Dhaka’s darkest hour: Terror takes over Bangladesh, time for India to act

In July 2024, when the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh called in the army to ensure law and order in the face of violent protests, the UN body told the men in uniform to stay away or forgo the opportunity to join the peacekeeping force and earn in dollars.

The UN peacekeeping force has been embroiled in many controversies in the past, but such a naked admission of ‘regime change’ is rare. The Bangladeshi army allowed body bags to pile up, and Hasina was eased out.

The results are before everyone’s eyes. The small South Asian nation has plunged into darkness, giving rise to new security threats for India. The stability of the subcontinent will be disturbed for many years to come.

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The Darkest Phase

Political turmoil is not new to Bangladesh. The 53-year history of the nation is dotted with a series of coups, countercoups, assassinations of heads of state, the overthrow of governments, and phases of law and order collapse.

However, never before has Bangladesh plunged into a state of anarchy. Seasoned observers equate the level of uncertainty in public life to what it was during the nine-month-long Liberation struggle in 1971.

Mob justice has become the rule of law, and even foreigners are not spared. Dacoity, snatching, rape, and murder are commonplace. Islamists are giving a hero’s welcome to women abusers in Dhaka. Victims of abuse are shamed.

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Thousands of deadly weapons were looted from the police during the regime change. The so-called protestors broke into jails and freed hundreds of terrorists. Muhammad Yunus’s administration made no effort to capture the criminals and recover the lost weapons. He sent journalists close to Hasina and leaders of minority religious groups to jail on fictitious murder charges and ensured the release of some of the biggest masterminds of terror.

The destruction of national monuments and history that began on August 5, the day Hasina was ousted, gained institutional backing during Yunus’s rule.

The Bangabandhu Memorial Museum – where Liberation hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in 1975 – was torched after Hasina’s ouster. The remains of the museum were reduced to rubble in February this year, using heavy machinery.

The demolition continued for nearly 24 hours. The perpetrators gave advance notice on Facebook. The state looked the other way and blamed Hasina and her Awami League, who were nowhere to be seen.

The symbols of secularism and Liberation (from Pakistan) are prime targets of such ‘mob violence’. Also under attack is anything deemed un-Islamic by staunch Wahhabi Muslims. Public art and Sufi (moderate Muslims) Mazars were destroyed in hundreds.

The ‘student leaders’, who are the biggest supporters of the Yunus regime and have enjoyed unconstitutional powers over the last seven months, led the mob to destroy the Bangabandhu Museum and other relics.

Many of these leaders are now holding senior positions in the newly formed National Citizen Party (NCP), which is enjoying indirect support from the administration in mobilising people and resources.

The organisation has admitted to having members from Islamist organisations. Yunus denied involvement with the NCP, but Bangladeshi observers have less trust in his words. Privately, too many refer to it as a “King’s party”.

Publicly, the media is silent. After August 5, media controls have shifted mostly to Islamists led by Jamaat-e-Islami and, partly, to individuals closer to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

This is most apparent in TV media, where lower-level reporters have overnight become editors. The print media has not remained untouched either. Many editors were thrown out of their jobs after August 5. Those remaining are under pressure.

Method in Madness

What is happening in Bangladesh is part of a design. Fact-checker Qadaruddin Shishir recently pointed out on his Facebook handle that the released terrorists played lead role in at least two mob attacks on media and police.

This is perhaps a tip of the iceberg. Islamists have gained control through the regime change. They are now on a mission to take the country down the path of Pakistan. The government of Yunus is making their job easier.

Bangladesh has seen military dictatorships, military-backed governments, and elected governments in the past. But never before have paratroopers occupied power. They took an oath on the Constitution and then demanded to throw it into the dustbin. All governments are power-hungry, but this government is exceptional in its aspirations.

The Chief Justice and other senior judges were forced to resign, virtually at gunpoint. They wanted to remove the President as well but were stopped by the army. Yunus’s favorite student minister (advisor) forcibly took down the picture of the constitutional ‘father of the nation’ from the President’s office. This same minister ignited dreams of taking over parts of India on his Facebook page. They speak with a thousand voices. The cacophony saves the government from accountability, but put into perspective, they want to dominate the army, delay elections, and ban two largest parties.

The Chief of Army Staff, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, recently warned against this trend. But that is more about defending his position.

Yunus tried to stoke fresh controversy over the 2009 killing of army officers in a coup by the Border Guards. The allegations of enforced disappearances have rattled the army, as the agencies involved are willy-nilly controlled by them.

More critically, such allegations are weakening institutions that have been at the forefront of the war against terror over the last decade. It is easy to guess who would be the ultimate gainers of this destruction.

Time to Act

As a large neighbour, India cannot and must not take the situation in Bangladesh lightly. It is a serious setback to India’s Act East policy, and left to itself, Bangladesh might soon emerge as a terror hub in South Asia.

It is questionable whether the army chief, with his eyes focused on dollars, will act on his own. If international pressure kept him away from his constitutional duties back in July, only a similar pressure can bring some sanity to the situation.

That does not mean Hasina’s re-entry into the power corridors. She lost it, and she must work hard to regain it. India should focus on its longer-term agenda of keeping Bangladesh free from terrorism.

Pratim Ranjan Bose is an independent columnist, researcher, and consultant. He tweets @pratimbose. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.