Beyond The Revolution: Building A New Bangladesh – Analysis

Protestors with the Bangladesh flag. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

 November 5, 2024 

By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

By Rimon Tanvir Hossain

(FPRI) — Once touted as the “Iron Lady” of Asia, Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was both the longest-serving Bangladeshi head of state and the world’s longest-serving female. However, on August 5, 2024, her reign came to an unceremonious end as a student-led revolution, which started after the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh reinstated a quota system for government jobs on June 5, 2024, forced her to flee to India and resign from office.

Today, “July 36” refers to the date of Hasina’s resignation and subsequent collapse of her Awami League government, which has also been heralded in pop culture as Bangladesh’s “Second Independence.” According to a report by the Human Rights Support Society, more than 30,000 people were injured and more than 875 were killed in the collective unrest, 77 percent of whom died from gunshot wounds.

While Nobel laureate and social entrepreneur, Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s appointment to lead the fifty-three-year-old nation—born after a revolution celebrated and strongly supported by Western capitals to provide Bangladesh a fresh start—was positively received at home and abroad, his task of assuring that the country’s institutions regain public trust, once captured by Hasina’s fifteen-year electoral autocracy, is daunting. The growing challenges ranging from Islamist parties, communal tensions, surging inflation, and inability to hold perpetrators of the revolution’s victims accountable seem distant from reaching the solutions the Yunus-led interim government promised: establishing reforms in the election commission, civil administration, and implementing judiciary and security forces in time for the upcoming elections.

The Roots of Unrest: The Quota Reform Movement

The student-led protests, initially known as the Quota Reform Movement, sought to change the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) quota which was done away with in 2018 but brought back with the June 5, 2024, High Court decision. The BCS Quotas have a deeper connection to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, due to the fact that 30 percent of the 56 percent of reserved civil service positions were reserved for descendants of Bangladeshi Freedom Fighters (“Muktijuddhos”). The Muktijuddhos fought against the Pakistan Army and helped win independence in the nine-month war with Indian and Soviet support. Over the years, the fact that the biggest quota—relative to the 10 percent of positions reserved for women, 10 percent reserved for people from underdeveloped districts, 5 percent for indigenous people, and 1 percent for people with disabilities—went to families strongly associated with the Awami League for their role in winning the 1970 Pakistan General Elections (which led to full-scale war) became increasingly perceived as a base forconsolidating the Awami League through entrenchment in the state bureaucracy.

The BCS positions offered stable, lifelong employment with government-provided cars, housing, and other benefits, which the students leading the protests argued was designed to favor Awami League supporters. Rising youth unemployment, which has gone from 8 percent when Hasina came to power in 2008 to 16 percent, coupled with bias in the state bureaucracy to provide loans and other benefits to private-sector leaders associated with the Awami League, further added to the intensity of this Quota Reform Movement.

Behind the quota was the even larger electoral autocracy operated by Hasina and her Awami League party, who after winning her electoral mandate in 2008, continually crushed the opposition and repeated this every five years through ballot stuffing, strong-arming the media, and voter intimidation. The US State Department issued stern warnings ahead of both the 2018 election and prior to the most recent January 2024 election. Deputy Assistant Secretary of South and Central Asian Affairs Afreen Akhter offered Hasina an ultimatum to allow for a caretaker-run election in October 2023, which the Awami League abolished in 2011.

In the lead-up to the most recent January 2024 election, the Awami League also faced US and E.U. scrutiny and even sanctions with regard to their domestic security forces—namely, their elite paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). On December 10, 2021, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on RAB as well as its former and current leaders for human rights abuses. Sweden-based investigative and public interest journalism platform founded in 2019 by exiled Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil, Netra News, also reported how RAB ran a secret prison for dissidents and other opponents to the Hasina regime called “Aynaghor” (House of Mirrors). This was followed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s May 24, 2023, announcement of visa restrictions on former and current pro-Awami League and opposition officials for undermining democracy ahead of the January 2024 elections.

A statement issued by the US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller mentioned “these individuals include members of law enforcement, the ruling party, and the political opposition” and that “their immediate family may be found ineligible for entry into the United States.”

Ultimately, Hasina evaded all these carrots and sticks to allow a free and fair election on January 2024, while the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), boycotted the election. This timeline of sanctions and other disciplinary measures made by the United States was put into perspective within the Biden administration’s wider democracy promotion campaign, of which Bangladesh was a clear target for its strong people-to-people ties, business and trade interests, and diaspora-lobbying with respect to human rights. The Quota Reform Movement in the perspective of this wider US democracy promotion agenda proves that the Hasina regime was unwise not to heed warnings and shot itself in the foot by relentlessly capturing institutions and leveraging their resources to crush any sign of opposition.

