A year on, is Bangladesh back at the beginning?

As the first anniversary of Bangladesh’s student-led revolution dawns, does the country find itself back at the start?

On August 5, 2024, Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister and fled Dhaka, ending her 15-year grip on the country only months after a sweeping victory in the widely disputed election held in January.

As Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of an interim government to oversee fresh elections, Bangladesh was set to chart a new beginning – a “rebirth” as student leaders called it.

But a year on, there is a growing political divergence – between the interim government and the Bangladeshi army and importantly, on the political front.

“It was felt that this government would stay only as long as it is necessary to hold an election,” veteran journalist and author Kallol Bhattacherjee told Scroll. “Instead of that, the interim administration has started this whole process of ‘reforms’ – reforms that are extremely elaborate and structural in nature and have no clear timeline.”

There is one school which believes in the 1971 liberation movement and that’s found in both the leading political formations – the Awami League as well as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party,

At the same time, the National Citizens Party, launched by the supporters of Yunus and the student leaders, believe in that language – that the country was reborn in 2024.

The National Citizens Party is attempting to build a political following but Bhattacherjee doubts its prospects.

“In fact, the big impact on the political electoral platform would be made by Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, of course, Jamaat,” said Bhattacherjee. “And the longer this chaos continues the brighter becomes the prospect for Awami League.”

Edited excerpts:

Around a couple of days back, the leader of the interim government, Muhammad Yunus, threatened to resign. Could you unpack what led to him giving this threat?

Tension had been building between the Bangladesh military and the interim administration led by Professor Muhammad Yunus over the last six to seven months.

It started with a detailed interview that the Army Chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, had given to Prothom Alo, one of the leading newspapers of Bangladesh. After that interview, there were several other developments and also comments, several of them, delivered behind closed doors. And especially last week in which the Army chief held a closed door meeting with the commanding officers of the Bangladesh Army.

The notification for the meeting said that the commanding officers should attend in their combat dresses. During the meeting, the Army chief said that he was not being informed by the interim government on several of the crucial decisions that it had taken so far.

Then he went on to describe one of the most important initiatives of the interim government, namely the “humanitarian corridor” that is being planned to connect the Rakhine province of Myanmar with the Chittagong division of Southeast Bangladesh.

That is a highly controversial project because Rakhine is known to be totally volatile. It’s prone to drugs and weapons smuggling. It is also the home base of several insurgent outfits like the Arakan Army and the Kuki National Front, etc. And there is a great deal of unease within the security establishment of Bangladesh about going ahead with this project.

Despite that, the interim government has shown willingness to go ahead with this particular initiative. And it discussed that initiative with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, when he visited Bangladesh recently.

It seems like what’s happening is that after Hasina was deposed, Yunus was put up almost like a figurehead. The real power behind the throne was obviously the army? But it seems that slowly, Dr Yunus is actually trying to take real pies, even backing the new student’s party.

The military was the outfit that held Bangladesh for nearly 72 hours or so – the first three, four days – after the chaotic departure of Prime Minister Hasina. There was a great deal of confusion in those moments and it was General Waker-Uz-Zaman who held the first press conference in which he announced that an interim administration was to be set up.

There was some doubt about who was going to lead that interim administration, because some sections believed that the army chief was actually the best person to lead that administration. But then the army chief himself said that some notable figure from the civil society would take over.

It was in that context, as Muhammad Yunus often likes to remind the world, that the students reached out to him when he was in Paris. And thereafter he flew back to Dhaka and took charge of the top post of the Bangladesh government. But the initial confusion and chaos was handled and cleared up by the military.

Then came the period that was being dominated by the advisors, the student activists, and in some ways, this day-to-day “movement wallahs” of Dhaka led by the students, the Islamists, etc, who have tried to lead the interim government towards a certain direction. And that is what we find that slowly, gradually, over the last nine months or so, the military and the interim administration have really moved away from each other.

One of the main flashpoints is when elections are going to be held. Dr Yunus wants elections to be delayed further and further and it seems like the army is now veering around to a position where elections should be held sooner rather than later. Could you unpack why the timing of this election has become so critical?

