Joshua Kurlantzick
In June and July 2024, massive protests broke out in Bangladesh, led mostly by students demanding an end to the increasingly authoritarian regime of then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League, and to the corruption that led to job quotas in many government agencies. The protests swelled and, while Hasina’s government had crushed previous dissent, these demonstrations eventually succeeded in forcing Hasina to flee (as the army refused to back her), leading to an interim government, advised by many of the students and led by Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus.
That interim government, following the celebrations in Dhaka and other places after Hasina fled, was supposed to usher in an era of reform in Bangladesh, creating a path to reduce violent political polarization, rebuild the state, reduce corruption, and end the two-party duopoly that had dominated politics for decades. That duopoly, consisting of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, had in recent years been dominated by the Awami League, but in the past, the BNP, when in power, also had acted in corrupt, nepotistic, and authoritarian ways.
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