A Slow Start to a Quick Fix: Yunus’s Interim Government

Yunus received much fanfare after being sworn in as Chief Advisor to the Bangladesh interim government on August 8, 2024, only three days after Hasina’s resignation and flight for refuge in India. The eighty-four-year-old Nobel Laureate was invited to lead the new transitional government after the student advisory board picked him as their leader, but received the more requisite support of Bangladesh’s only surviving institution—the Bangladesh Army.

Immediately upon Yunus’s swearing-in, lawlessness, communal tensions, difficulty for the country’s rapidly growing economy, and accountability for revolution victims were all on the agenda. Hasina and the Awami League were notorious for summoning all arms of the state’s security apparatus on protestors and civilians alike. These forces included not only the RAB but also the Bangladesh Border Guard forces as well as the student wing of the Awami League, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL). The Chhatra League in particular has earned much notoriety, as their coordination with government security forces since their 2019 murder of Abrar Fahad—a dissenter whose Facebook post expressing concern over a water deal with India led to him being killed in a Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) dorm—was on full display during the Quota Reform Movement. While the country underwent internet shutdowns during the Quota Reform Movement and protestors were subject to “shoot-on-sight” orders by Hasina, the Chhatra League was provided arms, ammunition, and access to the internet to better coordinate their efforts in stopping the protests. Following Hasina’s ousting, the estimated 100,000 members of the Chhatra League have been abandoned as targets for retribution after the Yunus-led interim government declared BCL a “terrorist organization” under the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Act and banned it on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, for their serious misconduct during the July unrest.

Even though the Yunus-led interim government has overseen Dhaka University banning the activities of political party student wings on September 19, 2024, which also includes the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami student branches, Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dol and Bangladeshi Chhatra Shibir, clashes between these groups continue. Additionally, Washington has expressed much concern over the need to contain the Islamist elements operating within Bangladesh, which Hasina’s Awami League and successive Indian governments were keen on clamping down on. On August 28, 2024, still within the month of Hasina’s ousting, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the country’s main Islamist party which has never earned more than eighteen out of the Bangladeshi Parliament’s three hundred seats, had their 2008-imposed ban lifted on them. Additionally, the day before on August 27, 2024, the leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) leader, Jashimuddin Rahmaani, was freed by the Yunus-led interim government. Rahmaani was originally jailed on August 2, 2013, for his role in murdering an atheist blogger and since his release has requested Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of the neighboring West Bengal state of India, to “declare independence from India,” further suggesting to hoist “Islamist flags in their capital of Kolkata.” These recent developments have led to a perception in New Delhi and Western capitals that Yunus is allowing free reign to the most dangerous elements of Bangladesh’s Islamist cadres, who are actively preparing for the upcoming elections which have yet to be given a date.

Of immense concern to both India and its transnational diaspora has been the extent of communal violencethat has rocked Bangladesh after Hasina’s ousting. According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist ChristianUnity Council, there have been over 2,010 attacks on Hindus or their properties in fifty-two districts out of the country’s sixty-four districts, and five Hindus have been killed in these attacks, two of which were confirmed as Awami League members. Due to the Awami League’s close ties to India, performative commitment to secularism, and an iron-fist policy towards Islamists, the Hindu minority in Bangladesh votes in majority for the Awami League and is also perceived by Islamists as a key constituency that lobbies for pro-India policies. Many Bangladeshi, Indian, and Western analysts, journalists, and commentators alike have argued that the Yunus government has done a generally decent job in addressing the communal tensions, with visits to temples and urging students and the common citizen to protect minorities themselves. On August 6, 2024, Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Shri Thanedar wrote separate letters to Blinken, advocating on behalf of the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh. On the same day, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, US Senator Ben Cardin, released a statement urging Bangladesh to form a responsible caretaker government “that will promptly organize inclusive democratic elections. The people of Bangladesh deserve a government that honors their voices, respects their will, and upholds the dignity of their nation.”

On September 20, 2024, US Senators Cardin, Murphy, Van Hollen, and Merkley issued a letter to Yunus directly, urging reforms and accountability in Bangladesh. The letter stated: “While many celebrate this new chapter in Bangladesh, a concerning volume of those celebrations have turned violent, with documented reports of reprisals targeting police as well as minority Hindu communities and those perceived to be supporters of Hasina’s government. As a result, the country has witnessed gaps in law enforcement and a lack of protections for those facing violent attacks, including members of the Hindu community and Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar.” Four days later, Yunus met with US President Joe Biden at the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where Biden congratulated Yunus and affirmed a close partnership between the United States and Bangladesh rooted in democratic values and strong people-to-people ties. Yunus gifted Blinken, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Italian Prime Minister GiorgiaMeloni with a book of paintings known as the “Art of Triumph,” capturing scenes from the July 36 student-led revolution. The gesture of gifting these Western heads of state photo books was in line with trade and education diplomacy interests as roughly 10,000 Bangladeshi students study in Canadian universities, making Canada a “study destination of choice” among Bangladeshi students, and the European Union’s role as Bangladesh’s largest trading partner, accounting for 20.7% of Bangladesh’s trade.

