A New Chapter for Bangladesh? | Ikhtisad Ahmed

The Awami League has dominated Bangladeshi politics since independence. It led the Liberation Conflict in opposition to Pakistan in 1971 and, following a interval of army rule that lasted till 1990, alternated governing duties with the Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP) for near twenty years. After profitable the 2008 common election by a landslide, nevertheless, the Awami League dragged the nation towards one-party rule, retaining workplace in three more and more rigged votes. Neither occasion has ruled democratically. But obtained knowledge held that, in such a partisan atmosphere, there have been no different choices. The favored rebellion of the summer season of 2024 proved obtained knowledge improper.

“The Monsoon Revolution,” because it has come to be identified, was sparked by employment quotas. Public sector jobs make up simply over 3 % of whole employment in Bangladesh. However they’re extremely sought-after: oases of steady pay and advantages in a desert of precarity. Traditionally, 15 % of state jobs have been reserved for ladies, hijras (a transgender neighborhood), and Adivasis (non-Bengali, non-Muslim indigenous teams). That is certainly a case of strong affirmative motion. However throughout its first post-junta tenure (1996–2001) the Awami League put aside an extra 30 % of state jobs—together with as much as 80 % of entry-level positions—for the prolonged households of “freedom fighters,” or veterans of the Liberation Conflict. It launched these reservations as a brief measure, then expanded and codified the system after 2008, successfully utilizing it to buy loyalty. A small cottage trade even emerged to forge or in any other case illegally procure “freedom fighter” certificates. 

In 2013, forward of a pivotal election, sporadic protests in opposition to the liberty fighters reservations coalesced right into a small motion. However the grassroots effort was overtaken by a maelstrom of political violence: cadres of the BNP and its coalition associate, Jamaat-e-Islami, the most important Islamist occasion, instigated clashes in opposition to state forces during which over 5 hundred folks had been killed. In 2018 demonstrations in opposition to the liberty fighter quota rekindled in Dhaka College and unfold to different campuses. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who’s famously temperamental, unleashed the police, Fast Motion Battalion (RAB, a paramilitary outfit which the US authorities not too long ago sanctioned), and Chhatra League and Jubo League (the occasion youth wings, which function as de reality militias), on the protestors. Then she abolished your entire quota system by fiat, which was manifestly unlawful. 

This was a well-recognized transfer. Within the face of public strain, Hasina usually pretended to yield, passing unconstitutional decrees that could possibly be reversed in court docket later. (For example, in 2011, to appease conservative supporters, she retained Islam as a state faith after the Supreme Court docket had deemed that motion unconstitutional; a problem to this transfer has been in judicial limbo since.) The ploy has the additional benefit of creating her appear to face with the frequent folks in opposition to a recalcitrant judiciary.    

Six descendants of freedom fighters—all affiliated with the Awami League—duly petitioned the Excessive Court docket, which this June reinstated the quotas. The ruling got here amid file ranges of youth unemployment and within the aftermath of high-level corruption scandals involving a former police chief, a former military chief, and several other Awami League leaders. College students took to the streets once more, with larger willpower. The liberty fighter reservations, in different phrases, grew to become a lightning rod for broader discontent. 

Hasina once more responded truculently, calling the scholars enemies of the state and ordering the Awami League youth wings to harass and assault them. Issues took a drastic flip for the more severe in mid-July, when she declared curfews and ordered the police, paramilitary forces, and ultimately the military to assault protesters. Over twenty-two days, in maybe the worst occasion of state violence since independence, greater than seven hundred folks had been killed and tens of 1000’s injured. (Each numbers are more likely to rise as data is available in.) 

By late July it appeared that the motion had been smashed. However the college students persevered within the face of incessant brutality and protracted telecommunications shutdowns. The tide slowly turned in opposition to Hasina. As ever extra civilians joined the motion, the military retreated. On August 5 she fled to India; on August 8 an interim authorities assumed energy.

