Mad with power and vengeance, Yunus risks taking Bangladesh down with him

As India grapples with the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, a sordid drama is playing out next door. An unelected regime, backstopped by the military, Islamists, war criminals and revisionist ‘student revolutionaries’, wants to turn Bangladesh into another Pakistan – a jihadi hellhole, an economic basket case and a rentier state that dreams of breaking India and plans to suck on Chinese and American teats.

This radical shift is being driven by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate heading an ‘interim government’ as the chief adviser. Yunus, a crafty, vengeful man, thinks he is playing 128D chess. He is writing blank cheques he cannot encash.

It has been nine months that this illegitimate regime has been in power, nine turbulent months following Sheikh Hasina’s orchestrated ouster during which Yunus has overseen Bangladesh’s rapid economic descent, freeing of 1971 war criminals, a surge in Islamist radicalism, unhinged vendetta politics, hounding of Hindu minorities and sweeping foreign policy changes without the requisite democratic mandate.

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When he flew in from the United States to assume power in August last year, Yunus had promised to “restore Bangladesh’s democracy” through “free and fair elections”. He is ‘restoring democracy’ by banning Awami League, Bangladesh’s largest political party, one that is synonymous to the country’s independence, and by delaying elections.

Not surprisingly, Yunus has run into a collision course with the BNP, the only major party left in Bangladesh’s political scene that fancies a return to power. The ‘chief adviser’, though, has other plans.

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For the head of a military-backed regime, Yunus has even made an enemy of the army chief because General Waker-Uz-Zaman has called for early elections and come out swinging against Yunus’s moves to take key decisions keeping the military in the dark, such as constructing a “humanitarian corridor” linking Chittagong to the restive Rakhine province in Myanmar where the military junta is fighting a civil war. Bangladesh is witnessing an intriguing power tussle and attempts at palace coup and counter coup. Yunus is evidently keen to control all the levers of power and enjoy unchallenged writ.

His hunger for power shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Bangladesh watchers. US diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks reveal that the Americans knew at least since 2007 that Yunus possesses “a strong desire to jump into the maelstrom of Bangladeshi politics.” One cable, dated 13 February, mentions that “Yunus is considering entering Bangladesh politics” and that “he was reviewing his options”. The cable discloses that Americans felt Yunus is “a person of great moral stature and strong organizational skills,” and his “candidacy could offer a possible out from the present Sheikh Hasina-Khaleda Zia zero-sum game that cripples Bangladesh’s democratic process.”

The Americans have always considered Yunus as “their man”, something India had a very good idea about. Another leaked cable marked “confidential” and dated December 2006, reveals what the South Block was thinking about the 2007 elections when the Americans wanted “neither Hasina, nor Zia to win” and were “actively supporting Yunus”, for whom the Americans had “fixed” the Nobel Prize.

This dynamic between Yunus, whose status as America’s pet poodle has always been known, and the US, is key to understanding the great game unfolding in India’s neighbourhood. In his brief tenure, Yunus has already savaged Bangladesh’s close strategic, diplomatic and commercial ties with India, warmed up to Pakistan, hitched Dhaka’s boat to Beijing and kowtowed to the US.

Much against the wishes of Bangladesh’s mainstream political class and even the military, Yunus is positioning Bangladesh as a mule for America’s proxy war against China in war-torn Myanmar – jettisoning the careful balance of power strategy that former prime minister Hasina used as a foundation to script Bangladesh’s rise.

The worst part is Yunus’s authoritarian impulses and reckless steps are destabilising a region strategically sensitive for India, apart from making life difficult for ordinary Bangladeshis. In his effort to cling on to power, the scheming Yunus alternates between habitual India-bashing and divisive agendas to keep rivals off tack.

In causing diplomatic friction with India, authoring wholesale pivot to China, and calling for a more robust American involvement in the region, Yunus is redrawing the strategic underpinnings of Bangladesh’s foreign policy, initiating transformative changes without Parliamentary backing or democratic buy-in when as the head of a caretaker government all he needs to do is ensure political, social and economic stability to ensure free, fair and inclusive elections.

