Diversify partnerships: Maintain balanced relations with major powers and avoid dependence on any single country.

Uphold consistent standards: Ensure transparency, accountability and respect for national laws in all foreign partnerships.

Strengthen domestic institutions: Enforce guest registration and lease-reporting requirements and adequately resource cybercrime units.

Enhance international cooperation: Promote intelligence sharing and joint investigations to combat transnational crime.

Protect national interests: Make foreign policy decisions based on Bangladesh’s priorities, strategic autonomy and long-term development goals.

Bangladesh should not hand its foreign policy to any single patron, whether Beijing, Delhi, Washington or anyone else; the Cox’s Bazar scam raid is a fresh reminder of why. Every few years, Dhaka is told to pick a side. A big investment pledge arrives, a high-level visit is staged, and the commentary swings between “saviour” and “betrayal”. Both words say more about our anxiety than about how diplomacy actually works. A country of 170 million people with thin reserves and a fragile post-uprising order cannot afford to bet its future on one relationship, and it cannot afford to pretend that any partner is either a pure benefactor or a pure threat.

In early September, police in Cox’s Bazar raided resorts and hotels used by a suspected cyber-fraud ring. According to The Daily Star’s Slow Reads analysis, six people (five Chinese nationals and one Taiwanese) were sent to jail on 4 September. Officers seized 1,938 older-model iPhones, about 50 monitors,........

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