On August 5, 2024, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country as protests accelerated and turned violent.
Violence was not unidirectional, but Sheikh Hasina’s efforts to crush the protests backfired. Protest leaders appointed octogenarian Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus to act as caretaker. Yunus is a popular figure among Western diplomats and within international organizations.
Inside Bangladesh, however, he is more controversial. He harbored a deep grudge against Sheikh Hasina and her secular Awami League party, especially after a judicial probe into corruption at the Grameen Bank.
In some ways, he is analogous to Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier made famous in the film “Hotel Rwanda” who let fame go to his head and then waged a terror campaign in pursuit of his own political ambitions in Rwanda.
Yunus promotes a narrative that the protests were organic; this is doubtful. While some students and civil society activists opposed civil service quota reforms and set-asides for family members of veterans of the 1971 fight for independence, others with external support sought to destabilize the country and overturn the secularism which has largely defined Bangladesh’s government since its independence from Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has harbored a grudge against Bangladesh for both its traditional diplomatic proximity to India and its hostility toward Jamaat-e-Islami, an extremist group complicit in the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide.
At best, Yunus today is a useful idiot like Abolhassan Bani Sadr was in Iran. Bani Sadr was a left-of-center economist who joined Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution and carried water for Khomeini’s claims that he merely wanted to oust an undemocratic shah and was interested in democracy. As soon as Khomeini consolidated power—as Jamaat-e-Islami does today—he exiled Bani Sadr.
At worse, however, Bani Sadr is willingly complicit in Jamaat-e-Islami’s attempt to recraft Bangladesh’s society. Rather than crack down on those launching pogroms against minorities, Yunus arrests Awami League politicians like Fazle Karim Chowdhury and veteran journalists like Farzana Rupa and Shakil Ahmed, among more than 900 others, many of whom now face spurious murder charges for daring to raise questions about the autocratic Yunus. Growing evidence that Yunus’ complicity goes beyond naivete explains why lawyers now consider an International Criminal Court referral.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi rode to power on a wave of popular anger at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy and abuses. When Egyptian students and civil society activists realized he sought to use their anger to eviscerate freedom and replace a secular autocracy with a theocratic one, they poured back into the streets and the Egyptian Army pushed Morsi aside to return to the status quo ante, no matter how flawed it was.
In 1997, the Turkish General Staff acted similarly to force the resignation of the government as it feared Islamist leader Necbettin Erbakan was attempting to cast aside Turkey’s constitution in favor of an Islamist state. Five years later, Erbakan’s protégé Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged a comeback and affirmed how correct the Turkish military had earlier been. Unfortunately, for Turks, it was too late. Turkey today is little more than Pakistan on the Mediterranean.
As Yunus and the Pakistan-directed Jamaat-e-Islami releases Al Qaeda sympathizers from prisons and wages war on Bangladesh’s women, liberals, and minorities, the question today is whether the Bangladeshi military will channel Egypt’s or stand down like Turkey’s. The decision it makes will define generations in Bangladesh by determining whether Bangladesh’s laicism will remain or whether those who sponsored and supported the Bangladesh genocide will gain their victory 54 years later.
Earlier this week, the Bangladeshi army held an emergency meeting and speculation about an imminent coup runs rampant. If the Bangladeshi military decides to right Bangladesh on its constitutional tracks, the United States will remain aloof. President Donald Trump does not bother himself with events 8,000 miles away; if anything, when briefed with the events at stake, he will side with the Bangladeshi military. The State Department may hand-wring but, as in Turkey, a timeline for restoration of democracy will assuage concerns.
If anything, Secretary of State Marco Rubio who so far has deferred to lower-level diplomats will understand what transpires is less a coup than a counter-coup to reverse a plot crafted in and executed by Islamabad eight months ago.
So long as Bangladesh returns war criminals and Al Qaeda sympathizers to prison and crafts a credible plan to restore democracy, Washington will greenlight action. Sometimes, democracy as a result trumps democracy in all levels of process.
Bangladesh’s Chief of the Army Staff Waker-Uz-Zaman now has a decision: Will he go down in history as the man who allowed génocidaires to win, or will he rescue the country to which he swore allegiance?