So, what was expected was that this interim administration, as it is an unelected administration, would preside over just the election process and then make way for the next elected government. And that was an unwritten agreement.

It was felt that this government would stay only as long as it is necessary to hold an election. Because what is necessary is to hold a credible election that would help people to forget that there was a controversial and non-transparent election held in January 2024.

Instead of that, the interim administration has started this whole process of “reforms” – reforms that are extremely elaborate and structural in nature and have no clear timeline. Sometimes these political, electoral and financial reforms that are being discussed may take not just years but perhaps even decades of activities.

I think there are elements now within Bangladesh who talk of this being a new rebirth after 1971. That’s the scale of reform on which spreading a new Constitution has also been discussed?

Yes, and a lot of people in Bangladesh don’t believe in this rebirth. One of the BNP [Bangladesh Nationalist Party] leaders was telling me recently that, in Bangladesh we don’t believe in these concepts of rebirth and a country can’t be born multiple times. Bangladesh was born in 1971 and that is the only birth that we believe in.

But these people who are currently in power, they obviously believe in that sort of symbolic language. There is obviously a gulf in between because there is one school which believes in the tradition and the activities of 1971 and that’s found in both the leading political formations – the Awami League as well as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

But new outfits, like the National Citizens Party, the NCP – which was recently launched by the followers of Professor Muhammad Yunus and the student advisors – believe in that language; that the country was reborn in 2024 and therefore there will be a new charter. We are also expecting that these student activists would bring out some sort of a July proclamation which would try to give some sort of a constitutional status to some of the main demands of this student movement of July-August 2024.

These are also highly controversial steps that are not being liked by the leading political formations that trace their lineage back to 1971 – and I’m referring to both Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party in this context.

Is this actually just a way for the student leaders of the July movement to buy time to set up some sort of political apparatus?

Absolutely, because the other two main political formations, that is Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party, have a very long association and very long familiarity with the bureaucratic apparatus of Bangladesh.

But it’s really doubtful that they [the new party, National Citizens Party] would do well even if more time is given to them because Bangladesh has many other political parties: like the Communist Party of Bangladesh and JSD [Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal], the very famous socialist party which used to be very violent in the 1970s as it is known as Jashod. These political parties are parties in name but they are more public movements.

My understanding is that NCP is also destined to be a public movement in the near future but it is not really going to make a big impact on the electoral platform. In fact, the big impact on the political electoral platform would be made by Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, of course, Jamaat. And the longer this chaos continues the brighter becomes the prospect for Awami League because it has a vast network of supporters [and] cadre in the country.

Though the interim government has “paused” the political activities of Awami League, it has not banned Awami League yet, so to say, and that is a very important distinction and that allows the party to continue its cadre-based activities at home behind closed doors. Recently, they even came out with a big rally in which thousands of people were arrested.

Is there a minus-one formula that the Awami is thinking of to disown Sheikh Hasina and then function as a legitimate political party within Bangladesh?

That was one of the starting point of the crisis because the military, as it was reported some couple of months ago, held a closed door meeting with some of the student advisors. The army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman reportedly requested the student advisors to agree to a new political party, that is New Awami League, under the leadership of the former speaker Shirin Sharmin. He suggested that this Awami League, as a political party in the country, is necessary and therefore it would be wiser for everyone to reconcile to the fact that whether they like it or not, the Awami League is going to be a part of the political process in the country.

The student advisors went out and tweeted and put out Facebook and social media posts accusing the army chief of being the remnant of the fascist regime. That triggered the confrontation between Chief Advisor Mohammad Yunus and the army chief in a more visible manner because these student advisors – Hasnat Abdullah, most importantly he and his cohorts – are known to be great admirers of Professor Yunus who also speaks very highly about them.

It became a very bitter quarrel on social media and between the officials, which indicated that these student advisors who are very close to Professor Muhammad Yunus were basically working in coordination with him. The army chief, thereafter, became an even bigger critic of Muhammad Yunus and the interim government.

