Dhaka, Bangladesh — On the afternoon of July 16, 2024, as Abu Sayeed, a student leader at the forefront of protests against then-Prime Minister Sheikh Haisna’s leadership, was shot dead by police in Rangpur – a northern district – a strikingly different scene was unfolding in the capital, Dhaka.
At the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Abdur Rahman, a senior leader of Hasina’s Awami League and a minister in her government, sat unperturbed in his office enjoying a poetry recital by a local poet.
A video from that day captures Abdur Rahman reclining in his chair, resting his fist against his right cheek, listening casually. Towards the end, he offered a lighthearted response: “Wonderful.”
Moments later, when informed by an aide of the escalating unrest following Sayeed’s killing, he dismissed the concerns, saying, “Oh, nothing will happen. The leader [Hasina] will handle everything.”
That contrast between the tension exploding into deadly violence on the streets of Bangladesh and the minister’s seemingly casual demeanour has since come to epitomise, for many in the country, the Awami League’s disconnect from grassroots realities amid nationwide tumult.
Less than three weeks later, the Hasina government, accused of authoritarianism and brutality, was toppled by a student-led uprising. At least 834 people lost their lives in attacks on protesters and bystanders by law enforcement officials. The protests began on July 1 and ended on August 5 with Hasina fleeing to India. More than 20,000 others were injured, including women and children.
The upheaval brought down the curtains on Hasina’s 16-year leadership. Now, five months later, her party – which has been a major force in Bangladeshi politics since before the nation’s birth – is still struggling to pick up the pieces. A sharp divide is emerging between unapologetic party honchos and mid-level leaders and activists who believe the Awami League needs to reflect on where it went wrong – and that the way in which the 75-year-old political party addresses that chasm could determine its future.
A party divided
Many Awami League leaders continue to deflect responsibility.
“We are victims of an international conspiracy; this will be proven soon,” the party’s joint-secretary, AFM Bahauddin Nasim, told Al Jazeera over the phone from an undisclosed location on January 16. He did not specify whom he was accusing.
Analysts argue that such claims highlight the leadership’s denial of its failures and inability to address public grievances.
This, in turn, is alienating grassroots members of the party, many of whom are now in hiding or fearful of legal repercussions over the killings. They lament the party’s transformation from an organisation connected with the masses to a top-down structure that lost touch with public sentiments.
On August 5, 2024, as huge crowds marched towards Hasina’s official residence, the then-prime minister joined her sister Sheikh Rehana in fleeing Ganabhaban (the prime minister’s residence) on board a military helicopter.
“While the dramatic escape was being broadcast on TV, I was still on the streets of Khulna with some activists. I tried calling our senior leader, the local lawmaker, but his phone was switched off,” a senior local leader of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the Awami League’s student wing, in the southwestern city of Khulna, told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity.
“At that moment, I felt cheated.”
On October 23, 2024, the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus banned the BCL. The once-influential BCL leader from Khulna recounted his harrowing journey to safety. He fled to neighbouring Gopalganj before relocating to Dhaka under a false identity.
“I’ve changed my Facebook account, phone number, and everything. I’ve started a small business to survive. The party abandoned us. I’ll never return to politics,” he said.
Similar feelings of abandonment were shared by grassroots activists across the country.
While many members remain silent, Samiul Bashir, an assistant secretary of the Bangladesh Krishak League, a pro-Awami League organisation, has been vocal on social media platforms.
“Committed activists have been sidelined for years. Since 2014, opportunists and family members of local lawmakers have dominated party structures at the grassroots, leading to the catastrophe,” he told Al Jazeera.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a leader of a pro-Awami League doctors’ association echoed similar frustrations. “The actions and words of those who rose to be the face of the party have been disastrous, particularly in the past couple of years.”
Reflecting on the party’s failures, he told Al Jazeera: “It was a harsh reality that our party became heavily reliant on intelligence reports to make decisions. I found many top leaders unaware of how decisions were made or who were making them.”
Analysts say the lack of democratic practices also plunged the party into disarray. Over the past decade, all grassroots units of the Awami League and its affiliated organisations in the Dhaka metropolitan area, for instance, have been operating with outdated committees, relying on the same old members without any changes.
No remorse
The Awami League has yet to issue a formal apology or statement acknowledging its government’s heavy-handed actions during the student-led uprising, known as the “July movement”.
Instead, the party repeatedly dismissed the movement, with statements – such as a January 10 press release from its youth wing, the Jubo League – describing it as a “terrorist uprising”, allegedly orchestrated by forces aiming to push the country towards a “Pakistani ideology”.
