New Delhi, Nov 9: In a bombshell interview that’s sending shockwaves through South Asian diplomatic circles, a key ally of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has unleashed a torrent of accusations, painting the 2024 Bangladesh uprising as a meticulously orchestrated Western plot.
Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury, Hasina’s former shipping minister and crisis negotiator, alleged that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—once the US government’s sprawling humanitarian powerhouse—and the influential Clinton family pulled the strings behind the student-led protests that toppled Hasina’s 15-year reign, an exclusive published by Russia Today said.
Chowdhury didn’t mince words, branding the chaos a “carefully planned” regime-change operation fuelled by shadowy NGO funding, Russia Today said.
“Certain actions of some NGOs, especially from the US—I mean USAID, or the International Republican Institute—were running campaigns against our government since 2018,” he charged, claiming millions in USAID dollars vanished into “clandestine” channels to stoke unrest.
The ex-minister zeroed in on a “nexus” between the Clintons and interim chief Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-winning microfinance pioneer now steering Bangladesh’s transitional ship.
“This relationship reflects a deeper attempt by the Clinton Foundation and Yunus to push for regime change under the guise of democracy and development,” Chowdhury asserted, tying it to Hasina’s refusal to bow to US pressures—like rejecting demands for a military foothold on strategic St Martin’s Island, a Bay of Bengal gem her father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, once defended.
The interview revives Hasina’s own post-exile broadsides, where she lambasted Yunus for “selling the nation to the US”, fleeing Dhaka on August 5, 2024, amid a mob’s rampage at her Ganabhaban residence, Hasina touched down in Delhi, where she remains under India’s protective wing.
The July-August inferno, sparked by job quota fury, claimed at least 700 lives and unleashed pogroms against Hindu minorities—scars that linger as Yunus’s regime pivots toward Pakistan, the very foe accused of 1971’s genocide that birthed Bangladesh.
Washington, predictably, swatted down the narrative as “laughable” and “simply false.” (IANS)