At the General Assembly, Yunus also met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif on the sidelines, where they reaffirmed their commitment to expanding the two countries’ bilateral cooperation. The long-held demand by the Awami League government for the Pakistani government to apologize for its genocideduring the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and Pakistan’s unwillingness to do so has held back bilateral ties according to Foreign Policy columnist and South Asia Brief writer Michael Kugelman. However, while steps were made in regard to this longstanding issue in 2021 with an exchange of letters between former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Hasina, Yunus’s willingness to engage Pakistan without mention of the 1971 chapter suggests this grievance in bilateral relations may not be as much of a constraint in Bangladesh-Pakistan relations post-Hasina.

While some of the Awami League ministers were detained—some on their way out of the country—many fled during the month of the student-led revolution. Bangladeshi news sources like the Daily Star and Prothom Alo have documented how a total of thirty current and former Awami League ministers weredetained and are currently being subject to proceedings.

Meanwhile, Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, who served as an advisor on Information and Communications Technology affairs to Hasina, has hired a former Trump lobbyist and actively operates as the de facto leaderof the Awami League in an attempt to make a comeback for the upcoming election.

On the day of Diwali, Thursday, October 31, 2024, US presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted that he “strongly condemned the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh,” further stating that it would have “never happened on my watch,” before tying these developments to Ukraine and the Southern border. In the same tweet, he promised to “also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left” and “also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Narendra Modi.” This timely statement by Donald Trump signals both a nod to the Indian American vote as well as Hindu Nationalist and Awami League lobbies, attempting to undercut Kamala Harris’s appeal to Indian Americans by explicitly claiming that she “ignored Hindus,” while also signaling a preference for the Awami League. Viewed within the backdrop of US electoral politics, Bangladesh is a partisan issue, and given Yunus’s former criticism of Trump back in 2016, the interim government can expect a less supportive White House if Trump returns to the White House after the 2024 US general elections.

In Between Rising Powers: Bangladesh in the Eyes of New Delhi and Beijing

The collapse of Hasina’s regime was a strategic failure for the Awami League’s long-time and premier supporter—India. Since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, where India played a leading role through covert support to the guerilla war, India has sustained a favorable trade imbalance, security cooperation, political alignment, and common cause over the containment of Islamist elements within Bangladesh. However, recent developments and the trajectory set for the next Bangladeshi election seem to swayagainst New Delhi’s favor, as anti-Indian sentiments have reached all-time highs and the Awami League has very little legroom to launch a comeback, given their reputation from their bloody crackdown on the Quota Reform Movement.

Another key supporter of Hasina’s regime was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Bangladesh is the second-biggest destination of Chinese military imports according to the Stockholm Peace International Research Institute (SIPRI). Between 2016 and 2020, Bangladesh bought 17 percent of all Chinese military exports and two-thirds of the Bangladesh Air Force weapon arsenal is currently made up of Chinese weapons. In line with the 2002 Defense Cooperation Agreement signed between China and Bangladesh, making China the only country with a broad defense agreement with Bangladesh, Dhaka has also inaugurated a Chinese-built naval base for the Bangladesh Navy at Pekua in Cox’s Bazar in 2023, BNS Sheikh Hasina, where two Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) officers were in attendance. According to a CSIS report entitled “Submarine Diplomacy,” published in November 2023, commercial satellite imagery revealed significant progress on this naval base, which both signaled Beijing deepening its influence in the Bay of Bengal while also attempting to strengthen ties between Bangladesh and Myanmar, aimed at undercutting New Delhi’s influence in its neighborhood.

Since 2010, half of Myanmar’s and two-thirds of Bangladesh’s arms imports have come from China. However, Bangladesh’s military still conducts annual bilateral exercises with the Indian military, most recently in October 2023, showing how Dhaka balances India and China even as it actively courts Beijing.

Over a fourth of world trade passes through the Bay of Bengal each year, with ports located in the bay that handle 33 percent of global trade and half of the world’s container traffic. Additionally, the Bay of Bengal is located at a strategic chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. This chokepoint is vital because it controls maritime access to the Far East and is used by a large amount of international shipping. Upon Hasina’s ousting, in one of her first statements from her refuge in a military base in India, she stated that she could have remained in power had she acquiesced to a US demand for a military base in Bangladeshi territory — St. Martin’s Island.

