The Treacherous Hasina Government Cannot Stop its Fall by Handing over the Strategic Chittagong Port to India

News:

The external affairs minister of India, S. Jaishankar, met Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday. Hasina offered her country's seaport, Chittagong to India, for use by Assam and Tripura. This would lead to better connectivity between the two countries. Jaishankar also invited Hasina to visit New Delhi. The invitation was extended on behalf of PM Narendra Modi. "I conveyed (her) that we look forward to her visit to India at a time her convenience,” Jaishankar said, adding that a number of issues relating to bilateral ties as well as rational and global issues came up as he called on the Bangladesh premier.

During the meeting, Prime Minister Hasina said that the two countries have to increase the connectivity further, her press secretary Ihsanul Karim told PTI. She told Jaishankar that the enhanced connectivity was needed for mutual benefit while it would particularly benefit India's northeastern region in using Bangladesh's southeastern Chittagong port, Karim said. (Source: Times of India, April 28, 2022)

Comment:

Sheikh Hasina’s offer to hand over Bangladesh’s main port – the Chittagong Port - for India's use carries great peril for Bangladesh’s strategic sovereignty. India has been trying to access this vital port for decades and had a treaty as well with Bangladesh in 2018 with no significant progress afterward except a trial run. This connectivity still remains vital for India because the route from India’s northeastern states such as Assam and Tripura to Chittagong port is shorter than the route to India’s Kolkata port.

Jaishankas’s visit took place after Hasina government said it would seek Indian support to pursue the USA to lift sanctions imposed on the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which is accused of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances. Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said on April 26, 2022, "We plan to engage India to pursue the RAB sanction issue, they (India) have many influences in USA politics, and we will discuss the issue during the upcoming visit of the Indian Foreign Minister Dr S. Jaishankar in Dhaka on Thursday" (The Daily Observer, April 27, 2022). It is beyond any doubt that Hasina wants to bribe India by handing over the vital infrastructure at the expense of the Ummah’s sovereignty. The enemy India’s motive to use our strategic port is not only economic; she has her own geopolitical interest and ambition centering on this facility. A case in point is India’s interest to use Sri Lanka’s northern port of Kankesanthurai (KKS) in 2011 expressing her economic interest only. Later that interest turned into taking control of the eastern Port of Trincomalee to tackle China’s growing influence in the region (“India and China’s Tug of War Over Sri Lanka”, The Diplomat, May 23, 2017).

The treacherous Hasina regime will never stop compromising the Ummah’s sovereignty and surrendering our strategic resources and infrastructures to the belligerent enemies unless we uproot them along with the Western-backed secular ruling system. And by reestablishing the promised Khilafah Rashidah (rightly guided Caliphate), Bangladesh must bring an end to the subservience of the Kuffar and Mushrikeen to usher in a new era under the leadership of Islam. Allah (swt) says,

[وَلَنْ يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لِلْكَافِرِينَ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ سَبِيلًا]

“and Allah will by no means give the unbelievers a way against the believers” [An-Nisa:141].

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Imadul Amin
Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Bangladesh