Prime Minister Tarique Rahman went to China in June and returned with the sort of communiqué that most governments “traditionally” bring back from Beijing. Warmer friendship, higher partnership, broader cooperation, deeper understanding and enough memoranda to keep several ministries occupied until the next state visit.
There were 17 MoUs in all, according to the Prime Minister’s Office, 13 of them government-to-government. Bangladesh and China announced that their relationship would be elevated towards a “community with a shared future in the new era”. Xi Jinping received Tarique Rahman at the Great Hall of the People.
Trade, investment, green development, education, infrastructure and other forms of bilateral enthusiasm were placed on the table. China described the visit as having taken relations to a “new strategic height”.
There was, however, an awkward question lurking beneath all this strategic altitude.
Only months earlier Bangladesh had signed a legally binding reciprocal trade agreement with the United States containing unusually muscular economic-security provisions. Bangladesh agreed to cooperate with Washington on export controls involving national-security-sensitive technologies and goods.
More intriguingly, the agreement says that if Bangladesh enters a new bilateral free-trade or preferential economic agreement with a “non-market country” that undermines the US deal, Washington may seek consultations and eventually terminate the agreement and restore higher reciprocal tariffs.
This does not quite amount to Bangladesh needing an American permission slip before shaking hands with China. It does mean that the country’s celebrated ability to be everyone’s friend now comes with some fairly serious small print. Curiously, hardly “anybody” seemed interested in dwelling on it.
There is probably a reason behind it. The new BNP government has discovered something much more interesting and entertaining than trade-law footnotes…foreign policy as domestic political tool.
For Tarique Rahman’s administration, diplomacy has rapidly become one of its most successful instruments of popularity. Ministers can struggle with electricity, prices, administration and the innumerable irritations of governing 180 million people.
But send somebody to Beijing, tell Delhi that Bangladesh will no longer be taken for granted, win an election at the United Nations or mention a Islamic NATO like defence pact and suddenly governing looks rather glamorous.
At the core of this “production” stand Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman and his increasingly conspicuous deputy, Humaiun Kobir.
There are political operators who rise through ideology, and bureaucrats who rise through obedience. Then there is Khalilur Rahman, who appears to have risen through something far more useful: usefulness in moments of uncertainty.
His appointment as foreign minister surprised many in the BNP. Only the previous year he had been national security adviser under Muhammad Yunus’s interim government. Bangladesh normally treats senior holdovers from previous administrations rather as medieval courts treated the previous king’s astrologer…possession of specialised knowledge is not necessarily sufficient protection.
Khalil survived. Better still, he was promoted.
His CV explains some of it. He came first in Bangladesh’s first regular civil-service examination in 1977, also finished first in his economics master’s at Dhaka University, studied at Fletcher and Harvard, joined the diplomatic service and subsequently spent a quarter-century in senior UN positions.
Before becoming Tarique Rahman’s foreign minister, he had served the interim government as high representative on the Rohingya issue and then national security adviser.
But qualifications alone do not explain Khalil. Dhaka contains just “enough" highly qualified former officials to staff at least one or two government in exile. His particular gift is strategic ambiguity.
To his admirers, every apparently contradictory manoeuvre forms part of a chess game occurring several moves beyond ordinary comprehension. To critics, he is an accomplished improviser who has discovered that if tactical flexibility is expressed slowly enough, preferably using the word “strategic”, it begins to resemble doctrine.
Bangladesh can court China while reassuring Washington. It can improve relations with Pakistan while telling India there is nothing to fear. It can demand Sheikh Hasina’s extradition from India while insisting that relations with Delhi remain important.
It can contemplate Islamic security arrangements while continuing to advertise non-alignment.
Contradiction to one audience is balance to another.
This is precisely why Khalil has become popular. Bangladesh spent years watching foreign policy discussed as though the country were a troublesome tenant situated inconveniently between larger landlords. Khalil speaks instead as if Bangladesh has options.
Sometimes he even seems offended that anybody should ask what those options produced.
After Tarique Rahman’s China visit, a journalist asked what tangible or immediate financial gains Bangladesh had secured. Khalil objected to the premise. “Please maintain some dignity,” he said, describing such questions as embarrassing and insisting that the Prime Minister had not travelled with a begging bowl.
The purpose, he explained, had been to establish the direction, content, height, breadth and depth of the relationship. It was a magnificent foreign-ministry theatre. Only a diplomat could transform the absence of a number into a discussion of breadth and depth.
Nearby, increasingly often, is Humaiun Kobir.
Kobir spent much of his life in Britain, was involved in Labour politics and worked within the British governmental system, including at 10 Downing Street, according to his official biography. He later became the BNP’s joint secretary general for international affairs and Tarique Rahman’s foreign-affairs adviser.
He also became Khalil’s able deputy and, occasionally, supporting cast.
At press appearances the division of labour could look almost theatrical…Khalil supplied the rebuke, Kobir the appreciative amusement from the side. When Khalil won the contested election for president of the 81st UN General Assembly in June, defeating Cyprus’s Andreas Kakouris 99-91, Kobir celebrated like the other half of a wrestling tag team whose partner had just retained the belt.
The victory itself was substantial: Bangladesh had mounted an intensive diplomatic campaign against a rival candidate rather than receiving the post uncontested.
