When student protests erupted in Bangladesh in early July 2024, the trigger grievance was government job quotas, but the underlying spirit which galvanized the movement was Sheikh Hasina Wajid’s brutal and ever-expanding dictatorship. This affected not only students, but a better part of society in Bangladesh. Thus, as the movement gained ground, it was joined by all the different classes in the country and became a flood.
Hasina became a dictator pretty early on, but she was not satisfied with that. Her ultimate aim was to create an opposition-free country. By the time she fled Bangladesh, she had learned not to concede even an iota to those in disagreement with her. So, accommodation of a view which did not accord entirely with hers was no longer a part of her.
One may blame her for everything, but she cannot be blamed for not trying to hang on.
Her efforts to break the back of Bangladesh’s second independence movement involved clamping more than eleven thousand protesters in irons, wounding 20,000, and killing at least three hundred, while this figure may reach a thousand when the final count is taken. And she used every resource in her toolkit….the police, the paramilitary, the army, and the “ghoonda” brigade of her own political party to break the back of this movement. She used vehicles stamped with U.N logos, helicopters to snipe at university students, killed 16 kids peeping out of upper-storey windows to see the fun, plus the usual component of tear gas and rubber bullets and their more lethal variant. And her more enthusiastic ministers did not fail to spin narratives which, unfortunately for them, did not get very far. Two of these which won’t be easy to forget were, that it was not the government which had shut down the internet, but the students who had cut off the underwater cables in Chittagong; and that the manner in which the students faced the bullets proved that they were clearly drugged!
Then, on Jul 20 one saw the iconic video of Abu Saeed with a stick in one hand, and arms open to receive a volley in his chest. When he fell, it would have been clear to everyone who saw him go down, that he had taken Hasina down with him, and that this was only a question of time.
Sometime after this, the Bangladesh army chief let it be known that the army would no longer be used to crush the movement. This was the signal for Hasina to run, and she did not disappoint.
On Feb 11, 1979, the Iranian army similarly declared that it would be neutral in the fight between Khomeini’s followers and the remnants of the Shah’s regime, and on the same day Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister appointed by the Shah, fled to France.
In Third World countries, prime ministers fall or flee when the army overthrows them, or when it declares its neutrality!
There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Bangladesh’s Army Chief, Gen Waker uz Zaman, must be a man of many gifts. There should also be no doubt that among these gifts primary must be Hasina’s certainty that come hell or high water, he would stand behind her. But he has been at his new job only since June 23, 2024, not long enough to be dyed too deeply in colours of loyalty specific to her. There is also evidence that when hell came earlier than high water, he took care to consult the pulse of his command and this was what counselled him to withdraw into the neutral corner, which really meant standing by the state and its people.
As Pakistan is also lurching towards its “Abu Saeed” moment, Gen Asim seems determined to keep his eyes and ears firmly closed against acknowledging its advance. Because he is a direct protagonist in the game of treachery which has defined and befouled Pakistan over the last two years, he is rabidly averse to taking the pulse of his command, which is ultimately to be deployed against the people of Pakistan. Our hope therefore lies in some among his herd of generals who may have learned a lesson or two from what has transpired in Bangladesh. It is they who should push him beyond neutrality all the way to London, where he will soon be joined by both Hasina, and Nawaz Sharif.
What a happy threesome they will make, and what relief they will have left behind.
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