How did the unthinkable occur? Over the previous fifteen years Hasina had captured the state equipment, outlawed opposition events, co-opted the intelligentsia, and neutered civil society. There appeared to be no area left for dissent. But this summer season it grew to become clear that she had did not pacify the youth. Understanding Hasina’s fall requires revisiting the historical past of Bangladeshi nationalism. Having monopolized the legacy of the liberty motion, she had all however claimed a divine proper to rule. However when the protestors challenged that narrative, her grip on energy unraveled. 

The Bangladeshi struggle of independence started in March 1971, after the Awami League secured a easy majority in Pakistan’s common elections, profitable 167 of 300 seats (and 160 of 162 in East Pakistan). When Islamabad rejected the outcomes, a civil disobedience motion broke out; the following clashes between the military and protesters snowballed right into a full-scale guerilla struggle. The army killed as many as three million Bangladeshis in a genocidal marketing campaign of counterinsurgency earlier than the brand new nation secured independence in December 1971. The Awami League’s chief, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, affectionately referred to as Bangabandhu (good friend of Bengal), had been imprisoned in West Pakistan in the course of the battle however now returned to turn into prime minister. He marginalized different members of the occasion management—like Tajuddin Ahmad and Syed Nazrul Islam, who had overseen the struggle effort—and dominated till 1975, when army officers assassinated him and most of his household as a part of a coup. Solely his daughter Sheikh Hasina and her youthful sister, Sheikh Rehana, survived.

Army rule of 1 type or one other adopted till 1990, when the Anti-Authoritarian Motion, led by Hasina and Khaleda Zia, head of the BNP, restored parliamentary democracy. They fought in opposition to one another in roughly aggressive elections till 2006, when violent clashes between supporters of the 2 events prompted President Iajuddin Ahmed to declare a state of emergency, after which the military stepped in. Elections resumed in 2008, and Hasina took workplace decided to seize state and civilian establishments. She exploited the quota system, filling the paperwork, judiciary, and regulation enforcement businesses with apparatchiks. On the similar time, she launched a smear marketing campaign in opposition to the BNP and Jamaat, branding them as traitors. (Jamaat management had collaborated with the Pakistani army in 1971.) Beneath the duvet of preventing terrorism and anti-state actions, the Awami League disappeared, extrajudicially murdered, and indefinitely detained opposition cadres, activists, employees, and college students. The BNP and Jamaat had been organizationally hollowed out; they had been conspicuously absent throughout this 12 months’s protests. 

Hasina additionally arrange a bespoke propaganda establishment, the Centre for Analysis and Data (CRI), which her nephew, Radwan M. Siddiq, helmed. Her son, Sajeeb Wazed, oversaw its Younger Bangla youth initiative. CRI crafted a PR technique to rewrite the story of Bangladesh’s independence round a deified Mujibur. It co-opted a once-rebellious underground music scene by inviting artists to carry out at annual Pleasure Bangla concert events commemorating a well-known Bangabandhu speech; commissioned cartoonists to adapt his autobiography; invited filmmakers to shoot a biopic about him and a documentary on Hasina; showered writers and teachers who praised the regime with prizes, analysis grants, and educating positions. This cohort of artists and intellectuals had been despatched out to thrive within the media, a lot of which is managed by conglomerates with shut ties to the Awami League.

A revolving door opened between the CRI and the nation’s two main NGOs, the Constructing Sources Throughout Communities (BRAC) and the JAAGO Basis. BRAC’s government director, Asif Saleh, and JAAGO’s founder, Korvi Rakshand Dhrubo, appeared by Hasina’s aspect at each alternative and labored intently together with her administration on its Sustainable Growth Targets. Even native branches of overseas organizations had been defanged. Beneath the management of Kazi Anis Ahmed—the writer of the Dhaka Tribune and Bangla Tribune and the brother of a former Awami League parliamentarian—PEN Bangladesh was largely totally silent about Hasina’s despotism. (The group didn’t reply to requests to remark.)

