Protests Shatter Hasina’s Invincibility

Bangladesh has, in recent days, suffered its worst civil unrest in decades. A peaceful demonstration against the reinstatement of civil service job quotas for relatives of independence war veterans turned violent last week after the student wing of the ruling Awami League (AL) party, police, and border guards targeted student protesters with force.

Some demonstrators responded violently, attacking government buildings, public infrastructure, and police facilities and even staging a jailbreak, freeing hundreds of prisoners outside the capital, Dhaka. The Bangladeshi government deployed the army to restore order, imposed curfews, and shut down the internet nationwide. Nearly 180 people have died.

The demonstrations have abated since Sunday, when Bangladesh’s Supreme Court drastically decreased the number of quotas in question. But protesters have vowed to return to the streets if their demands, which include the release of arrested protest leaders and the resignation of government and university leaders that they have linked to the violence, are not met.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina now faces her biggest challenge over her 15 consecutive years in power. Even if she rides the crisis out, she has suffered unprecedented political damage that could come back to haunt her in the weeks and months ahead.

Hasina has faced little sustained resistance during her time in power, in large part because her government has sidelined the opposition. But this month, as thousands of students rose up in Dhaka and beyond, the initial protests morphed from a demonstration against job quotas to a wider anti-government movement fueled by long-standing grievances about state repression and corruption.

As a result, Hasina’s aura of invulnerability has been shattered. The protests were some of the largest and angriest ever directed at her—there were unprecedented chants of “down with the dictator”—and they have enjoyed extensive public support. Many Bangladeshis are also enraged about the dozens of people killed in her government’s heavy-handed response, her deployment of the army, and the nearly one-week internet shutdown.

This widespread anger has weakened Hasina’s legitimacy, which was already fragile when she returned to power in a January election boycotted by the opposition and amid growing economic stress. Hasina has sought to base her legitimacy on her oversight of remarkable economic growth, successful counterterrorism policies, management of the complex Rohingya refugee crisis, and geopolitical balancing act. This has now become a much harder sell.

Hasina isn’t about to step down. She has taken a characteristically defiant stance, painting the protests as a movement hijacked by mobs tied to the political opposition. Given this framing, Hasina resigning would amount to giving in. She has leveraged her own tragic history—the military assassinated her father, Bangladesh’s independence hero, along with her mother and her three brothers when she was 28 years old—to become a strong and unfaltering leader.

However, with the Bangladeshi public galvanized, it won’t take much to trigger fresh protests down the road. The next time around, Hasina could find it increasingly difficult to insulate herself from calls for her resignation. Such calls may not come from her inner circle, and she would surely ignore any from the opposition.

But Bangladesh’s military, which has staged a few coups and coup attempts in the country’s past but currently backs Hasina, could advise her to resign if sustained unrest raises concerns about stability. Similarly, India—Bangladesh’s closest and most influential friend—could take a similar position if it fears destabilizing actions by the opposition that would imperil Indian interests. (New Delhi, like Dhaka, sees the opposition as a dangerous Islamist force.)

Hasina, one of Asia’s longest-serving leaders, is the ultimate survivor; she is often described as an “iron lady.” She may persevere and serve out her fourth straight term, which ends in 2029, but the beleaguered prime minister has never had so many cracks in her armor.