Deceit in Two Guises: American Imperial Hubris and the Jamaati-Shibir Machinery of Blood

History has a cruel habit of repeating itself when nations fail to recognise deceit in time.

In Bangladesh today, deception wears two familiar masks. One speaks the language of “democracy promotion” and “stability” from distant capitals; the other chants piety while sharpening knives at home. Deceit, indeed, has two names in our present tragedy: American imperial arrogance abroad, and Jamaati-Shibir mass-liquidation at home.

The Jamaati-Shibir axis has never been a benign political force. Its genealogy is written in blood—beginning with collaboration during the genocidal war of 1971 and continuing through decades of ideological sabotage against the secular, plural foundations of the Bangladeshi state. These are not merely political opponents; they are historical negationists who have repeatedly sought to erase the moral meaning of the Liberation War itself. Their violence has never been incidental. It has been doctrinal, systematic, and sanctified through a perverse theology that equates brutality with virtue.

Today, under the permissive shadows of an illegitimate interim order, these forces once again prowl the civic landscape. They reappear under new aliases, cloaked in civil society rhetoric, digital anonymity, and carefully curated respectability. Yet the stench of their past crimes lingers unmistakably. From campuses to streets, from minority neighbourhoods to dissenting voices, their method remains the same: intimidation, erasure, and terror masquerading as moral discipline.

What renders this resurgence especially dangerous is not merely its domestic character, but the external indulgence that enables it. American imperial interventionism—ever adept at speaking the language of freedom while undermining its substance—has once again misread Bangladesh through the narrow prism of strategic convenience. In the name of “transition” and “reform,” Washington has lent moral oxygen to forces whose historical record stands in open contempt of democracy, human rights, and pluralism.

This is not new. From Latin America to West Asia, from coups disguised as corrections to chaos sold as opportunity, American imperial policy has long mastered the art of destabilisation without accountability. Bangladesh is merely the latest theatre where ideology is sacrificed at the altar of influence. In this cynical calculus, Jamaati-Shibir extremism becomes a tolerable nuisance—a useful instrument—so long as it serves the immediate geopolitical script.

But history is not so easily fooled. Jamaati-Shibir is not a neutral actor waiting to be civilised by power. It is an ideological formation rooted in annihilation—of dissent, of minorities, of secular memory. To legitimise it, directly or indirectly, is to legitimise the very logic that once turned rivers red in 1971. No amount of diplomatic euphemism can launder that truth.

The moral collapse of such external endorsement is compounded by the silence—or worse, complicity—of those who pretend that neutrality is possible in moments of existential crisis. There is no moral middle ground between the ideals of liberation and the machinery of liquidation. To equivocate is to choose, and to choose silence is to side with the oppressor.

Voices like ours echoed across independent platforms and public discourse, capture this growing moral impatience. They articulate what millions feel but are often denied the space to express: that a state held hostage by extremists and their foreign enablers cannot endure indefinitely. Governments born of deceit rarely depart with dignity; they exit under the weight of their own contradictions.

Bangladesh was not born to be a laboratory for imperial experimentation or a sanctuary for ideological butchers. It was forged through sacrifice, anchored in secular humanism, and baptised in the blood of those who believed that dignity, not dogma, should define the nation. That inheritance cannot be bartered away for diplomatic convenience or surrendered to the heirs of collaboration.

Let it be said, clearly and without apology: Jamaati-Shibir violence is not a political option; it is a historical crime. And American imperial meddling, however polished its language, is not benevolence; it is deceit refined into policy. To confront one without naming the other is to misunderstand the anatomy of Bangladesh’s present peril.

History will render its verdict, as it always does. The only question is whether we will stand on the side of liberation’s truth—or once again allow deceit, in all its guises, to masquerade as destiny.

Written by Anwar A. Khan 

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