Oil, War, and the Hypocrisy of Power–But Who Speaks for the Hungry Children of Bangladesh?

By Sunahwar Ali

When I read the Reuters analysis that Iran could go for up to two months without oil exports before being forced to cut its own production, I didn’t just see a technical statistic.
I saw the faces of drivers in Dhaka, Sylhet, and Chittagong sitting for an entire day at a petrol station, hoping for a few litres of octane.
I saw their children going to sleep without food because their father earned nothing that day.
I saw ordinary families paying triple the price for a kilo of rice, a litre of milk, a candle to light their home.

And I asked myself:
Who is talking about them?
Let me speak plainly.
As a former Chief Whip of Tower Hamlets Council, as an anti‑racist, anti‑corruption, and equality campaigner who has walked the streets of London’s East End and the villages of Sylhet, I have seen how global power works.
When America and Israel tighten the screws on Iran–through sanctions, threats, or pushing for an oil embargo–the world’s media talks about geopolitics.
They talk about nuclear deals, about red lines, about “maximum pressure”.
But no one in Washington or Tel Aviv talks about the Bangladeshi bus driver, Taxi and motorway driver who cannot afford to feed his children.

The crisis on our streets–right now
In Dhaka, in Sylhet, in Chittagong, and across every district of Bangladesh, people are already queuing all day for petrol or octane.
Some get lucky. Most do not. Motorbikes sit idle.
Cars are abandoned half‑way to work. Buses do not run, so daily labourers cannot reach their jobs. And when the buses do run, the fare has doubled– because the owner has to buy fuel on the black market.
I have spoken to drivers whose children cry from hunger.
I have heard from mothers who skip meals so their toddlers can eat a single roti. Shopkeepers tell me that the price of everything– cooking oil, vegetables, transport, even medicine–has gone up because of the fuel crisis. This is not an accident.
This is the direct result of a global oil war engineered by American and Israeli interests, with the complicity of Western powers who claim to care about human rights.

No one is complaining?
I am complaining.
Some people say,
“Why don’t Bangladeshis protest?”
Let me tell you something. Ordinary people are too exhausted from survival to protest.
They are too busy standing in line for six hours just to be told the pump is dry. And the rich and powerful in Bangladesh–the ones who own the private petrol hoards, who have dollar accounts abroad –they are silent because they profit from scarcity. Meanwhile, the Western media ignores our suffering because we are not “geopolitically important”.
We are just collateral damage.
But I am not silent.
I have never been silent.
Not when I fought racism in Tower Hamlets housing.
Not when I exposed corruption in local government. And not now.

Who is responsible?
Let me name them.
The crisis in Bangladesh’s fuel market is not because of OPEC.
It is not because of natural shortages.
It is because the United States and Israel have systematically worked to destabilise oil‑producing nations like Iran, while simultaneously controlling global shipping routes and financial systems.
Every time Washington slaps new sanctions on Tehran, every time Israel threatens military action, the price of oil futures jumps. And who pays? A rickshaw puller in Chittagong.
A mother in Dhaka’s Kamrangirchar.
A tea garden worker in Sylhet.
This is state terrorism by economic means. And it is racist, because it assumes that brown and Black lives in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Gaza are cheap enough to be sacrificed for American and Israeli strategic goals.

A call to action– from Dhaka to London
So here is what I demand, as an anti‑racist, anti‑corruption, and equality campaigner with roots in both Bengal and Britain:
1.Immediate investigation into how US and Israeli policies are directly causing fuel poverty and child hunger in Bangladesh.
2. Compensation for Global South nations that suffer economic damage from Western‑led oil wars.
3. End to all unilateral sanctions that block fuel supplies to civilian populations.
4. Bangladesh government must break its silence–stop playing diplomatic games and start defending our people’s right to affordable energy.
5. Diaspora action:
Every Bengali in London, New York, or Rome must raise their voice.
Write to your MPs.
Protest outside US and Israeli embassies.
Our families back home are starving while you stay quiet.
And to those who say
“this is just politics”–go and look into the eyes of a child in Sylhet who hasn’t eaten because his father couldn’t buy petrol to drive his taxi. Then tell me politics doesn’t matter.
I have fought injustice my whole life.
I will not stop now.

Sunahwar Ali is a former Chief Whip of Tower Hamlets Council, an anti‑racist, anti‑corruption, and equality campaigner, and a community organiser between London, Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong.