Blake was (and is) no tourist . . .
Blake was not here as a tourist on a sight-seeing expedition to Bangladesh. What he says matters, despite all that talk on our part of shared values and institutions.
Robert Blake -- he is US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs -- has set alarm bells ringing in Bangladesh. His expression of views regarding the Yunus affair is certainly understandable. The sordid manner in which the Bangladesh government has gone about humiliating the Nobel laureate has not exactly endeared us to people beyond our frontiers.
The tone and tenor in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina castigated Muhammad Yunus recently was certainly not edifying for us. The briskness with which the Bangladesh Bank showed Yunus the door out of his very own Grameen Bank was as stupefying as it was outrageous. Finally, the Bangladesh attorney general's making it known that Sheikh Hasina and Santu Larma should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace over the Chittagong Hill Tracts peace deal was enough to make people wonder if that was also the view of the government.
So, yes, the government of Bangladesh has been tying itself in knots over the Yunus issue. It is not just Hillary Clinton and her husband who are worried. President Obama is too. And do not forget that Mary Robinson, the formidable former president of Ireland, is justifiably angry at the treatment being meted out to independent Bangladesh's only Nobel winner. It now remains for the government, considering the embarrassment it has brought upon itself, to look for a way out of its difficulties.
The air is thick with rumours that a rapprochement between the government and the Grameen pioneer is in the works. All we can do is wait. But while we do that, we certainly note that when Blake darkly informed us that a failure on the part of the government to reach a compromise with Yunus could affect relations between Washington and Dhaka, we spotted in his remarks some very real signs of danger.
No American diplomat speaks out of turn. And no American diplomat or governing politician reveals, in public, what his private views are about a situation. Robert Blake, by such logic, was articulating the views of the Obama administration. It is of course rather queer that a state will choose to base the future of its diplomatic links with another state around particular individuals. But Washington appears to have done that and there is nothing we can do about it.
But we, through our government, indeed through the Foreign Office, could have done something swiftly to remind Blake and his people back in Washington that diplomatic niceties do not include issuing threats to a country, no matter how couched in fine language such threats may be.
Blake's words were not a gaffe. He made his remarks twice, once at the American Club and then in an interview with a Bangladesh television channel. Much as you would prefer not to cite earlier instances of American intimidation of politicians in weaker nations, you cannot but recall Henry Kissinger's threat to Pakistan's Zulfikar Ali Bhutto over the latter's nuclear plans in the mid 1970s. Kissinger promised to make a horrible example of Bhutto. And we all remember the way Bhutto's government fell before his life came to an end.
We do resent the manner in which Blake expressed his opinion on his trip to Dhaka.
And yet, Foreign Secretary Mijarul Quayes appears not to be too worried about the repercussions of Blake's remarks. The opinion of a personality or an individual does not matter, says our top diplomat. Oh yes, in this case it does. The individual Blake is of little consequence to us.
For the record, Blake is the public face of the United States and its government -- for South and Central Asia. He was not here as a tourist on a sight-seeing expedition to Bangladesh. What he says matters, despite all that talk on our part of shared values and institutions. And he has said things we do not agree with, indeed are worried by. He has ruffled our sensitivities. And what has the Bangladesh Foreign Office done about it?
It could have done a couple of things immediately after Blake's views came to light. It could have censured his remarks as interference in Bangladesh's domestic matters. And it could have summoned the American ambassador for a clarification of Blake's comments. It did neither.
And the foreign secretary's interpretation of the whole episode leaves us wondering about the inability or unwillingness of the government to take a position on issues of grave import for us. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has said not a word. Why has she not?
Ambivalence has generally been a hallmark of ties between Bangladesh and the United States. In 1971, the Nixon administration, having gone for a pro-Pakistan tilt, tried working out through Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed a confederal Dhaka-Islamabad arrangement. In 1974, Bangladesh was denied American food aid because of its jute trade with Cuba.