The student leaders that you speak of also have right-wing, Islamist leanings – from their writings and Facebook posts it seems that they are more Right than Left or Centre. What is the situation right with respect to the right-wing in Bangladesh, the Islamist strain, which has always existed but maybe never enjoyed the prominence that it has till now?

The Islamists have existed in Bangladesh, but Bangladesh always had its own kind of Islam. If you look at the heritage of Maulana Bhashani who was also an Islamist and yet he was one of the founders of the Awami League in 1949 and then joined the Bangladesh formation movement with Sheikh Mujib. Let us also not forget that Maulana Bhashani was also –

A rare creature that can only exist in that era. He was a socialist Islamist, right? “Lal Maulana”.

And also he was close to, at one point. Jawaharlal Nehru. Bangladesh’s Islamist traditions are also very unique and peculiar to Bangladesh. But what we are witnessing now are multiple strains of Islamism. Of course we have the Jamaat and then we have the Hifazat and other such outfits. Recently we have seen outfits like Hizb ut-Tahrir that are pan-Islamist in nature and have external support. We are now finding these new varieties of Islamists who are also on the surface of Bangladesh politics.

How are minorities feeling now?

The main issue is really the breakdown in law and order and that is part of the breakdown of the bureaucracy and the contested nature of bureaucracy and the interim government. There is a total breakdown in the relationship because the interim government and its chief supporters, namely, the student activists, continue to view the police and the security administration as their opponents and allies of the previous regime who need to be countered.

The real problem in Bangladesh is the killing of the majoritarian population – or majoritarian political groups targeting the majority community first and the first line of victims are essentially fellow Muslims. Then others are also in the firing line because it is a political contest. And as Muhammad Yunus, quite unfortunately, keeps on saying that the victims of violence from the minority community are not really victims of targeted minority persecution but [that] they are targeted because of political reasons. For whatever X or Y reason, both the minority as well as the majority communities are being targeted because the law and order machinery is not really doing well in Bangladesh right now.

What is the US’s role right now in Bangladesh? After Hasina was deposed, they seemed to back Dr Yunus quite forcefully. Is that still happening?

The United States was one of the major partner countries of Bangladesh even during the Sheikh Hasina period. The United States has traditionally been the largest investor in Bangladesh and therefore its political presence in Bangladesh has not been commensurate with its economic profile in the Bangladeshi economy.

But after the departure of the Sheikh Hasina government, we are finding that the political profile of the United States within Bangladesh has also gone up many times in an unprecedented manner.

Perhaps since the days of General [Hussain Muhammad] Ershad who was backed by the Americans in the 1980s, this is the first time that we are finding the United States not only showing its military presence and also its diplomatic presence in very very critical areas.

Just three days back they held what is just being described as a fire drill, which is kind of an HADR – that’s humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operation – on the shores of Cox’s Bazaar.

It was quite unprecedented for someone like me, who has been following the country for a considerable number of years, because Sheikh Hasina very famously used to oppose these sort of activities. But here was the United States and its army and air force carrying out these exercises on the soil of Bangladesh.

There are also reports that military personnel from the United States are seen to be moving around in places like Sylhet and Comilla and Brahmanbaria, very close to the Indian borders of Meghalaya as well as Tripura and Assam.

Diplomatic activities between the two outfits – that is the interim government of Bangladesh and the government of the United States, the bureaucracy of the United States – as well as military activities, at least from the American side, are becoming increasingly visible.

It seems China is making moves in Bangladesh, too. A couple of days back there were reports that it’s trying to help Bangladesh set up an airbase close to the Siliguri chicken’s neck.

The airbase in Lalmonirhat is an old airbase – it goes back to the Second World War. During the Second World War, the entire eastern part of India was redesigned in terms of the military requirement of the Allied forces. From Odisha to East Bengal to Assam, there were several airbases that were created to help the war efforts during the early 1940s. Lalmonirhat was also developed in that period. But over the last 70 years or so and, especially, after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971, the importance of that airbase had gone down.

As long as Bangladesh was East Pakistan until December 16, 1971, the airbase was of some strategic value for the Pakistan government. But it basically was lost in that strategic calculation over the last 50 years or so.

