Bangladesh’s shaky political future

When Bangladesh makes international news, it’s usually for tragedies: devastating cyclones, massive industrial accidents, grisly terrorist attacks. Even by those dismal benchmarks, the latest story from Bangladesh stands out—the deaths this month of more than 200 people during a government crackdown on student protests.

The violence may signal the beginning of the end for 76-year-old Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, under whose increasingly autocratic rule the country has turned into a de facto one-party state. But those expecting liberal democracy to flower in a post-Hasina Bangladesh will almost certainly be disappointed. A return to instability, economic stagnation and widespread Islamist violence against religious minorities appears more likely.

Bangladesh’s nearly 175 million people make it the world’s fourth most populous Muslim-majority nation, behind Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria. Shortly after Bangladesh gained independence, Henry Kissinger famously called it a “bottomless basket case.” But under Ms. Hasina, who has ruled since 2009 in her second stint as prime minister, the country has fashioned a more hopeful story as a fast-growing economy.

Bangladesh’s economic growth has averaged 6.5% over the past decade. The poverty rate—defined as the share of the population living on less than $2.15 a day—fell from 11.8% in 2010 to 5% in 2022, according to the World Bank. The United Nations estimates that Bangladesh will graduate from the list of “least developed countries” in two years. The country is ahead of India on life expectancy and female literacy. Along the way, Bangladesh has built a $47 billion garment-export industry that employs some four million people, most of whom are women.

One way to think of Bangladesh under Ms. Hasina is as the opposite of Pakistan. In 1947 the departing British carved the eastern and western wings of Pakistan out of the Muslim-majority regions of undivided India. Until 1971, Pakistan consisted of two distant and noncontiguous parts: East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (today’s Pakistan). For the first three decades after independence in 1971, Bangladesh followed a trajectory similar to Pakistan’s, marked by high-profile political assassinations, sectarian violence and military coups. Both countries housed Islamist terrorist groups hostile to India.

On Ms. Hasina’s watch, Bangladesh changed course. The prime minister cracked down on terrorism, nudged the army out of active politics and strengthened ties with India, by far the region’s largest economy. By building modern infrastructure and a world-class garment industry, Ms. Hasina laid the groundwork for a more prosperous future—in line with Thailand and Vietnam.

Ms. Hasina’s record on radical Islam has been mixed. She has made dangerous compromises, among them allowing the Islamic fundamentalist group Hefazat-e-Islam to purge school textbooks of content it deemed un-Islamic. Nonetheless, the ruling Awami League party has generally held to its nonsectarian ideology. “In a region marked by intense religious majoritarianism, Sheikh Hasina has done a relatively good job maintaining public rhetoric around pluralism,” Geoffrey Macdonald, an expert on Bangladesh at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said in a phone interview.

Despite these achievements, Ms. Hasina’s grip on power has never looked shakier. In January she won a fourth consecutive term as prime minister in an election marred by an opposition boycott and voter turnout of only about 40%. Corruption allegations have swirled around her government. A former low-level employee in Ms. Hasina’s household reportedly amassed a $34 million fortune. According to media reports, a former Bangladeshi land minister built a real-estate empire of more than 350 properties in the U.K., valued at £200 million.

In recent years, economic growth—long the cornerstone of Ms. Hasina’s political legitimacy—has slowed. The pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted Bangladesh’s economy. Fuel and food prices soared while foreign-exchange reserves dwindled, forcing the government to turn to the International Monetary Fund for a $4.7 billion bailout. The World Bank estimates that more than 1 in 7 young Bangladeshis is jobless. The protests that led to this month’s bloody crackdown were sparked by a court ruling—since reversed by the Supreme Court—reinstating a quota that reserved 30% of sought-after civil service jobs for families of those who fought for independence from Pakistan. Each year some 300,000 graduates compete for roughly 4,000 government jobs.

Mr. Macdonald of the U.S. Institute of Peace reckons that Indian politics under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also contributed to Ms. Hasina’s domestic troubles: “India’s Hindu nationalist turn has definitely made Hasina’s life more difficult.”

All this means that Ms. Hasina will find it difficult to recover from the most recent bout of violence. In private, even Awami League supporters acknowledge that the government’s credibility is at an all-time low.

What comes next? Unfortunately for Bangladesh, those waiting in the wings to replace Ms. Hasina include hardened Islamists who will no doubt seek revenge should they gain power. “Even after this mega-mishap, it’s hard to imagine who comes next,” Kazi Anis Ahmed, a Bangladeshi author and businessman, said in a phone interview from Dhaka. “Sheikh Hasina is still better than the alternatives.”