What evidence supports the claim that the U.S. influenced Sheikh Hasina’s removal in 2024?

A: Washington’s estrangement from the Awami League has a long history. After Hasina returned to power in 2009, U.S. Ambassador Dan Mozena told reporters in Dhaka, ‘The U.S. interaction with the sitting government is not business as usual.’ He stated that U.S. aid to Bangladesh would continue on a case-by-case basis. In other words, the Obama administration was simultaneously appeasing and ramping up pressure on the Hasina government to align it with Washington’s geostrategic interests in curbing China’s influence in the region. In 2014, in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Nisha Desai Biswal, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, called for new elections in Bangladesh to accommodate the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Hasina’s rival, Khaleda Zia. In February 2019, a bipartisan group of six influential U.S. Congress members urged the Trump administration to address ‘threats to democracy’ in Bangladesh. They noted allegations of election fraud, rigging, and voter suppression in the 2018 polls and pushed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to ‘take action.’ Earlier, a top Pentagon commander fumed over the elections, stating Hasina ‘is trying to achieve a de facto one-party rule.’ In 2021, Washington sanctioned multiple Hasina administration officials and members of security forces for alleged human rights violations. Washington announced that anyone attempting to taint the upcoming elections would face a U.S. visa ban. This intimidated officials into disobeying Hasina’s orders and created a maelstrom, allowing the re-emergence of radical Islamic groups. In September 2023, the State Department disclosed that it had taken steps to impose visa restrictions on Bangladeshi individuals responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.