During the nearly one-hour conversation with Al Jazeera, Nasim also repeatedly accused Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) party, of “misleading” students under the guise of the anti-quota movement. The 2024 anti-quota movement in Bangladesh began as a student protest against the reinstatement of a discriminatory quota system in public jobs. Escalating due to government repression and widespread bloodshed, it evolved into a broader uprising against Hasina’s government.
The Jamaat has long had a controversial place in Bangladeshi politics, since it opposed the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.
During the Awami League’s recent leadership, five top Jamaat leaders and one senior leader from the principal opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were executed for war crimes. Both the BNP and Jamaat faced severe crackdowns under the Hasina government, including widespread enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Nasim admitted to Al Jazeera that his party had made “strategic missteps” but attributed its failures primarily to “intelligence lapses”.
However, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, a close aide of Hasina and home minister for 11 years until the removal of the government, claimed in a recent interview with the Indian Express, a major Indian newspaper, that the Awami League had been the victim of a “joint coup” carried out by “Islamic terrorists and the army”.
Others close to the party disagree.
Tanjim Ahmad Sohel Taj, the son of Bangladesh’s first Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad and former state minister for home affairs, lamented the lack of accountability within the party.
“The Awami League must apologise to the people of Bangladesh for the injustices, oppression, corruption, plundering and laundering of billions. I have yet to see any self-realisation, self-criticism, or admission of guilt,” he said in a television interview.
Al Masud Hasanuzzaman, an analyst and professor of political science at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, argued that the party’s hardline stances and decisions fuelled public outrage, paving the way for the uprising’s success.
“Fanatical measures ultimately hurt Sheikh Hasina’s popularity, turning her resignation into a singular demand,” he told Al Jazeera.
Resurrection – an uphill battle
Hasina is not unfamiliar with exile – or with comebacks.
After the assassination of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family on August 15, 1975, Hasina, his daughter, stayed in India for several years.
But she returned to Bangladesh to lead the Awami League in 1981. It took 21 years to rebuild the party and come back to power.
“This time, however, is different; the party fell to a bloody student-led uprising supported by the military, and Sheikh Hasina’s image as a leader is severely tarnished,” Hasanuzzman said.
He argued that the Awami League faces a severe image and leadership crisis. “Without Sheikh Hasina, rebuilding the party will be challenging, and internal divisions are likely,” he said.
The BNP and the Jamaat, the two other major political forces in the country, have both said that they want Awami League leaders and activists involved in the killings of citizens last July and August to face trial. Ultimately, however, they have argued that the fate of the Awami League would be decided by the country’s people.
However, the student movement that led the campaign to remove Hasina has taken a much more uncompromising position on the future of the Awami League.
In a street rally on January 25, Mahfuz Alam, an adviser to the interim Yunus government and a key leader of the student movement, said that the Awami League would not be allowed to participate in the next elections, which Yunus has said will be held by early 2026.
“Our focus includes prosecuting individuals involved in murders, disappearances and rapes while implementing reforms and ensuring fair elections with the participation of all pro-Bangladesh political parties,” he said.
From the Awami League’s perspective, the elections could prove crucial. “If AL [Awami League] can participate in the election, it will create a foothold for the party to return,” Hasanuzzaman said.
“Yet, political revival is very difficult for [the] Awami League without rebuilding public trust through leadership, organisation and grassroots connection,” he added.
Ali Riaz, a political analyst and professor at Illinois State University, outlined four conditions that the Awami League would need to meet for any chance of a potential comeback: issuing an unequivocal apology for crimes committed during its 16 years in power, particularly the 2024 uprising; renouncing its current ideology; ensuring that no member of Hasina’s family leads the party again; and facing trials for committing heinous crimes including crimes against humanity.
“Those directly responsible for the atrocities during the July uprising including Sheikh Hasina must face trials. Any discussion on their comeback can take place only if these conditions are met,” Riaz told Al Jazeera. Riaz is also the vice chairman of a Yunus-led government commission tasked with building a consensus on a series of proposed reforms.
Still, many Awami League activists continue to have faith in Hasina, though they occasionally criticise the misuse of power by her family in private.
Senior leaders abroad are using social media and talk shows to urge them to regroup and suggest that the Yunus-led government is “going to fail”.
But that’s a hard sell to party activists. In the comments section below those assertions by party leaders, these junior Awami League leaders are pushing back – pointing out that it is easy for exiled leaders to speak from the sanctuary of a foreign land, when activists on the ground are scattered and in hiding across Bangladesh.
Like the former Khulna student leader, many of them are too afraid to reveal their identities publicly. A political comeback feels a long way off.