Hasina’s rule was predicated on an in depth if profoundly unequal relationship with India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unconditionally supported her at worldwide boards and in return burdened her administration with extortionate commerce and infrastructure insurance policies. (He secured his good friend, the billionaire Gautam Adani, a deal to promote electrical energy at inflated charges to the Bangladeshi state.) Following Modi’s reelection this Might, Hasina visited Delhi twice for bilateral summits. The Bharatiya Janata Social gathering’s demonization of Bangladeshis as terrorists and infiltrators was not on the agenda. Nor was an equitable water-sharing settlement. As a substitute Hasina invited Modi to determine a rail community by her nation’s sovereign territory, connecting mainland India with its politically restive northeastern states, which lie on the opposite aspect of Bangladesh. (Opposition events denounced her transfer.) She then visited Beijing, reportedly to safe a $5 billion mortgage, however returned residence early and with solely $140 million.

By then the quota protests had been gathering steam at public universities. On July 14, at a press convention about her China journey, making an attempt to distract from her overseas coverage failures, Hasina turned her ire on the scholars, labelling them “progenies of Razakars”—a derogatory time period for individuals who collaborated with the Pakistani army in 1971. Usually such pious slander would assist delegitimize protests within the eyes of civilians. However this time it didn’t work. The scholars took the time period and ran with it, chanting within the streets of Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong, Sylhet, and Khulna: “Who am I? Who are you? Razakar. Razakar. Says who? Says who? The dictator. The dictator.” That evening they expelled the Awami League youth wings from public college campuses. 

The Awami League propaganda machine rumbled into motion. The occasion’s common secretary, Obaidul Quader, solemnly proclaimed that its youth wings would strike in opposition to anybody insulting the Liberation Conflict and conducting anti-state actions. Between July 16 and July 18, the Chhatra League and Jubo League militias, police, and RAB put the protesters beneath siege. The Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) quickly joined them, with shoot-at-sight orders from Quader. 

All this was broadcast stay on social media. Movies of homicide went viral. Twenty-three-year-old Abu Sayed, his arms raised in give up, was gunned down at point-blank vary with birdshot; the police First Data Report solely reported {that a} “student was seen falling to the ground.” Twenty-five-year-old Mir Mugdho, who was distributing meals and water to the protesters, was shot within the head. The physique rely mounted throughout these seventy-two hours, prompting regulation enforcement to strain households and hospitals to misreport. (The Bengali day by day Prothom Alo highlighted one significantly egregious case: when battling protestors on the streets of Dhaka, the police fired a bullet right into a residence, killing Safqat Samir, a fifth-grade pupil. Officers later pressured his father to not press costs.)  

On July 18 a somber Hasina addressed the nation, recounting the lack of her father, as if this private tragedy—and the cult of Mujibur—overshadowed what her forces had been doing to the scholars. No sooner had her temporary handle ended than a nationwide Web shutdown minimize Bangladesh off from the world. A curfew was imposed, and the army rolled out in armored automobiles marked with the UN insignia. Home tv channels within the Awami League’s pocket reassured viewers that every thing was all proper, however nobody was about to neglect the pictures that had been circulating on-line. In addition to, helicopters had been flying overhead and there was fixed gunfire. The worldwide neighborhood was largely silent, with some exceptions: PEN Worldwide referred to as for journalists to be protected and the Web to be restored, and the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, took umbrage that UN peacekeeping automobiles had been used to assault civilians, raised issues over human rights violations, and referred to as for a sturdy investigation. 

In a public assertion, the scholars stated that they organized horizontally as a result of the Awami League had co-opted and focused dissenting leaders up to now. However, as state violence intensified, spokespeople like Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud emerged. In an interview on July 19 with Netra Information—an impartial Bangladeshi outlet primarily based in Sweden, the place I work because the managing editor—Islam recounted the indiscriminate slaughter, opposed the curfew, demanded that safety forces and Awami League cadres withdraw, and affirmed that the anti-discrimination motion would proceed. Most significantly, he refused to barter with the federal government at gunpoint. Doing so, he stated, would insult the reminiscence of those that had fallen. 

