December 1971.

In Dhaka’s parliamentarian halls, the echoes of political assassinations and military coups have recurred frequently since then.

Ruling since 2009, Hasina had indeed become much more dictatorial and had taken extreme action against the Bangladesh National Party of her bete noire and former political partner Khaleda Zia ( the two had ganged up to bring down President Ershad in 1990 ), along with her ongoing crackdown on fringe terrorist movements that operated under the general umbrella of the Jamaat-e-Islami ( Jamaat ).

The players are who?

The formerly indifferent relationship between India and Bangladesh took a sudden turn for the better since 2014, when incoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited heads of other South Asian governments to his inauguration in a first for an Indian prime minister.

Although Modi and Hasina did not do well in his efforts to set a more positive tone for relations with Pakistan, they did succeed.

After the horrifying terrorist attacks in Dhaka in July 2016 that left at least one Indian dead ( a young woman who had been a tourist ), India provided significant and recurring assistance on the intelligence and arms fronts to Hasina as she cracked down on the banned Jamaat networks that sometimes poured across the border into India, particularly into the welcome embrace of the opposition-led Bengal state.

The two leaders have worked cooperatively over the years, despite numerous conflicting concerns, to maintain stability in the region, cooperation in combating terrorism, and a move to stop people smuggling, which ironically resulted in a shift in activities from India to the “mother lode” of Europe and the United States.

It does appear, and it certainly has been actively discussed in Delhi all week, that Indian intelligence agencies simply failed to grasp the momentum behind the student protests. There is much discussion about the tens of millions of dollars that foreign powers frequently divert to the accounts of protestors ( particularly the bank accounts of Jamaat loyalists who reside “illegally but comfortably” in Bengal ).

A second topic of furtive discussions in Delhi this week is the action of the US, and to a lesser extent, the UK. According to a well-informed observer in Delhi, accusations made about the UK were “unfounded and speculative” because he believes the role played by the junior Treasury Minister, Tulip Siddiq, the sister of Hasina, was far too significant to allow the new Labour government to play any part in the proceedings.

However, other sources have pointed out that coups do n’t get planned in days, and it is more likely that players in the former Conservative-led government were keen to play along with the supposed US plan to depose Hasina, if for nothing else because most of them feared losing their seats in the July UK elections and were seeking sinecures with US agencies and companies after their inevitable defenestration.

Particularly the US actions have been very eye-opening. From decrying the Bangladesh elections earlier this year as” not free and fair” to an official statement “welcoming the interim Dhaka government” in a matter of hours after Hasina fled the country, there’s an American fingerprint discernible in every direction.

It is no secret that a number of pro-Palestine US government members shared a cause with the Jamaat, and they undoubtedly gained from funding and lobbying support from the small but powerful Bangladeshi-American community, particularly on the East and West coasts of the country.

There were also regular meetings between US officials and Tariq Rahman, son of Khaleda Zia and de-facto head of the BNP, over the past few months. A number of UK Labour politicians, according to legend, regularly lobbyed the BNP for the Biden government.

How was the coup activated?

Indian sources made arrangements for the swift appointment of Nobel laureate Yunus as interim prime minister despite not providing any shocking revelations about how the US funded the” student” protests.

In any event, Yunus featured as far back as 2015 when he communicated a desire to support ( or even lead ) a “benevolent dictatorship” that would replace the democratically elected government Hasina.

Of course, this came after Hasina’s government’s crackdown in 2013 and some politically charged speeches that ended up being both politically charged and embarrassing.

From whatever I have pieced together, it appears that adequate funding has been provided to the Jamaat-linked individuals operating in Bengal since at least last year and there had been some speculation that the US had funded a number of Islamist politicians who stood ( and mostly won ) during the Indian elections, opposing the candidates of India’s ruling BJP.

Although that may have been the case, and there have actually been instances where entire villages have failed to cast a single vote for the BJP, which may highlight the importance of the Jamaat in Bengal, it seems largely that the money was funneled into Bangladesh.

As a side note, while Bangladesh has its own currency, it is generally believed that the Indian rupee operates like legal tender in many parts of the economy, much like the US dollar does globally. Therefore, Jamaat account funding in India would facilitate the transmission of funds between activists in Bangladesh.

The surprise court rejection of the jobs quota for descendants of freedom fighters, a founding myth of the Awami League, is now itself being considered through conspiratorial lenses, with some “well-informed sources” suggesting that the judges who helped to pass the order all have significant US nexus including children living or studying in the country.

In any event, the court action pushed the government to” clarify” matters with a new statute, which in turn triggered the riots witnessed around the country since June.

Notably, the ruling BJP’s victory in the Indian election came to an end at the end of May, causing a setback for many political observers, who attribute this to the blockbuster or strategic voting practiced by the Muslim population throughout the nation, but particularly in states like Bengal, where the BJP lost ground in comparison to its performance in the previous elections in 2019.

With the BJP on the back foot, Indian observers claim the US government green-lit the operation against Hasina.

Dhaka and Manipur

Virtually unnoticed outside of India, there has been a storm operating in the Indian state of Manipur, which borders Myanmar on one side and the Indian state of Mizoram on the other ( which itself borders Bangladesh ) for almost all of the past twelve months.

An armed insurrection in Manipur, which started as a turf war on drugs ( remember Myanmar’s central role in the world drug trade ), has been supported by a number of community organizers, who are reportedly supporters of the US Democratic Party.

Having been burned in Manipur, Indian security forces are heavily stretched and it is believed that the focus on Manipur has been a primary reason for the Indian intelligence failure in Bangladesh as resources had been rapidly reallocated over six months ago.

