Upon former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and dramatic escape to India, the Awami League party and its associates are attempting every strategy in their arsenal for a possible comeback. After all, this nation’s wealth sustained their livelihoods during a 15-year uninterrupted timeline, and it must be retrieved at all costs.
Overt strategy
Sajib Wazed Joy, the former PM’s son and Information and Communication Technology Adviser, has hired Stryk Global Diplomacy, a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm for $200,000 to press the case for Awami League with the US government.
As the Biden administration has proven to be staunchly behind the Dr Yunus-led interim government, it can be forecasted that this same policy will continue if the Democratic Party nominee wins the upcoming election.
In this case, the lobbying firm may first persuade Indian-American congressmen such as Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi that Hindus in Bangladesh are in an existential crisis, and only the Awami League government can save the minorities.
These congressmen have already spoken against violence targeting Hindus, and would be an apt audience for Awami League. Afterwards, more congress members would be approached to pressure the US President.
Ultimately, it is the executive branch -- the US President alongside the military, intelligence, and international affairs bureaucracy that craft and carry out foreign policy. Robert Stryk, executive chairman and founder of the lobbying firm, was one of former President Trump’s early backers, as he ran the president’s campaign in the state of Oregon.
It seems that the Awami League leadership is hedging its bets on another Trump presidency to secure support from the US, as this lobbyist has access to the former president.
Covert strategy
Since the student-led revolution dislodged the dictatorship, we have witnessed ongoing small-scale violence across the nation. Take the Ansar riot of late August, when some paramilitary members started protesting the policy of their mandatory six-month leave without pay upon working for three years.
Even after the interim government assured this policy would be abolished, the protests continued. They clashed with students, resulting in 40 people with injuries. Finally, the army was called in to quell this mutiny, with 4,000 Ansar members charged with obstructing law enforcement in front of the Secretariat.
Intelligence reports that current and former Ansar officers affiliated with the Awami League provoked the group for this movement. Furthermore, Major General Abdul Motaleb Sazzad Mahmud, director general of Bangladesh Ansar and Village Defense Force, said that many of the protestors are imposters wearing Ansar uniforms.
The masters behind the strategy
Sajeeb Wazed Joy remarked to Time Magazine that he was discussing the mass protests with his family on a WhatsApp group chat. He proposed reducing civil service quotas for descendants of freedom fighters to 5%.
This is when another family member chimed in that they are also grandchildren of freedom fighters, to which Sajeeb "jokingly replied" that is why there is 5%. It takes a sociopath to be laughing about this, when a massacre was taking place under the family matriarch’s orders.
When the Bangladesh revolution martyrs’ museum is established at the former official residence of the PM, this Time news story should be preserved as an enlarged poster. Some of us have a tendency of whitewashing erstwhile rulers’ crimes. So that the same does not take place a decade from now, we should always remember the type of family that ruled this nation, laughing away during a massacre of the citizenry.
Sajeeb Wazed also mentioned that if the interim government runs the nation for 18 months, it works well for Awami League, as the nation is under a lawless situation with a mob of protesters on a rampage.
A theory has emerged among some political analysts that Sheikh Hasina and her family are investing massive funds to create enough chaos in the nation so that the everyday citizen actually believes that things were better under the dictatorship. It falls upon each person who believes in a secure, prosperous, and righteous Bangladesh to prove otherwise.
Tamim Choudhury is a Public Affairs Specialist at a Washington DC-based international volunteering agency.
