Parked in the Bay - The Soils of War / Global Eyes / In Motion Magazine

Box 4: Parked in the Bay

The Soils of War

by GRAIN
Barcelona, Spain

Box 4: Parked in the Bay

The US administration deployed two US Naval ships with 3,500 marines on board to the waters of the Bay of Bengal for humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations in Bangladesh after that country was hit by Tropical Cyclone Sidr in 2007. In the words of the US Charge d’Affaires in Bangladesh, US is “(h)ere for the long term … to assist with recovery and rehabilitation”. (1) These Department of Defense operations come under a joint plan of the US Department of State and USAID. One of the ships, USS Kearsarge, has also been used between 2003 and 2005 in “Operation Iraq Freedom” and the “Global War on Terror”. Many local voices were raised in protest in Bangladesh.

1. US embassy, Dhaka, press release, 7 December 2007,
http://tinyurl.com/c2kmpb
see also Indo-Asian News Service, “Islamists protest US naval