Personal college college students joined their public college counterparts at this important juncture, bringing the city center class firmly into the fold. Certainly, civilian assist stored widening. Rickshaw-pullers saluted the protestors and turned their automobiles into advert hoc ambulances. Graffiti artists painted the cities with expletive-ridden witticisms and anti-government sketches. The rappers Shezan (“Kotha Ko,” “Speak up”) and Hannan (“Awaj utha,” “Raise the noise”) wrote soundtracks for the motion. Expatriate Bangladeshis demonstrated in solidarity throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Migrant employees protested in Qatar and, risking arrest, within the UAE.

In the meantime the Awami League’s terror equipment chugged on. Its cadres piled into hospitals with spears, machetes, and weapons to assault college students receiving remedy. (The Each day Star printed video footage of 1 raid.) Police raided university-adjacent neighborhoods, abducting and detaining college students. Upwards of 450,000 anonymous arrest warrants had been issued, to be crammed later for retroactive punishment. 

On July 24, with telecommunications virtually totally restored, Hasina appeared in official press images crying right into a tissue in entrance of damaged laptop screens at a authorities workplace. Wazed—her son, data and communication expertise adviser, and the top of Younger Bangla—and Mohammad A. Arafat, minister for state and data broadcasting, clarified that the shutdown had been in response to a “terrorist attack” at a authorities information middle, insinuating that the protesters had set it on hearth. (There is no such thing as a proof in any respect that such a factor occurred.) Arafat additionally speculated that the scholars had been protesting beneath the affect of unlawful narcotics. Awami League apologists flooded the airwaves and social media proclaiming their timeless belief in Hasina and mourning the broken state property. Nahid Islam was kidnapped, tortured, launched, then kidnapped once more and compelled to pose for images having afternoon tea with police chiefs. Beneath duress, he launched an announcement calling for the protests to finish.

It appeared the motion was on its final legs. Then, on July 27, a fresh-faced new trio of scholars—Abdul Hannan Masud, Mahin Sarker, and Rifat Rashid—held a rigorously guarded on-line press convention from an undisclosed location. They in contrast the Awami League’s response to Operation Searchlight, the Pakistani army’s bloodbath of civilians in 1971—thereby turning the Razakar label on its head—and promised to proceed the motion till its calls for had been met: the resignation of Quader and the house and regulation ministers; the removing and investigation of safety officers on lively responsibility in the course of the protests; indemnity from prosecution for protestors; the resumption of courses; the everlasting expulsion of the Awami League youth wings from campuses; and an apology from the prime minister. Hasina held two conferences with enterprise leaders and heads of safety forces however refused the scholars’ calls for. 

On August 3 Waker-uz-Zaman, the military chief and husband of Hasina’s cousin, commanded the troops to implement order however chorus from firing on protesters. He had good purpose to be nervous. By then the variety of civilian casualties had grown too excessive to hide or brush off. There was a menace of overseas sanctions, to not point out that the military could possibly be barred from collaborating in profitable UN peacekeeping missions overseas. In addition to, his troopers had been tiring after three weeks of all-out struggle in opposition to the citizenry. 

The motion then narrowed to a single, new demand: that Hasina resign. On August 3 folks scaled the Shaheed Minar—erected on the positioning in Dhaka the place the Pakistani army gunned down activists of the Language Motion in 1952—holding aloft the pink and inexperienced flag. Beneath them, manufacturing facility employees, faculty college students, white-collar workers, and even celebrities milled about, singing patriotic songs, dancing, portray, and above all chanting in opposition to Hasina. 

