Michael Rubin
Until her August 5, 2024 ouster, Sheikh Hasina, a two-time prime minister who had run Bangladesh for 20 of its 54-year history, was the closest to royalty as anyone in Bangladeshi politics. Not only was she the South Asian country’s longest-serving ruler, but she was also the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father.
Students and opposition politicians grew more critical of her autocratic tendencies over time. The spark for the protests was a long-simmering dispute over civil service employment quotas that Hasina first expanded and then as discord grew, abolished, only to have courts reinstate them.
While quota reform initially motivated protests, a reaction to Hasina’s heavy-handed response backfired. Violent protests and vigilantism snowballed after security forces killed five protestors in mid-July. Within a couple weeks, security forces and pro-Hasina vigilantes reportedly killed slightly over 1,000 protestors. Amidst the outrage, protestors marched on Dhaka. As they reached the capital, Hasina fled. Whether she officially resigned, however, remains a subject of debate.
To fill the vacuum, protestors announced the appointment of Muhammad Yunus, an 84-year-old economist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate popular in the West. Yunus should have said no because, while he assuages the West, changes are afoot in Bangladesh that could alter the country irrevocably.
History matters. When Pakistan formed from the 1947 partition of India it was not a single contiguous territory but rather divided into West and East Pakistan separated by more than 1,000 miles of India. While the two halves of Pakistan were technically equal, West Pakistan dominated politically, culturally, and militarily.
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