The Bangladesh military was quite categorical in this remarkable press conference that they held the day before yesterday [May 27]. They came out quite clearly with the fact that they are not quite comfortable with the idea of handing over such a strategically important airbase to another country.

One of the spokespersons said that they are developing the airbase but they have not yet taken a call about handing it over to China or if at all it would be handed over to any country.

There is again a difference of opinion between the interim government and the Bangladesh military on this very important airbase of Lalmonirhat.

With the US inside Bangladesh and China making moves, where does India stand now?

The big mistake that was committed by India, especially during the last five years of Sheikh Hasina’s governance, was that India gradually forgot the fact that the spirit of 1971 is contested because there are multiple claimants to that legacy and heritage – and they come not only from one party, the Awami League, they also come from Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

The Indian establishment, to me, it appeared that it really fell for the line that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina used to advance: that it was her party, it was her father, who were the prime movers.

Of course, Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the towering figure of the 1971 struggle but there were also many others – let us not forget the great Tajuddin Ahmad and the founder of BNP, Captain Ziaur Rahman, who rebelled from the Pakistan military, at great personal risk, and then gave leadership to the Mukti Bahini and mobilised the East Bengal people from the Pakistan military forces and he created his own outfit and became part of the liberation struggle.

I remember the conversation I used to have before the fall of Sheikh Hasina was that there was a great deal of discomfort about extending a hand of friendship or even holding a brief conversation with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Yes, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party had made some serious mistakes in the early 2000s, especially during Begum Khaleda Zia’s year tenure after 2002 or 2001 that there were all these ULFA [insurgency group United Liberation Front of Asom] elements and others paved out of Dhaka.

But a lot of time had passed and things were different and they were willing to talk about their past mistakes. I think that opportunity should have been grabbed.

From what I understand the BNP repeatedly reached out to India?

Yes and they also traveled to India, but they were not hosted prominently and they were not shown a great deal of – they were not kind of, it’s not a very high profile visit or anything like that

But what happened was that in December 2023, when we used to discuss the necessity for holding a more transparent and credible election in Bangladesh, the idea that India would give is that it is Bangladesh’s business; that Bangladesh organise its election in the way that it wants to organise it.

But we saw that the election ultimately that was held in January 2024 was absolutely fraudulent because the opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, did not participate. In the last 10 months we have seen that the Indian High Commissioner has hosted the Bangladesh Nationalist Party leaders on multiple occasions.

Today, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s leaders are talking in language that is very comforting for the Indian establishment; because today they are talking about protection of democracy, they are talking about holding elections, they are talking about ensuring accountability and also about the spirit of 1971. Because BNP makes it very clear that Bangladesh was born in 1971 and Bangladesh was not reborn in 2024.

It’s quite obvious that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is also a political formation which can be a partner of dialogue with India; there are multiple parties who can be the stakeholders when it comes to India. I think that mistake has now been corrected because, obviously, with the Awami League, with Sheikh Hasina being on Indian soil, India has that leverage but also with the BNP, India is in a far more comfortable position.

I think some of the grounds that were lost have been regained in the last 10 months but then at the level of the interim government, India is, if I can say so, a villain to the interim government.

So it seems India will have to wait for elections for more ground to be regained in which it seems like the BNP will come to power.

India would have to regain some of the ground at least in terms of trade and connectivity. Many projects that were launched in the years from 2015 onwards are in limbo. We have to really see these projects, including cross-border trade. Bangladesh is one of the top 10 trading partners of India and only two of the overland trading partners along with Nepal.

But let us also remember what has happened in the last nine months that overland trade has been seriously affected because India has closed all the land ports to the export of textile apparel from Bangladesh. Though it is not really a very big part of Bangladesh’s textile export globally, but it is a bilateral blow to the trade relations. So, yes, I mean these things will have to be recovered.

But most importantly Bangladesh will have to be stabilised and that can happen only if Bangladesh acquires an elected government which would have some sort of reconciliation with the domestic bureaucracy and the security establishment, so that the law-and-order situation in the country can really come back on track.

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