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Critical Review of the “US-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade”

Iconus Clustus 19 July 2025

This paper critically examines the leaked draft of the U.S.–Bangladesh Reciprocal Trade Agreement, revealing it to be a deeply asymmetrical arrangement that compromises Bangladesh’s regulatory sovereignty, economic autonomy, and geopolitical independence. Under the guise of market access and tariff relief, the agreement imposes sweeping U.S. oversight across digital governance, labor law, defense procurement, environmental regulation, and data control. Rather than fostering mutual benefit, the proposed terms reflect a strategic restructuring of Bangladesh’s legal and economic infrastructure to serve U.S. commercial and strategic interests. The analysis situates this deal within the broader context of post-colonial dependency and calls for urgent public scrutiny, renegotiation, and activist resistance.

19 July 2025

1. Introduction In July 2025, a confidential draft of the so-called U.S.-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade was leaked. At first glance, it appeared to be a bilateral deal to facilitate trade flows between the two countries. However, on closer inspection, the document revealed something far more consequential: a complex and far-reaching framework that, if ratified, would embed U.S. influence deep into Bangladesh’s economic, legal, and digital infrastructures. Drafted amid political instability and under an unelected interim government, this agreement must be understood not merely as a trade pact, but as a coercive tool of structural realignment: one that reorients Bangladesh’s legal, economic, and geopolitical frameworks to align with U.S. priorities, without public consultation or democratic mandate. This paper offers a critical examination of the agreement, exploring its key provisions, underlying logic, and broader implications. It further contextualizes the agreement within a lineage of similarly coercive international arrangements and concludes with strategic recommendations for activists, policymakers, and civil society actors committed

to protecting Bangladesh’s sovereignty. 1.1 Security Classification • Marked CONFIDENTIAL, with “Modified Handling Authorized.” • Declassification set for 4 years after enforcement/negotiation closure. • Suggests it is either a draft or pre-ratification version. • Legal effect is not yet public—yet expectations and timelines for Bangladeshi compliance are clear and immediate. 2. Critical Analysis of the Agreement The agreement, sprawling across 21 pages, is organized into six major sections: taxation, non-tariff barriers, digital trade and technology, rules of origin, commercial and national security terms, and investment and services. While billed as reciprocal, the obligations it places on Bangladesh far outweigh those asked of the United States. 2.1 Tariff & Non-Tariff Barriers One of the most striking aspects of the draft agreement lies in its treatment of tariff and non-tariff barriers. Bangladesh is effectively being asked to lower customs duties specifically on U.S. goods, potentially undermining the country’s ability to protect its local industries through strategic tariffs. Even more troubling, however, is…

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From Shahbagh to Karbala: Rhetoric, Revisionism, and the Return of the Mob [1]

Iconus Clustus 4 July 2025

In Mahfuz Alam’s hands, the word “mob” becomes a political mirror — reflecting only those struggles that threaten the new order. From Shahbagh to the People’s Courts, he retrofits secular justice movements into spectacles of irrational rage, while carefully omitting the rise of Islamist forces now embedded in power. His rhetoric isn’t argument — it’s choreography, built from contradictions and cloaked in abstraction. But the real danger isn’t what he says — it’s what he replaces: memory with manipulation, ethics with performance, revolution with revision. When Mahfuz speaks of Karbala, he isn't invoking resistance — he's rehearsing a morality play for a regime in need of a conscience.

4 July 2025

“Mob means an opportunistic group that nurtures vengeful, directionless, revolutionary pretensions.” — Mahfuz Alam, Special Adviser to the Chief Adviser Let us begin with Mahfuz Alam’s own postscript — a sentence that reads like it’s been pulled from a thesaurus and passed off as philosophy. It is intended, one assumes, as a capstone to his moral framing of Bangladesh’s so-called “July revolution.” But this single line — vague, self-congratulatory, and strategically abstract — is far more revealing than its author might have intended. It does not define the mob; it betrays the mob of meaning. In Alam’s universe, a mob is not defined by who they are or what they do — but by who they threaten. And so begins the rhetorical sleight-of-hand: a redefinition of history, morality, and memory, with the aim of shielding the Interim Government’s foundational moment from scrutiny. But in trying to separate July’s student uprising from mobocracy, Mahfuz performs a quiet substitution: he lifts the

moral crimes of the present and lays them upon the past. The Mob Is Always the Other Who does Mahfuz include in his invented taxonomy of mobs? It’s instructive: • The 1971 violence against Biharis. • The early repression of anti-Mujib student voices. • Fifty-three years of attacks on religious minorities — but with no attribution. • The People’s Courts. • The ‘96 People’s Stage. • October 28 • Shahbagh. This is not analysis. It is a political Rorschach test — what shows up as “mob” in Mahfuz’s inkblot are the struggles that confront the forces he is now aligned with. Especially chilling is his treatment of Shahbagh — the spontaneous secular uprising that demanded justice for war criminals. In Mahfuz’s telling, it becomes “mob justice,” no different from communal riots. A movement rooted in the memory of the 1971 genocide is flattened into a faceless frenzy, and those who chanted for accountability are smeared as enemies of law and…