In the same year, Tajuddin Ahmed was forced to quit office because the suspicion was that the Bangladesh government had begun veering toward a Washington-friendly stance. And if you go by what foreign journalists have had to say, Henry Kissinger perhaps had something of a role in not preventing the August 1975 coup against the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Inter-state relations are never based on ambivalence. Foreign policy works on principles tempered by pragmatism. And silence is no diplomacy.
The tone and tenor in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina castigated Muhammad Yunus recently was certainly not edifying for us. The briskness with which the Bangladesh Bank showed Yunus the door out of his very own Grameen Bank was as stupefying as it was outrageous. Finally, the Bangladesh attorney general's making it known that Sheikh Hasina and Santu Larma should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace over the Chittagong Hill Tracts peace deal was enough to make people wonder if that was also the view of the government.
So, yes, the government of Bangladesh has been tying itself in knots over the Yunus issue. It is not just Hillary Clinton and her husband who are worried. President Obama is too. And do not forget that Mary Robinson, the formidable former president of Ireland, is justifiably angry at the treatment being meted out to independent Bangladesh's only Nobel winner. It now remains for the government, considering the embarrassment it has brought upon itself, to look for a way out of its difficulties.
The air is thick with rumours that a rapprochement between the government and the Grameen pioneer is in the works. All we can do is wait. But while we do that, we certainly note that when Blake darkly informed us that a failure on the part of the government to reach a compromise with Yunus could affect relations between Washington and Dhaka, we spotted in his remarks some very real signs of danger.
No American diplomat speaks out of turn. And no American diplomat or governing politician reveals, in public, what his private views are about a situation. Robert Blake, by such logic, was articulating the views of the Obama administration. It is of course rather queer that a state will choose to base the future of its diplomatic links with another state around particular individuals. But Washington appears to have done that and there is nothing we can do about it.
But we, through our government, indeed through the Foreign Office, could have done something swiftly to remind Blake and his people back in Washington that diplomatic niceties do not include issuing threats to a country, no matter how couched in fine language such threats may be.
Blake's words were not a gaffe. He made his remarks twice, once at the American Club and then in an interview with a Bangladesh television channel. Much as you would prefer not to cite earlier instances of American intimidation of politicians in weaker nations, you cannot but recall Henry Kissinger's threat to Pakistan's Zulfikar Ali Bhutto over the latter's nuclear plans in the mid 1970s. Kissinger promised to make a horrible example of Bhutto. And we all remember the way Bhutto's government fell before his life came to an end.
We do resent the manner in which Blake expressed his opinion on his trip to Dhaka.
And yet, Foreign Secretary Mijarul Quayes appears not to be too worried about the repercussions of Blake's remarks. The opinion of a personality or an individual does not matter, says our top diplomat. Oh yes, in this case it does. The individual Blake is of little consequence to us.
For the record, Blake is the public face of the United States and its government -- for South and Central Asia. He was not here as a tourist on a sight-seeing expedition to Bangladesh. What he says matters, despite all that talk on our part of shared values and institutions. And he has said things we do not agree with, indeed are worried by. He has ruffled our sensitivities. And what has the Bangladesh Foreign Office done about it?
It could have done a couple of things immediately after Blake's views came to light. It could have censured his remarks as interference in Bangladesh's domestic matters. And it could have summoned the American ambassador for a clarification of Blake's comments. It did neither.
And the foreign secretary's interpretation of the whole episode leaves us wondering about the inability or unwillingness of the government to take a position on issues of grave import for us. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has said not a word. Why has she not?
Ambivalence has generally been a hallmark of ties between Bangladesh and the United States. In 1971, the Nixon administration, having gone for a pro-Pakistan tilt, tried working out through Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed a confederal Dhaka-Islamabad arrangement. In 1974, Bangladesh was denied American food aid because of its jute trade with Cuba.
In the same year, Tajuddin Ahmed was forced to quit office because the suspicion was that the Bangladesh government had begun veering toward a Washington-friendly stance. And if you go by what foreign journalists have had to say, Henry Kissinger perhaps had something of a role in not preventing the August 1975 coup against the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Inter-state relations are never based on ambivalence. Foreign policy works on principles tempered by pragmatism. And silence is no diplomacy.
The writer is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=179644__._,_.___
