Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s decision to return to Dhaka in December this year has clearly caused consternation among those who hold political power in her country today. Judging by the varied, contradictory and often confusing responses from government functionaries, including ministers and the attorney general, it is evident that nervousness characterises the situation in Dhaka.
For the past two years, first during the unconstitutional Yunus regime and then in the months since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) came to power following the controversial election in February this year, anti-Hasina quarters have consistently demanded that the former prime minister be extradited from India to face justice in Dhaka.
Now that Hasina has decided to return home on her own, her political enemies have been wrong-footed. The entire question of justice is itself questionable, given that Hasina was tried by a reconstituted International Crimes Tribunal (ICT). The restructuring placed elements opposed to a secular Bangladesh in positions of authority, giving them the power to try not only the former PM but also members of her administration.
Faced with Hasina’s decision to return to Dhaka, possibly surrender herself in court and face the law, the government and her detractors appear uncertain about how to respond. Some have suggested that she will be taken to prison as soon as she sets foot in Bangladesh. The more extremist among the Awami League’s enemies, particularly those who spearheaded the intrigue that led to the fall of the Hasina government, have been clamouring for the so-called death sentence passed on the former PM to be implemented upon her return.
There is, at this point, little reason to believe that Hasina’s decision to return home is a stunt. Her desire to return to Bangladesh appears grounded in the geopolitical realities now swirling around the country. The broad sense, in Bangladesh and beyond, is that the former PM could not have decided on such a consequential homecoming on the spur of the moment.
Not just the Indian authorities, her hosts for the past two years, but in all likelihood also those who matter in distant Washington, could well have been informed of Hasina’s move. In terms of diplomacy, the Indian authorities have carefully stayed away from commenting on her decision. But the ground realities point to a shift in the political tectonic plates perceptible since August 5.
The recent visit to Dhaka by Trump administration representative Sergio Gor, his meetings with senior Awami League leader Saber Hossain Chowdhury and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, and, most significantly, with Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi, followed by Trivedi’s return to India, have fuelled intense speculation among Bangladesh watchers. Understandably, speculation has risen sharply over what might happen in Bangladesh between now and December.
So what might happen in the months before Hasina departs for Dhaka? One does not need an astute political analyst to comprehend the realities that could shape up. Given her record of returning from exile, it would be unwise to assume that the former prime minister will back down from her latest move. She returned to Bangladesh in 1981, six years after the assassination of her father, Bangladesh’s founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. She returned in 2007 again, despite an attempt by the military-backed caretaker regime to prevent her from coming home after a visit abroad.
What route might Hasina take as she goes back home? The question concerns the security she will need once she is back in Dhaka. Some have predicted her return by air, possibly with the courtesy of the same Bangladesh military officers who escorted her and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana into exile in Delhi on August 5, 2024. But tragic precedents could well complicate such a homecoming.
The shooting that killed Philippines opposition politician Benigno Aquino Jr at Manila airport on his return from exile in 1983 has been cited. So too has the violence that killed as many as 180 people in grenade blasts as they welcomed Benazir Bhutto’s return to Karachi from exile in Dubai in October 2007, followed two months later by the assassination of the former Pakistan prime minister in Rawalpindi. These are precedents no one would wish to see repeated when Hasina comes home in December.
Could Hasina then enter Bangladesh by crossing the border with West Bengal? If she does, it could create a major headache, indeed a severe crisis, for the Bangladesh authorities. She could be welcomed by her party and ordinary people, potentially turning her return into a long march, à la Mao Zedong, from the frontier to the capital. If such a situation arises, the BNP administration, already struggling to reassure the nation that it can govern the country effectively, could find itself in a deeply tricky situation. An entire administrative apparatus could well come apart.
The reality is that Hasina, despite her exile of the last two years, matters enormously in Bangladesh. Especially since her interaction with the international media in Delhi earlier this month, the shadow cast by the former PM looms large over the country’s political landscape. Before December, she will expect the authorities in Dhaka to lift the ban on her party, release the tens of thousands of political prisoners detained in various prisons and guarantee a return to judicial independence.
The ball is clearly in the court of the BNP government, hamstrung as it is by such political outfits as the Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizens Party. In the interest of its own future, the BNP will need to extend, beyond its current anti-Hasina rhetoric, a hand to the Awami League.
Once Hasina is back home, a wholesale change in the political situation is only to be expected. Even if the ban on her party is not lifted by the time of her return, her arrival in Dhaka will almost certainly translate into the sort of enthusiasm among citizens that marked the return home of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1972 and Sheikh Hasina herself in 1981 and 2007.
Let there be a caveat, though. Hasina’s homecoming will not necessarily herald a return to normal politics and social stability. Drastic changes have occurred since August 2024. The Yunus regime deliberately took to hollowing out Bangladesh in terms of its history, politics, social order and economy. The Jamaat, a party that opposed Bangladesh’s liberation and is yet to express contrition over its role, is today well-entrenched in the country’s politics.
Diehard BNP leaders and activists, happy at the party’s return to power after twenty years, will not be kindly disposed to the Awami League’s return to centre stage. Then there are the mobs that sustained Yunus and his regime in the destruction of Bangladesh’s ethos during the eighteen months it held on to power. They could well be tempted to cause anarchy across the country.
Bangladesh will not slide into civil war, as many fear. But the mischief that right-wing organisations and anti-Hasina elements, outraged by her imminent return, could resort to may cause a descent into grave disorder. In desperation, vigilantes could resume the murder and mayhem that caused the deaths of hundreds of policemen and thousands of Awami League activists and supporters after early August 2024.
If disorder seizes the country, attention will turn to the role the army could play in containing the situation. With the BNP’s senior leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir poised to take over as Bangladesh’s new President, there will also be a close watch on how he wields his limited authority. The head of state in Bangladesh has constitutionally little authority to exercise without the consent of the prime minister.
Uncertainty will underpin the times immediately ahead for Bangladesh. Be that as it may, a basic truth remains: Hasina is the political leader around whom circumstances evolve and grow. Her party, despite its current predicament, remains a strong presence that its rivals and enemies simply cannot wish away.