Web and telecommunications had been shut down once more on August 4. State forces killed over 100 residents that day, the bloodiest for the reason that rebellion started. However this proved to be the final gasp of a misplaced trigger. On August 5 the protestors ready to march on Hasina’s residence. As the group constructed at Shaheed Minar, information broke that the prime minister had resigned and fled to India beneath the duvet of a army coaching train. Zaman waited for the plane carrying her and her sister to enter Indian airspace earlier than making a nationwide handle. This was a cue for a extra brazen revolt in opposition to the Awami League. Statues of Mujibur—erected throughout the nation at the price of tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}—had been defecated on, toppled, and smashed to items. His residence was set ablaze. 

Now in politically uncharted waters, the president and army leaders met pupil coordinators to debate appointing an interim chief. They agreed on Muhammad Yunus, an eighty-four-year-old Nobel laureate who based the microfinance establishment Grameen Financial institution. Yunus is admired by the likes of the Clintons and The Gates Basis however seen extra skeptically by progressive economists, who imagine his financial institution traps the poor in a cycle of debt with high-interest loans.

Much less usually famous is that Yunus has an ambiguous relationship with the Bangladeshi army. In the course of the 2006–2008 political disaster, when the army briefly took energy, it honed the practices of enforced disappearances, indefinite detentions, and extrajudicial killings—practices that the Awami League later deployed. But in 2007, as he thought of launching his personal political occasion, Yunus assured The Washington Publish that the military was “cleaning up” the nation by detaining corrupt officers. 

Yunus was sworn in as the top of an interim authorities on August 8. Saleh and Rakshand are a part of his advisory group. His motley crew of ministers embody the scholar leaders Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, retired military officers, and several other Islamist ideologues, however just one indigenous consultant, Supradip Chakma, whom activists from the neighborhood view as an Awami League stooge. Rani Yan Yan, chief advisor to the Chakma Circle—one among three hereditary chiefdoms within the Chittagong Hill Tracts—publicly opposed his appointment. 

The early days of the Yunus regime haven’t been promising. JAAGO’s volunteers painted over revolutionary graffiti with anodyne messages pinched from self-help books. The members of civil society Yunus appointed as ministers have repeated acquainted homilies about accountability and justice however not acted to dismantle the Awami League patronage system. Quite than return to the barracks, the military flexed its muscle groups on September 17 by assuming magistracy powers—the authority to supervise civilian regulation enforcement—for the following sixty days. Apart from the token arrest of Ziaul Ahsan, a very infamous military officer, the safety forces haven’t been investigated for his or her actions in the course of the protests. Evading duty for its function in propping up the Awami League, the mainstream media runs day by day paeans to the interim authorities and stays silent in regards to the army.¹

In the meantime Islamists, occasion cadre, and a few college students have loved an orgy of violence in opposition to minorities—destroying Sufi shrines, vandalizing Hindu temples, and harassing ladies and the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. Over a dozen folks have been killed, together with a minimum of 4 in army custody. In mid-September, in two separate pogroms in Khagrachhari and Rangamati within the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bengalis murdered 4 Adivasis, injured near hundred, and set hearth to some fifty outlets. Conscientious residents have mobilized in opposition to the hate, however the state has not lifted a finger, apart from retaining the Awami League’s draconian legal guidelines in opposition to freedom of expression. 

The scholars resumed their research on September 22. That they had come collectively throughout traces of sophistication and beliefs, not in search of energy however merely appearing on their conscience. But they ousted a dictator. Opposition events, cautious of the scholars’ huge assist, are actually attempting to discredit the motion by holding it solely accountable for the violence that has flared up in its aftermath. That is to be anticipated. Among the pupil organizers have proven curiosity in going into politics; the previous guard certainly fears that the motion would possibly develop a unified ideology and coalesce into an electoral power. In the event that they comply with that path, the scholars will discover formidable challenges mendacity forward. Although momentarily discredited within the eyes of the folks, the dominant events won’t disappear so simply—and nor will the army.