This fundamental mismatch between Yunus’s self-image as a ‘saviour’ of Bangladesh, his vaulting ambition, strong desire to wield power (refer to the US diplomatic cables) and the military and the BNP’s assumption of the chief adviser’s limited role, lies at the heart of Bangladesh’s ‘war like’ situation that Yunus blames India for. This turmoil couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Bangladesh is struggling. Growth has stuttered to 3.97%, the slowest in 34 years. The economy is battered with industry shutdowns, high inflation, unemployment, falling wages and steep price rise, potentially putting millions at risk of falling into extreme poverty. Foreign investors are staying away.

IANS quotes data from Bangladesh’s central bank to report that Dhaka’s flow of FDI fell to $104.33 million in the July-September quarter of 2024-25 fiscal, the lowest in six years, and the country received 71% less foreign investment year-on-year, down from $360.5 million in the July-September period of FY24.

The flagship garment sector that plays a significant role in Bangladesh’s economy, contributes handsomely to the GDP and employment is besieged with problems. According to a report published last December, in one year “140 factories across various sectors have ceased operations, including 76 in garments, 50 in knitwear, and 14 in textiles. This has led to the loss of approximately 94,000 jobs, with the Beximco Group alone laying off around 40,000 workers from its 15 garment factories. In total, closures have left 134,000 workers unemployed amid the shuttering of 155 factories.”

Trump’s punishing tariffs on Bangladesh resulting in a halt in orders from America and import restrictions from India have further hit the sector’s profitability. Things are so bad that General Waker, during the recent high-level gathering of military commanders at Dhaka Cantonment that generated a lot of media heat, reportedly said, “garment factories are shutting down one after another, and no one seems concerned. This silence is dangerous.” A clear barb at Yunus.

The ’chief adviser’ remains unfazed. He is focused more on ideological agendas such as freeing hardcore war criminals like Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam, a death row convict accused of killing 1,256 people, abducting 17, and raping 13 women during the 1971 Liberation War, apart from torturing civilians and setting fire to hundreds of houses. Islam was handed a death sentence in 2014. The Appellate Division of Bangladesh’s top court upheld the death sentence five years later.

Under the Yunus regime, the same Supreme Court on 27 May scrapped its earlier judgement – a first in history – that upheld the conviction and death sentence and ordered “immediate release” of Islam, a pointer to how Jamaat is holding the Yunus regime to ransom.

In a measure of the distance Bangladesh has travelled under a vindictive, unelected regime, the Bangladesh Supreme Court led by its chief justice on Sunday ordered the Election Commission to restore the registration of Jamaat, the right-wing jihadi outfit that was banned by the Hasina government under anti-terrorism law for its role in violent protests and historical opposition to Bangladesh’s independence.

Jamaat, that played a key role in the genocide of Hindus and Bengali-speaking Muslims during the 1971 war alongside the Pakistani army, will now be able to contest in future elections whereas former prime minister Hasina has been charged with “crimes against humanity”, and “the chief instigator behind the violent crackdown that unfolded during the July and August unrest.”

It speaks volumes of Bangladesh’s trajectory under Yunus that the banned Awami League will not be allowed to contest elections while Yunus’s attack dogs, Jamaat and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir go about persecuting ethnic and religious minorities and altering the secular character of Bangladesh’s Constitution.

In the zero-sum game of Bangladesh’s exclusionary politics, the pendulum will keep swinging from one extreme to the other. Yunus, who is crossing swords with the army chief and wants to replace him with a more pliant man, will soon figure out that he cannot run the country through palace intrigue, mob violence and revenge politics, and by seeking to decouple from India.

Yunus is courting China on the one hand, giving it access to Lalmonirhat airfield, close to India’s Siliguri Corridor (Chicken’s Neck), giving Beijing opportunities to expand strategic influence through Teesta River management project in exchange for China’s help in making Bangladesh a manufacturing hub, on the other hand he is embarking on a risky pirouette by giving the US a route to back the Arakan Army rebels in Myanmar’s Rakhine state through the so-called “humanitarian corridor” that Bangladesh’s army chief went ballistic about.

Since China is seen to be backing Myanmar’s military junta, the US sees a chance to lodger proxy war against the Chinese in Myanmar, and Yunus risks making Bangladesh a pawn to the great power game. Yunus has thrown up too many balls in the air, and it remains to be seen if he is a wizard to pull it off, or n usurper who risks taking Bangladesh down with him.