Bangladesh, Power Politics, and the Unbroken Will of a People

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” — Thomas Jefferson

In the turbulent months following August 2024, Bangladesh found itself engulfed not merely in political transition but in a storm of global anxieties, competing narratives, and profound national grief.

Among many Bangladesh’s people have become very angry for the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina on 5 August 2024, the nation’s longest-serving and most infrastructurally transformative leader, was not an organic political shift but the outcome of shadowy geostrategic forces – the American deep state CIA.

For many citizens, the political convulsions of 5–8 August 2024 were not only shocking—they were traumatic. In their view, it was as if a sovereign nation had been tossed like a pawn on the chessboard of world powers.

The Great Game Returns to Bangladesh

Bangladesh has always lived at the fault line of global strategy, its land and seas coveted by larger powers. Among critics of the post-August transition, a recurring charge is that the United States, through the CIA, engineered a political reset to install a friendlier figure in Dr. Muhammad Yunus. We argue that the ascendancy of Dr. Yunus to the leadership of an interim authority was too smooth, too fast, and too convenient to be dismissed as coincidence.

They frame it as a “regime change” operation—part of the broader pattern many in the Global South associate with Washington’s historical interventions. As one political analyst wrote, “When powerful nations cannot control a leader, they try to control her successor.”

From this perspective, Sheikh Hasina’s mighty defense of national sovereignty, her economic diversification away from Western dependence, and her rejection of external interference in electoral matters made her, in critics’ eyes, a target.

The resonance of this belief is unmistakable.

The Long Shadow of 1971

To many Bangladesh’s people, history is not past—it is present. When the events of August 2024 unfolded, many invoked an old and bitter specter: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

For those who still carry the scars of 1971, the potent idea that ISI sought historical revenge. Among nationalist circles, a sentiment persists that any moment of Bangladeshi vulnerability is an opportunity for the old enemy to tighten its grip through proxies, digital disinformation, or ideological infiltration.

Such fears are rooted in fact not memory, they remain real in the public imagination. As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The Yunus Question

Dr. Yunus is celebrated internationally by his deception and manipulation, but domestically he has no foundation. 

But the perceptual experience among many citizens remains that Yunus, willingly became the beneficiary of international interventionism. The optics of his installment as head of the temporary authority only intensified this fact.

In any robust democracy, optics matter. Legitimacy matters. And in the Bangladeshi public sphere, legitimacy is now at the heart of every debate. But Dr. Yunus has no legitimacy on any grounds – he is an usurper illegally and unconstitutionally. 

Ghosts of the War: Jamaat and the Al-Badr Legacy

It is a fact that elements ideologically aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami mass-murderers—and their intellectual descendants—have regained influence.

For many, these groups are not political actors but embodiments of historical trauma. The memory of Al-Badr’s atrocities—executions, rape, collaboration with the Pakistan Army—is etched into the national consciousness in Bangladesh.

Thus, even the faintest suggestion of their resurgence is not merely political—it is existential. As Elie Wiesel warned, “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

This fear, grounded in evidence, now shapes the emotional landscape of the nation.

The “Anti-Bangladesh” Community Debate

Bangladesh’s social fabric contains communities like the Biharis that remained culturally or ideologically oriented toward Pakistan long after 1971. Those Bihari community (can speak Bengali fluently for living in Bangladesh for about 54 years, especially, living in Dhaka’s Mirpur and Mohammedpur, who never reconciled with the nation’s birth, their full loyalty lies still with Pakistan but Pakistan refused to take them back to Pakistan, rather, they called them as treacherous people for both Bangladesh and Pakistan—they aligned themselves with the conspiratorial forces seeking to weaken the country’s trajectory and actively joined the deep-seated cabal in overthrowing HPM Sheikh Hasina from power on 5 August 2024.

These feelings reflect deep emotional wounds. For those who lost loved ones in the Liberation War in 1971, national loyalty is not an abstract category—it is a moral covenant sealed with blood.

The NGO Complex and the Question of Sovereignty

Civil society organizations have long been crucial to so-called development, but the unvarnished truth is that a subset of NGOs—funded by foreign donors dictated by the American deep state and their vassal states with geopolitical agendas—played a malign role during the 2024 transition.

It is that certain NGOs amplified unrest, lobbied international actors, or created narratives that delegitimized the elected government of HPM Sheikh Hasina. This as part of the broader phenomenon described by John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, where development channels become levers of political control.

Again, it reflects a growing global skepticism toward foreign-funded activism.

The Phoenix That Refuses to Die

But if August 2024 exposed wounds, it also revealed the fiercest truth about Bangladesh:

This nation refuses to bow.

The people believe that Sheikh Hasina will soon return—not as a defeated leader, but as a resurrected heroine. To them, she symbolizes stability, economic rise, and the fierce pride of a nation that refuses to be anyone’s vassal.

They speak of Bangladesh as a phoenix—charred, bruised, momentarily grounded, but gathering strength beneath the ashes. “You cannot kill a dream whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo

And the dream of a sovereign, self-determining Bangladesh did not vanish on 5 August 2024.

The Road Ahead

Bangladesh stands at a defining crossroads. It may be haunted by old ghosts, shadowed by global rivalries, and shaken by domestic hullaballoos. But its people—resilient, passionate, forged in 1971’s crucible—are not passive spectators.

They are, and always have been, the authors of their own destiny.

If Bangladesh rises again—as we believe it surely will—it will be because its people refuse to allow external forces, internal opportunists, or historical enemies to define its fate.

And in that rise, the phoenix will not merely fly—it will soar.

Written by Anwar A. Khan 

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