On August 5, 2024, a student-led movement toppled Sheikh Hasina’s deeply entrenched authoritarian regime. The redoubtable Economist magazine voted Bangladesh ‘the country of the year’ (2024) because students led a movement that ‘toppled a tyrant’ and paved the way for a brighter future.
Do the student leaders really deserve such praise, or was there the not-so-hidden hand of external forces?
It is reasonable to argue that the legitimacy of a home-grown pro-democracy movement is impaired when it is co-opted by powerful external actors whose geopolitical considerations might not be aligned with a country’s national interest.
The Economist is silent on this issue, and there is hardly any national debate on this vexed question, perhaps because the media is still not free in the post-Hasina era.
The prime suspect that aided and abetted the expulsion of the Hasina regime is the USA. This proposition is supported by a combination of historical records and circumstantial evidence.
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Reflections on development and governance 