Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in South Asia, has experienced turbulent events over the past months. Mass protests that lasted over a month forced the 76-year-old Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country. Before her escape, thousands of protesters stormed the premises of the prime minister’s residence, Ganobhaban. Hasina tried to record a speech to address the nation but was unable to do so. Security forces and the military sided with the protesters and gave the prime minister only 45 minutes to flee the capital, Dhaka.
Hasina, along with her sister, fled to India, landing in the northeastern city of Agartala. Immediately after, General Waqar-uz-Zaman, Chief of General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Bangladesh Army announced the formation of an interim government. He vowed to punish those responsible for the deaths and destruction. “Trust in the army. We have held meetings with political party leaders,” said Waqar-uz-Zaman.
Until this point, it was believed that Bangladesh’s main internal problem, apart from the poverty of its vast population, was the autocratic rule of a single clan for decades. Since its founding in 1971, the Hasina clan has ruled the country, with brief interruptions, for more than half a century. The median age in Bangladesh is 25 years, with a per capita GDP of $2,500, and the value of human life is very low.
Trapped in the same social and economic model, the country has effectively become the world’s textile factory. It is also filled with impoverished youth, now capable of using the internet and fearlessly confronting the armed forces. The result is increased internal dissatisfaction and yet another social upheaval.
Bangladesh has a rich history of coups disguised as revolutions, executed by military juntas. There have been five coups in its first decade of independence. The Hasina clan periodically lost and regained power during these coups. Often, the cycle of overthrowing one government for another took less than a week.
It all began on August 15, 1975, when President Mujibur Rahman, the “father of national independence” and the father of the now-ousted Sheikh Hasina, was overthrown and killed in a coup. He was assassinated in his residence along with his wife and three sons, though his daughters survived as they were abroad. The coup was organized by career officers, many of whom had begun their service under Pakistan and were discontented with being passed over by veterans of the liberation movement called Mukti Bahini.
General Khaled Mosharraf overthrew the military junta that assassinated the president on November 3 of the same year. Fearing that Mosharraf intended to restore the ousted clan to power, the August 15 coup leaders executed government officials from Mujibur’s government before their exile. Mosharraf, on the other hand, sought power for himself, but he only managed to become Chief of Staff and the de facto ruler of Bangladesh for a few days.
Members of the “Association of Revolutionary Soldiers,” a Maoist-leaning military organization under Colonel Abu Taher, overthrew and killed Mosharraf on November 7. Following their agenda, the association began killing officers outside their ranks, and the country descended into anarchy.
On November 24, 1975, Chief of General Staff Ziaur Rahman arrested Abu Taher, dispersed the Maoists, assumed the presidency, and took steps to reduce the frequency of coups in Bangladesh. In May 1977, 98.8% of the country’s citizens declared in a referendum that they fully trusted this president. However, on May 30, 1981, General Muhammad Manzoor, discontented with the sidelining of veterans from the 1971 independence war, shot President Rahman during an inspection visit to Chittagong.
More than 300 people lost their lives during the current protests in Bangladesh, which started in late June. The formal cause of the unrest was the reinstatement of quotas for veterans of the Independence War and their relatives. Hasina’s government allocated nearly one-third of public sector positions, or about 30% of government jobs, to this group. Students, who already accused the government of poor socio-economic policies, were outraged and took to the streets, demanding an end to the quota system.
The success of the coup and Hasina’s flight, followed by the military’s announcement of the formation of an interim government, marked significant changes not only in Bangladesh but in the entire South Asian region.
On the foreign policy front, the events in Bangladesh represent, for now, the loss of another key ally for India, which recently saw its alliances with the Maldives and Myanmar wane and now faces competition from China in relations with Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Only Bhutan, Mauritius, and the Seychelles maintain relatively stable relations with India in the region following the fall of Hasina’s government. The coup in Bangladesh reinforces a sense of isolation for India in South Asia while pushing it toward what pro-Western experts call “energy cooperation with Central Asian countries.”
At first glance, the fact that a pro-Indian government collapsed in Bangladesh suggests that China may be preparing to take control of the country. Indian experts are already anticipating a sharp increase in Pakistan’s influence, with some reports suggesting that Pakistani agents were involved in the unrest. China is now in a position to significantly expand its influence in Bangladesh. Consequently, pro-China regimes may surround India, including those in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives, where a pro-China leader has recently assumed power.
At the same time, there appears to be a clear US and British interest and involvement in the coup and subsequent events in South Asia. The US and its allies are keen for India to shift its focus from South Asia to post-Soviet Central Asia, thereby directly competing with Russian interests for the first time.
Western media reported in 2023 that Sheikh Hasina was “recently cozying up to China and Russia” and “intending to bring Bangladesh into BRICS.” Notably, the former prime minister claimed that her overthrow stemmed from her refusal to allow the US to establish a military base on St. Martin’s Island in the Chittagong province.
An Indian newspaper published Hasina’s letter containing this information. However, while in India, Hasina sought political asylum from the UK rather than India. Her sister already holds British citizenship, and her niece has been a Labour MP in the British Parliament since 2015 and even joined the new Cabinet.
Interestingly, Hasina’s statement about the role of the Americans in the coup does not seem to diminish her chances of obtaining refugee status from Britain, even though the US remains Bangladesh’s main trading partner. This is particularly surprising since Hasina has previously spoken to the media about these events while she was still in office.
She claims that a “white man” approached her at the beginning of this year, before Bangladesh’s general elections on January 7, 2024, which the West criticized for their “undemocratic nature.” He told her that she would not “face any problems” in the elections as long as she allowed his country to build a military base in Chittagong, on St. Martin’s Island.
St. Martin’s is a small tropical resort across from Myanmar’s coast. Establishing a US military base here would immediately pose a significant threat to China’s projects in Myanmar. These include oil and gas pipelines running from Myanmar’s coast to China’s Yunnan province, as well as the planned construction of the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port on the Rakhine coast with a special economic zone and logistics corridor leading to China.
Beijing initiated these projects partly because the US could easily block the Malacca Strait near Singapore, cutting China off from energy supplies. Should the Americans succeed in building the base, they would effectively gain control over a new route, as St. Martin’s Island is only 180 km from the future Kyaukphyu port.
Thus, it is possible that Sheikh Hasina unwittingly protected China’s strategically vital interests, albeit at the cost of her premiership. In doing so, she antagonized both India and the West, who supported India in its rivalry with China. Hasina explains her stance as a response to the threat of separatism in Chittagong’s Christian-minority hill regions. According to her, the Americans have plans to split Myanmar and create a separate Christian state in its Chin State and adjacent regions of Bangladesh and India, which would lead to a large-scale reconfiguration of the entire South Asian region in favor of Western interests.