The Padma Bridge, inaugurated in February 2022, is Bangladesh’s largest bridge, standing at 3.88 miles in length and 60 feet wide, able to carry 10,000 tons, and projected to boost the country’s GDP by 1.2 percent. Proposed in 1998, the bridge had many setbacks in construction due to the withdrawal of support by the World Bank in 2015 after allegations of corruption. A Chinese engineering firm, China Major Bridge Co., hadtaken over construction of the bridge following the World Bank exit. The Padma Bridge is the largest bridge built by a Chinese company outside of China and was dubbed the “dream bridge,” by the Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Yao Wen. Ambassador Wen further stated that not only will the bridge “contribute to the connectivity in South Asia,” but also that whenever China’s President Xi Jinping “mentions Bangladesh, he will mention the Padma Bridge.” Additionally, a much-needed $12.65 billion dollar nuclear power plant in Rooppur is pledged to be 90 percent financed by Russia as of 2023. Putin has also made inroads in Dhaka, helping the country shift away from energy dependence on India, while also benefitting from Bangladesh abstaining from a recent 2023 UN vote to cease the war in Ukraine.

Washington’s Approach for Bangladesh’s Role in the Indo-Pacific

Bangladesh plays a tough balancing act in the Indo-Pacific due to its immense population, resource endowments, and strategic location in the Bay of Bengal. This was played to Hasina’s hand, who sought to balance neighboring Beijing and New Delhi while maintaining Bangladesh’s role as an important trading partner to the United States and European Union. Her capture of state institutions, momentum for turning the country into a one-party state, and ability to navigate the trail of Western sanctions, all while maintaining consistent economic growth at a 7 percent annual rate, attests to this small-state-leverage playing larger powers off one another. Ultimately, mass rebellion and inability to provide effective governance and economic opportunity succeeded where coercive US measures could not.

With Yunus at the helm, Bangladesh is under a transitory governance scheme where Washington has a more receptive head of state. However, commitment to free and fair elections that releases far-right Islamist elements, while committing to deepening Western and Indian interests, presents a conflict of interest. More pressing, the Chinese inroads made in Bangladesh with BNS Sheikh Hasina, military imports, and the Padma Bridge have distanced Washington as a strategic competitor in the region. The steps Washington takes next with Bangladesh must account for the need to assure an effective democratic framework for elections, state security and law and order for the regime that assumes power after the interim government holds its election. The announcement that Yunus would not run himself and the momentum gained by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Islamist parties has raised alarms in New Delhi and Western capitals, with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh recommending at the Indian Air Force Commanders’ Conference to be ready for “new challenges” in response to the changing posture of the incumbent and coming regime in Dhaka. In response, the former Bangladesh Army Chief of Staff, Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan, has led the Bangladesh military to assess putting the country on war footing under a model of the French levée en masse—referring to the French Revolution’s policy of requiring all able-bodied men to serve the military to defend the nation.

Washington is uniquely poised to help Dhaka deter any confrontation with New Delhi, while also reeling the strategically-located country from China’s embrace ahead of the 2027 projected Chinese invasion ofTaiwan. Diplomatic overtures and economic cooperation can collectively aid in preventing Bangladesh from becoming another autocratic regime, as well as from becoming a vassal for Beijing’s interests in the Indo-Pacific neighboring its regional rival, India. However, Yunus must hold the line against Islamists, as Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Yao Wen, recently praised Jamaat-e-Islami as a “well-organized party.” Yunus must also continually court the United States and European Union in order to reel Bangladesh from the crosshairs of China’s grand strategy in South Asia.

While the Yunus-led interim government’s decision to lift the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami was rooted in ending the Awami League’s one-party governance, Beijing’s open embrace of Islamist forces who have historically antagonized Washington, New Delhi, and European capitals has raised alarms for the country’s trade, people-to-people ties, and defense posture. A Bangladesh where institutions are captured by the anti-Awami League axis of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami will allow Beijing unprecedented leverage in Bangladesh, given both their anti-Indian and anti-Western track record, ongoing rhetoric, and overall platforms. The Yunus-led interim government is Washington’s last window ofopportunity to chart a prosperous and democratic Bangladesh for decades to come, or it can serve as a missed opportunity that offered China and Russia an indefinite foothold.

• About the author: Rimon Tanvir Hossain is a Research Assistant with the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Technologies and Cybersecurity Program. He received his M.P.P. from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and his B.A. from UC Berkeley. He was a former congressional staffer in the United States Senate and conducted research with the UCLA Luskin Global Public Affairs program on U.S.-China competition in the Bay of Bengal.
• Source: This article was published by FPRI