Kobir’s period as second fiddle has probably ended. He has now become more prominent.
He was sworn in as state minister for foreign affairs in August, and the distribution of responsibilities made clear which deputy would occupy the main stage. Kobir, designated State Minister for Foreign Affairs-1, received bilateral affairs, multilateral affairs and non-resident Bangladeshis, plus whatever else Khalil chooses to assign him.
Shama Obaed Islam, State Minister-2, received human rights, research, climate change, creative economy, LDC graduation, ICT, maritime resources, health diplomacy and cultural and sports diplomacy.
These are perfectly respectable subjects. They are also not India, China, America, Pakistan or the United Nations. Shama Obaed has therefore acquired something resembling the diplomatic equivalent of being minister for everything that does not normally lead the evening news.
Kobir promptly demonstrated why.
Asked about the new Mecca defence pact involving Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, he recently said, rather boldly, Bangladesh viewed the possibility “positively.” Mecca, he observed, occupied a special place in Bangladeshi hearts; participation in an Islamic security arrangement in the Middle East would therefore not be unusual.
Several media meanwhile reported that potential Bangladeshi participation could complicate relations with India and test Dhaka’s traditional balancing strategy. It was excellent domestic politics though. It was also the sort of remark that makes professional diplomats reach quietly for antacid.
Joining a collective-security arrangement is not an expression of religious affection. It is a strategic commitment. Bangladesh would have to consider its longstanding non-aligned posture, its geography, its relationship with India, its dependence on Western export markets, its extensive Chinese defence relationship and the precise obligations membership might entail.
Kobir had nevertheless identified the emotional wavelength on which Bangladesh’s new diplomacy increasingly broadcasts.
Then came the citizenship affair.
Soon after his elevation, Prothom Alo reported questions over whether Kobir, who grew up in Britain, had relinquished British citizenship before becoming a minister. Asked directly in a press meet, he did not provide a direct answer. Instead he asked who had published the story and “who is so bothered?”
Transparency International Bangladesh subsequently criticised his response and demanded clarity; journalists’ group BJIM called his manner confrontational.
The episode revealed the strange political chemistry surrounding the Khalil-Kobir partnership. Criticism that might badly damage an ordinary minister often seems merely to strengthen their appeal among supporters who regard hostile questioning as evidence that somebody is finally defending Bangladesh vigorously enough.
Conduct an informal poll across Bangladeshi Facebook and one encounters a “striking” phenomenon: two unelected foreign-policy technocrats have developed something approaching “political fandom.”
Even Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizen Party, which can usually locate a reason to attack the BNP government before breakfast, have found remarkably little political profit in challenging the broad direction of this assertive diplomacy. Foreign policy has become one of the few arenas where the government can occupy nationalist ground without immediately surrendering half of it to the opposition.
There is an obvious temptation here, and it resembles what happened to Game of Thrones.
David Benioff and DB Weiss produced their best seasons while working from the dense political structure supplied by George RR Martin. Characters operated within constraints and decisions carried costs. Alliances created consequences. Realpolitik drove the story.
Then the source material ran out, expectations became enormous and the final seasons increasingly seemed written towards delivering moments audiences wanted to see.
Bangladesh’s dynamic diplomatic duo face a comparable danger.
So far Khalil and Kobir have been operating in the George RR Martin phase of foreign policy: geography, trade, military dependence, India, China, America, Pakistan, the Rohingya crisis and the Bay of Bengal provide brutally real constraints.
But popularity creates its own scriptwriters.
Once audiences cheer when India is rebuked, there is pressure for another rebuke. Once Islamic solidarity produces applause, there is temptation to offer a defence pact. Once China provides photographs of strategic partnership, there is pressure to promise greater strategic partnership.
Once journalists asking awkward questions can be portrayed as insufficiently patriotic, foreign policy begins drifting from statecraft towards fan service.
The irony is that Khalil’s greatest strength has always been his refusal to choose unnecessarily. Strategic ambiguity works precisely because it preserves room for manoeuvre.
Fan-service diplomacy does the opposite. It converts ambiguity into promises.
Bangladesh can enjoy Khalil’s balancing act and Kobir’s exuberance. It can celebrate a UN victory and cultivate Beijing, Washington, Ankara, Riyadh, Islamabad and Delhi simultaneously. But eventually somebody will ask for something in return.
China may want strategic access. Washington has already written economic-security expectations into a trade agreement. India will judge Bangladesh’s Pakistan and Mecca Pact adventures through its own security anxieties. Pakistan and Türkiye will expect substance from warmer defence relations. Saudi Arabia will not construct a security architecture merely to provide Dhaka with popular Facebook posts.
That is when the Khalil and Kobir show becomes interesting.
Foreign policy is currently Tarique Rahman’s most agreeable domestic product because it allows Bangladeshis to feel that their country has recovered agency. That feeling is politically valuable and, after years of perceived diplomatic imbalance, understandable.
But diplomacy ultimately has a crueler audience than Facebook. Khalilur Rahman and Humaiun Kobir have mastered the applause. Their real test is whether they can resist writing the final seasons for the fans.
—
Faisal Mahmud is the Managing Editor of Daily Waadaa