Preferred Name
Mamun
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6991-0437
Date of Graduation
5-15-2026
Semester of Graduation
Spring
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Department of History
First Advisor
Jonathan S. Jones
Second Advisor
Neel Amin
Third Advisor
Michael Gubser
Abstract
Abstract
On April 29, 1991, Bangladeshi people witnessed a destructive attack of a cyclone in the coastal region of the country. The cyclone, with a wind speed of 225 km/h, killed almost 139 thousand people and left millions of people unprotected in the cyclone-battered areas. After the cyclone, there was a humanitarian crisis of hunger, disease, homelessness, and potable water, as the two-month-old civilian government of Bangladesh was struggling to mitigate the suffering of survivors. After the fifteen days of survivors’ struggle with crisis, at the request of the government, on 12 May, the United States sent a military task force with more than seven thousand Marines and Army personnel to the cyclone-battered areas of Bangladesh to help manage the humanitarian crisis. The task force used advanced technical and logistical equipment that made the US a leader among nations in this global humanitarian effort. After a successful month-long operation, the US task force left Bangladesh by the second week of June 1991. Though US disaster assistance was humanitarian, there were some diplomatic, geopolitical, and moral “motivations and strategies” that triggered the US to come forward for the cyclone relief operation in Bangladesh. The thesis is organized thematically and described chronologically. In the thesis research, I have utilized primary and secondary sources. For primary sources, I have relied on newspapers and official documents. Moreover, I have coined data from the sources in two languages, English and Bengali. This thesis argues that the humanitarian crisis of the cyclone brought the US task force to consolidate the strategic relations with Bangladesh by assisting a new democratic government in the management of the catastrophic cyclone.
Included in
Asian History Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, Military History Commons, Political History Commons, United States History Commons
