Manash Ghosh | Return of Hasina: Mission Possible?

Sheikh Hasina Wazed’s recent audio address to the world press at the Delhi Foreign Correspondents’ Club, a forum she used for her outreach to her countrymen and people and governments around the world about her resolve to return home by December, was an astute political move which has turned out to be a resounding success. It provides her people with a roadmap of plans to resurrect Bangladesh from the path of self-destruction. Her message was also aimed at providing succour to her countrymen experiencing extreme privation caused by runaway inflation, scarcity of essential supplies and closure of almost 1,500 garment and other factories. The dire situation has resulted in phenomenal job losses and massive pauperisation of the working class. Even the elite are stressed — the acute energy crisis has crippled daily life with power and gas outages lasting hours on end, bringing Bangladesh to the edge of a precipice.

The other objective of Ms Hasina’s roadmap was to surrender to the Dhaka International Crimes Tribunal (DICT) so as to expose the travesty of justice the DICT had committed which had enabled this “corrupt court” to rig her trial and deliver a sham verdict. No wonder over 50 million people, almost half of whom were in Bangladesh, heard Ms Hasina’s voice which was a record of sorts. This has created a massive stir in Bangladesh which is giving the Tarique Rahman-led government sleepless nights.

The irony is that though Bangladesh’s domestic media was barred from covering the event, people defied the blanket ban and tuned in to her broadcast, proving that a dethroned Hasina continues to strike terror in the hearts and minds of BNP leaders and the Jamaat. It also proved that her popularity has soared exponentially — from 30% in July 2024 to 80% currently, according to Prothom Alo, a leading Dhaka daily.

“This is because her track record proves that only she can save Bangladesh from becoming a failed state. I was once an inveterate critic of Hasina. But now I am her most ardent supporter as her governance skills alone can reverse our nation's current pathetic state. Not long ago she had made Bangladesh one of Asia’s emerging tigers. Our GDP has plummeted from 6.8% in her days to less than 2% now,” said Mohsin Rashid, former president of the Bangladesh Muslim League and also the country’s leading legal luminary.

All this gives the lie to Mr Rahman’s assertion that Ms Hasina is politically irrelevant and, therefore, inconsequential. It also indicates that she and the Awami League still remain the pivots around which Bangladesh’s politics revolve.

Ms Hasina’s Delhi engagement has completely outsmarted the BNP government’s desperate efforts to prevent her voice from reaching her countrymen. The club’s hour-and-a-half-long event in whiçh Ms Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and her former minister Nowfel, also featured, cautioned how the country’s democratic set up was being threatened by resurgent Islamic militancy, with ISIS and Khilafat followers carrying “hundreds and thousands” of kalma flags with which they regularly stage marches, besides hoisting them at public places in Dhaka and Narayanganj. Both affirmed that their nation had turned into a hub and playground for foreign terrorist groups and Pakistani and Turkish spy agencies. The officer corps of the country’s military, too, had been infiltrated by Pakistani terrorists like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. All this bode ill for regional security and peace.

That Ms Hasina was all for reconciliation between rival parties and groups to restore the country’s stability and progress was emphasised with vigour to dispel the current belief that her return might throw the nation into a renewed cycle of violence. Ms Hasina’s sequential narration of the violent incidents that unfolded since July 16, 2024, which eventually led to her ouster from power, provided her people with a better understanding of the “students revolution”. For instance, the fact that 3,000 policemen (Md Yunus had pegged the figure at just 44) had been killed by cadres of the current ruling party and Islamic terrorists, who also burnt down 461 police and Dhaka Metro stations and looted arms besides freeing hundreds of convicted Islamic terrorists by storming jails as part of their planned strategy to turn Bangladesh into a cocoon of terror, has led many to wonder aloud whether the present rulers in Dhaka wanted to convert Bangladesh into another Afghanistan.

The growing Islamisation of the military by renaming their formations after the four Khalifas and setting up Islamic international institutes at considerable costs at military cantonments are unprecedented developments in the three uninformed services. These decisions of the top brass of the army (taken with Mr Rahman’s approval) reflects the mindset of the present regime and coincided with putting out “shikha anirban” (the eternal flame) built in Dhaka cantonment in memory of martyred soldiers of Niyomito Bahini (the military wing of the Mukti Bahini) in 1971 on the plea that money was being wasted to keep alive the so-called spirit of 1971.

“Bangladesh exists only in name. Its ideals and spirit are now Pakistani. The nation’s control is in the hands of war criminals,” confessed Fazlur Rahman, a Supreme Court lawyer and prominent MP of BNP who was also a Muktijuddho commander in 1971.

To ensure Ms Hasina’s safe return and stay in Dhaka, several rounds of ground-breaking parleys have been held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our national security adviser Ajit Doval, senior Indian diplomats and Sergio Gor, US envoy to India, who is also President Trump’s eyes and ears on South Asia.

Significantly, America’s traditional hostility towards the Awami League is being gradually replaced by growing forbearance resulting in increasing unanimity in views between the Modi government and the Trump administration on key Bangladesh issues. For instance, Mr Rahman’s recent China trip and involving Beijing in key infrastructural projects, including building a China-Bangladesh economic corridor, have not been enjoyed by Delhi and neither by Washington. This has made the latter increasingly view Bangladesh’s issues through the former’s gaze in order to find solutions.

Americans are also coming around to the Indian view that allowing inclusive politics and elections by unbanning Awami League alone can restore peace, stability and democracy in this strategic south Asian nation. Washington agrees last February’s parliamentary poll was far from free, fair and democratic and that holding a participatory mid-term poll could help achieve a breakthrough in the current impasse.

The questions that will confront Mr Rahman sooner than later are: Will he be able to rule a country that is perennially plagued by political instability, unending violence and continual economic downslide? How long will he be able to withstand pressure that would be exerted on him by those very foreign benefactors who had facilitated his hassle-free homecoming and had him installed in the nation’s highest office?

Mr Rahman making Ms Hasina’s handing over under the extradition treaty conditional on his proposed Delhi visit underscores how desperately his government wants to send her to the gallows.