The day of reckoning
A new dawn is breaking in Dhaka, but the storm is not over yet
As I write this (730am in Dhaka), the worst fears about massacre of thousands under cover the night has not happened, but the Hasina regime is still in power with the Prime Minister bunkering down in Ganabhaban. This post covers some developing news and some quick thoughts.
Hasina’s fortress
This map puts Ganabhaban defences in context.
46th Infantry Brigade is defending the area. Its commanding officer, Brigadier General Imran Hamid, is considered to be a hard core Hasina loyalist. The revolution to succeed, this brigade must be disarmed or prevented from committing massacre.
To prevent a massacre, the area is being monitored from satellites. Specifically, satelite imaging will monitor the march towards Dhaka on 5 August 5, 2024. Monitoring is to focus on Gana Bhaban (23°45'54" N, 90°22'21" E) and its surrounding three square kilometers, capturing high-resolution images at regular intervals.
Any evidence of security force movements, violence, or destruction will be documented. With nearly 400 killed by official figures, including children, thousands seriously injured, and hundreds still unaccounted for, the world is watching. An ICC complaint is pending and global human rights organizations have demanded accountability for those with command responsibility. Any actions by Hasina loyalist soldiers in contravention of international humanitarian laws will not go unnoticed.
The endgame
By all accounts, all the pillars of establishment in Bangladesh have been walking away from Hasina. Civilian administration has been teetering for the past fortnight, and is non-existent currently. Security forces have, by and large, stopped enforcing Hasina’s orders. The business community has asked her to step aside openly and behind-the-scene. Even the much cowered and battered shell of the civil society that is still left in the country has firmly moved against her.
There are conversations of safe exits and transitional frameworks, the simplest being: President dissolves the parliament, Hasina signs a document stating her resignation and refusal to continue in the office followed by a flight to some tropical paradise, and a presidential ordinance appointing an interim administration. But this presupposes Hasina’s resignation.
Unfortunately, at this stage, she is showing no inclination to do anything such. Rather, it appears that she believes she will prevail. And it appears that there is a band of hard core loyalists who would kill many more for her. That is why today may see further bloodshed.
The oldest dirtiest trick
It’s not just massacre of protesters. Hasina has regime has resorted to the oldest, dirtiest trick in the subcontinental politics — violence against minority communities. In the last 24 hours, armed men have gone on rampage against Hindu houses and neighbourhoods in many parts of the country, followed by a social media campaign that Islamists / BNP / Jamaat and so on are attacking Hindus. The ploy here is blatant — India must provide all out support to Hasina because only she can prevent exodus of Bangladeshi Hindus and destabilise neighbouring Indian states.
I wrote last year about the risk of Hasina playing the communal card. That the narrative of ‘secular Hasina defending minorities’ is a lie came as a surprise to many in India in August 2023. But the Indian discourse on Hasina’s Bangladesh has become more nuanced in the past year. There is now a clear understanding that Hasina’s henchmen are among the worst perpetrators of communal repression in Bangladesh, particularly when it comes to land grabs (for example, by the former police chief Benazir Ahmed).
Further, the communal card is far less credible when protesters are visibly westernised youth demanding utterly secular stuff like jobs and rights. Bangladesh’s Monsoon Revolution is not about religious or communal identity, and there is no reason to fear communal violence when Hasina leaves.
And one way or another, she will leave.
Lal Salam to all on the streets today.
(5 August morning, long march to Dhaka)
Bangladesh will be free. It’s not long now.
I'm not nearly as optimistic as you are. Hasina rigs three elections back to back, but the thing that provoked the biggest protest was government jobs. This doesn't bode well for any future administration that's planning to do privatisation and/or civil service reform. Even BNP ran explicitly on a left wing agenda in the last "election".
Obviously, civil service jobs always had prestige attached to them but in the 90s and 2000s, it had lost most of its appeal. But after the 2010s, civil service jobs became attractive again. Businesses complained about civil service taking away skilled workforce from the private market. Even engineers and doctors started applying for the general cadre.
This isn't something that can be solved with simple economic growth. As long as the wage premium for public sector workers (formal or informal) exists we wouldn't be able to cut down the civil service. In fact more economic growth will more lucrative opportunities for rent seeking and more people capable of passing the exam.
This is probably the worst thing Hasina has done to Bangladesh. She has made more like socialist India where the greatest aspiration of the youth is to be a tax funded parasite. This is going to be a permanent blight on our nation.