Analysis, Bangladesh, China, Current Affairs, India, Myanmar, Proxy War, USA, War

The Corridor of Complicity: Bangladesh at the Edge of a Proxy War

Iconus Clustus 9 May 2025

In the shadow of Myanmar’s civil conflict and the ongoing humanitarian tragedy of the Rohingya, a new geopolitical proposition emerges: the creation of a humanitarian corridor through Bangladesh. While clothed in the language of compassion, this proposition is anything but innocent. This piece examines the philosophical and ethical stakes of such a corridor, the actors involved—state and non-state, regional and global—and the legitimacy crisis of Bangladesh's interim regime. It warns that the corridor risks becoming a conduit for proxy warfare, drawing Bangladesh into a dangerous entanglement, compromising its moral identity and national sovereignty.

9 May 2025

1. Setting the Stage: The Specter of the Corridor The emergence of a proposed "humanitarian corridor" connecting the Arakan region of Myanmar to the outside world through Bangladesh is not an isolated gesture of international goodwill. Instead, it harks back to historical precedents where similar rhetoric masked hard geopolitical motives. Corridors have often functioned as the thin edge of interventionist wedges, paving the way for foreign involvement, regime change, or the legitimization of proxy actors. In this context, the corridor risks becoming a gateway for U.S.-led strategic penetration, not just into Myanmar, but into the heart of South Asian balance. The alignment of the corridor with insurgent activity and covert arms movement under the guise of humanitarianism bears striking resemblance to past interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. 2. An Illegitimate Regime, An Unrepresentative Gamble At the heart of this unfolding dilemma lies Bangladesh – a nation whose current government holds no electoral mandate. The Yunus-led interim regime, installed following

the ousting of the elected government, lacks constitutional legitimacy. It neither represents the will of the people nor adheres to the foundational principles upon which Bangladesh was founded. Any decision it takes, especially those with massive geopolitical and ethical consequences, must be questioned not only for their outcomes but for the very authority under which they are made. The regime’s submission to U.S. designs casts a long shadow on national sovereignty, one that cannot be overlooked or excused. 3. The Chorus of Actors: State and Non-State Entanglements The scenario brings together a complex cast of actors: the United States with its strategic doctrines; China, wary and watchful; Myanmar, whose sovereignty is directly endangered; the Arakan Army (AA), a non-state military actor now courted by Western support; India, in whose backyard the entire drama is being played out; and Bangladesh, which finds itself caught in a web of foreign interests and domestic instability. Crucially, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), another…

Analysis, Bangladesh, Current Affairs, India, Opinion, Pakistan, Politics, Secularism, War

A Region Unravels: From the Indus to the Bay of Bengal, the Secular Order Faces Its Greatest Test

Iconus Clustus 25 April 2025

The Indus Treaty has collapsed. The Shimla Agreement lies suspended. From Pakistan’s proxy warfare to Bangladesh’s creeping Islamism and great power maneuvering, South Asia is entering not just a geopolitical spiral—but a civilizational eclipse. What we’re witnessing is the slow disintegration of the pluralist soul that once defined this region.

25 April 2025

I. Introduction: The Breaking of a Compact When India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty following the terror attack in Pahalgam—carried out by The Resistance Front (TRF), a group with clear operational and ideological ties to Pakistan's deep state—it did more than nullify a water-sharing agreement. It shattered one of the few remaining symbols of post-Partition cooperation between the two nuclear-armed rivals. For decades, the treaty withstood wars, diplomatic breakdowns, and public rage. That it should now collapse in response to yet another incident of state-proxied terror speaks volumes—not only about India’s strategic posture but about the region’s crumbling secular compact. Now, that compact has fractured even further. In a retaliatory gesture of its own, Pakistan has suspended the Shimla Agreement (1972)—a foundational accord that once governed diplomatic protocols, bilateralism, and conflict resolution between India and Pakistan. If the Indus Waters Treaty was the hydrological pillar of cooperation, the Shimla Agreement was its diplomatic spine. Together, these two treaties formed the

last architecture of mutual restraint between nuclear neighbors. Their dual collapse signals a freefall into a pre-1970s strategic environment—one where war, not negotiation, is again the default setting. However, to treat the Treaty’s dissolution as a bilateral escalation alone would be myopic. It is better understood as the tremor before a regional quake. From the Indus in the West to the Bay of Bengal in the East, a new geopolitical alignment is taking shape—an alignment that threatens to undo the fragile, secular, and postcolonial order that had once offered a vision of stability. Across South Asia, terror proxies are resurgent, Islamist politics is infiltrating interim governments, and foreign powers are circling zones of instability under the guise of humanitarian concern. India, at the heart of it all, finds itself in a two-front dilemma. In the West, Pakistan continues to serve as an incubator for transnational jihadist ambitions. In the East, Bangladesh’s descent into political instability and Islamist resurgence—combined with creeping…