By Bruno Philip
Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladeshi prime minister who had to flee her country on Monday, August 5, was, all at once, the daughter of the hero of Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistan; one of the figures behind the democratization of a country that had long been locked down by authoritarianism; and the architect of a relative economic boom for this young nation that was once synonymous with overpopulation and misery. The adjectives that had once been used to define her before she descended into autocratic rule now serve to underscore the irony of the highlight of the end of her reign, a meteoric fall from grace.
After 15 years in power and three successive mandates – she had just begun her fourth following the country’s January elections and had previously been the prime minister from 1996 to 2001 – the 76-year-old “iron lady” had barely had time to jump into the helicopter that was set to transport her to neighboring India. The police chief had just warned her that tens of thousands of demonstrators, bent on revenge after the brutal police crackdown on student protests – more than 400 dead over three weeks – were marching toward her residence in the capital city, Dhaka.
She didn’t even have time to compose the resignation speech she had wanted to write: In the city engulfed by insurrection, no one could guarantee her safety. A few hours later, Bangladesh’s army chief announced that he would oversee the formation of an interim government.
At this stage, and given the influence long wielded by the country’s military – whether at the helm or behind the scenes – over the country’s 53 years of existence as an independent nation, no one can say for sure how the generals will behave going forward, now that they are de facto back in power. Even though they were keen to show, in every possible way, that their return to power was not a coup d’état.
Geopolitical anomaly
Political violence is a permanent fixture in the former East Bengal: The “Bengali country” (Bangla-desh) was painfully brought into being in 1971, following a bloody insurrection against its former “colonizer,” Pakistan. When the British Raj in India was partitioned in 1947, Pakistan was established in territories with Muslim majority populations, thereby becoming a geopolitical anomaly: The country was divided, between a western part with Karachi as its capital, and an eastern, Bengali part with Dhaka as its capital, separated by the whole of India. As the two entities were entirely culturally different, only Islam could serve as a national unifying force.
This oddity was not to last, as the Bengalis soon felt that they were under the domination of the West Pakistanis, who lived where the fledgling nation’s real center of power resided. An insurrectionary movement was born, supported by India, which went to war in 1971 to ensure the Bangladeshi nationalists’ victory. This followed months of bloody repression of independence supporters by extremist militias and the military regime’s police forces. Yet on December 16, 1971, after a 13-day Indian lightning offensive, the Pakistani army surrendered. East Pakistan became Bangladesh and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of Sheikh Hasina, became the country’s first leader.
The honeymoon period of independence was not to last. After four years in power, characterized by a political drift towards a one-party state and growing authoritarianism, President Mujibur Rahman was assassinated on August 15, 1975, by putschist colonels. Some 15 members of his family, who were with the patriarch, were also killed. Only his two daughters, Hasina and Rehana, who were in West Germany at the time, escaped the slaughter.
Deeply affected by the tragedy, Hasina, who would later be elected to the country’s governing office in the 1996 elections, never stopped referring to her missing father. Speaking to Le Monde at her family home during that year’s election campaign, “Mujib’s” daughter pointed out the marks the assassins’ bullets had left on the books in the library. Portraits of the “martyrs” adorned the walls, and traces of their blood had been preserved behind glass, adding an extra note to the macabre atmosphere.
Series of coups d’état
At the age of 49, Hasina, who had returned to her country after years of exile only 14 years prior, embodied the political “resistance” against the generals and their affiliates who had held power since the assassination of the “father of the fatherland.”
From 1975 to 1990, a series of coups d’état and aborted putsches punctuated the country’s political history. In December 1990, after three months of unrest in which Hasina played a major role, General Mohammad Ershad, who had become president in 1983, was forced to resign.
This was followed by several decades of democratically-elected governments in which Hasina and her rival, Khaleda Zia, the widow of a previously assassinated “general president,” constantly passed power back and forth between each other, following the ebb and flow of elections. This was the feud between the “widow” (Khaleda) and the “orphan” (Hasina), a fierce struggle that would later see both women, one after the other, jailed for corruption.
The recently dethroned prime minister was a victim of her own growing penchant for authoritarianism, control and nepotism. In this, she was truly her father’s daughter, as he had established an undivided reign in his time. The fact that the enraged masses have desecrated the ubiquitous portraits of “Mujib” and statues in his likeness undoubtedly represents a crucial milestone for Bangladesh. After the 1971 war of independence and the democratic turning point in 1990, the revolution of 2024 brought an end to a major Asian political dynasty.
The fact remains that, amid the climate of uncertainty prevailing in the country, and since Dhaka descended into chaos on the day the dictator fled, it is hard to know who will reap the rewards of this extraordinary revolution. Resolutely secular and very close to India, Hasina had contained the Islamist threats. The appointment on Tuesday, August 6, of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohammad Yunus, to head a transitional government is a positive sign, however, as the country’s new authorities must now set about paving the way for democratic renewal.
source : lemonde