- (december 2022)
Bangladesh in 2022
Pakistan's overpopulation is a problem shared with Bangladesh, which until 1971 was part of Pakistan. Bangladesh has 170 million people, which makes it the world’s eighth-most populous nation. The 2018 elections have created
more tension in a country that already was rocked by the
bitter rivalry between
the "battling begums",
Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina,
the two women who have dominated Bangladesh politics
since 1991, both related to former national heroes who were assassinated:
Hasina is the daughter of independence leader Mujibur Rahman, who ruled between 1971 and 1975, and Khaleda is the widow of military dictator Zia-ur Rahman, who ruled from 1977 to 1981.
In 1991, when Bangladesh held the first democratic elections, Khaleda became prime minister, and for a while the two women alternated in power.
However, after she won in a landslide in 2008, Hasina
Hasina turned increasingly authoritarian, crashing political rivals and gagging the media, so much so that Bangladesh can now be considered a de-facto one-party state. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Bangladesh ranked 146th out of 180 countries in media freedom.
In 2018 Hasina's Awami League won elections and she won a third term but just before the elections a court had sentenced Khaleda to five years in jail after convicting her of embezzling money meant for an orphanage, and,
for good measure, her son Tarique Rahman was also jailed for 10 years;
so the election results were contested by Khaleda's
party, the BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party).
The BNP has accused Hasina of arresting around 2,000 of its members in the first two weeks of December 2022 alone.
Bangladesh ranked 162th in Reporters Without Borders' 2022 "World Press Freedom Index".
Hasina's big political weapon has been a healthy economy:
Bangladesh's economy enjoyed an average growth rate of 8% before covid struck.
The state embarked on several high-profile projects like the
Padma bridge, the Rooppur nuclear power plant and Dhaka's metro.
However, Bangladesh's economy is largery based on the garment industry, and therefore vulnerable to disruption of supply chains like the ones caused first by covid and then by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Western analysts fret over Bangladesh's increasing ties with China
(China is now the top trading partner of Bangladesh), but
the USA is still Bangladesh's top source of foreign direct investment.
A RAND report (titled "China’s Global Basing Ambitions") mentions Bangladesh next to Pakistan and Myanmar as a likely
target for China to establish military bases, but China Index 2022
ranked Bangladesh only 54th in global Chinese influence (Bangladesh's arch-enemy Pakistan topped the index, and, incidentally, Singapore ranked third without anyone in the West panicking about it, and the USA itself ranked 21st, way ahead of Bangladesh).
Meanwhile, the country is sheltering almost a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, victims of ethnic/religious persecution for being Muslims in a Buddhist country.
The fact that two women have been vying for power for more than 20 years proves that Bangladesh is still a moderate Islamic country, but fanatical Islamists have gained strength in recent years, sponsored by Saudi Arabia (and possibly Pakistan) and helped by anti-India sentiment and anti-Myanmar sentiment.
While bilateral ties with India have prospered under Hasina, religious/ethnic cleansing has reduced the Hindu minority from 29% of the population in 1947 to less than 10%.
Hasina's regime has so far been successful in curbing the Islamists.
Traditionally, they have belonged to three organizations:
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which evolved into Neo-JMB, an affiliate of ISIS responsible for the Holey Artisan Cafe' terrorist attack in 2016 in which 29 people were killed (17 foreigners);
Ansar al-Islam (AAI), the al-Qaeda affiliated group responsible for the killing of atheist blogger Rajib Haider in 2013;
and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HUJI-B).
The Neo-JMB was largely disbanded by a police operation in 2016, and a new organization emerged in 2019, Jama’atul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya.
The real threat to Hasina's power and to the secular dimension of Bangladesh came from the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI). Hasina made sure that a high-profile trial of Jamaat's leaders depicted them as traitors who collaborated with Pakistan during the 1971 independence war. Accused of genocide, in 2010 the top leaders were sentenced to jail and even death and in 2013 Jamaat-e-Islami was banned.
P.S. of 2024
In 2024 rival student groups and police clashed in several cities after Bangladesh reinstated quotas for government jobs that had abolished in 2018 following massive student protests. These quota for civil service jobs reserve 30% of government jobs for family members of veterans of the 1971 independence war against Pakistan but only 10% for women.
The protests turned deadly in August 2024 when students demanded Hasina's resignation.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2022 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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