From where?

Sources say Indian officials are flabbergasted at the speed and scale of events unfolding in Bangladesh. They have so far focused solely on reacting to the immediate effects of weekend events, which range from stranded tourists to a recent upsurge of illegal immigrants crossing India’s borders with Bangladesh.

Besides the usual gasps of wishful thinking, I did not hear any commentary on plausible next steps around supporting Hasina or even reviving old relationships Yunus and other Bangladeshi officials. With no meaningful role to play in the upcoming months, India is now firmly entangled in a reaction loop.

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A Chinese company that was established four and a half decades ago to avoid US punishment has been accused of selling goods to Chinese businesses.

Nettrix, a Beijing-based agency established in December 2019, has sold system machines that used Intel and Nvidia’s bits and Microsoft’s technology to sanctioned Foreign companies and organizations, according to a review published by the New York Times on August 4. &nbsp,

The report said all of Nettrix’s top executives came from Sugon, which was sanctioned by the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security ( BIS ) in June 2019. According to the statement, the executives are still working together in Kunshan, Suzhou, with Sugon and other businesses owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences ( CAS ).

According to a report from the New York Times, Nettrix has sold servers to a number of the same companies as Sugon, and its clients include colleges that house protection facilities and security companies that work with the military and China’s Excellent Firewall.

Nettrix, which is not connected to the CAS, claimed in a statement that it did not assist Sugon in evading US punishment. It emphasized that no regulations were broken by the purchase. After the US sanctioned it in 2019, Sugon claimed to have fired hundreds of employees. &nbsp,

Public information gathered by Asia Times showed that Qin Xiaoning, who was praised as one of 14 “outstanding” Chinese Communist Party people in 2018, led about 200 original Sugon people to type Nettrix in December 2019 in order to maintain access to US computers. In 2022, she received an other reward. &nbsp,

Before 2019, Zhao Lei and Wei Bingqing, vice chairman of Qin and Nettrix, both had worked for Dawning Information Industry Co Ltd. or Sugon.

” It’s a great time to set up Nettrix despite some difficulties”, Qin told the media in an interview in April 2020.

In December 2022, Nettrix had now formed alliances with more than a hundred providers including Intel, Nvidia, Broadcom and VMware. Last month, it became the third-largest visual processing unit ( GPU) client dealer in China, following Inspur and Tsinghua Unigroiup’s H3C. &nbsp,

In March this year, the corporation launched the Nettrix AI Open Lab in Tongxiang City in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province. The facility has 128 artificial intelligence ( AI ) servers, which mainly use Intel processors and Nvidia-made GPUs. &nbsp, &nbsp,

Qin’s leaders

On February 1 this year, Sugon’s director told investors that the business has no ownership relationships, but even business relationships, with Nettrix. &nbsp,

Suma Information Industry Co Ltd and Nettrix, Sugon’s past businesses, were mentioned in a selling brochure when it unveiled its Intel-powered I620-G30 site in 2021. However, the BIS was silent at the time. &nbsp, &nbsp,

In the most recent New York Times article, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who oversees the BIS, was quoted as saying,” This is a very difficult job, and I’m not under any illusions that we are doing it perfectly.” &nbsp,

She claimed that the BIS’s monthly expenditure, which was only US$ 191 million, hindered her player’s work due to limited resources.

Nazak Nikakhtar, a former assistant secretary for industry and analysis at the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration ( ITA ), told Asia Times in an interview in June that the US government should first license a very small amount of trade before conducting the end-use-check before granting more licenses.

In fact, it’s not difficult to trace the officers relations of the top managers of Sugon, Suma and Nettrix.

When Sugon went people in Shanghai in 2014, senior vice president Nie Hua and leader Li Jun, who were then 35, placed in the top three. 19 among 321 key team members eligible to receive investment options. &nbsp,

Sugon sold its total interest in Suma to a company that Nie legitimately represented in July of the same year after the US added it to its Entity List in June 2019. Suma remained a CAS product. &nbsp, &nbsp, &nbsp,

She was Sugon’s vice chairman and Systems Products Division brain just before Qin became CEO of Nettrix in December 2019. The ownership structure of Nettrix has never been made public. &nbsp,

While Sugon (a source of SOE customers), Suma (a manufacturer of computer servers) and Nettrix (a supplier of foreign chips) have been individual companies since 2019, Li and Nie have continued as Qin’s leaders as of now.

According to Hygon’s listing prospectus, which was released in July 2022, the trio are partners in Tianjin Haifu Tianding Technology Partnership ( Limited Partnership ). Hygon now has a market capitalization of 181.2 billion yuan ($ 25.34 billion ).

Through her 1.11 % stake in Tianjin Haifu Tianding, Qin indirectly owned a 0.14 % stake in Hygon. The interest is now for 259 million renminbi.

Sugon’s coming program

Sugon has used Hygon and Loongson computers more frequently than it has in the last four and a half centuries. &nbsp,

Hygon’s X86 computer, which uses AMD’s instruction set infrastructure, is made by Samsung and GlobalFoundries. Loongson’s 3A5000 chipset, which uses the company’s own structures, is made by Taiwan-run TSMC’s lovely in Nanjing, China. &nbsp, &nbsp,

A whistleblower-claiming netizen from Shanghai claimed on July 10 that Sugon may eventually disappear from the system server industry as a result of” some new major changes.”

However, a Zhejiang-based netizen made it clear that Sugon will just continue to sell computer servers powered by local cards and only those that are locally produced.

Read: China bird: Fix symbolic, inadequate US punishment

Observe Jeff Pao on X: &nbsp, @jeffpao3

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