Sheikh Hasina’s downfall and exile are of her own making

The Bangladeshi leader’s delusional belief in her own invincibility precipitated her downfall amid a Gen Z revolution.

After weeks of antigovernment protests, on August 6, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the country in a spectacular turn of events. Until the last moments of her rule, her grip on power seemed all but absolute even after the deaths of hundreds of students who hit the streets demanding first reform of civil service job allocations and then her resignation.

Hasina’s stubborn refusal to compromise, overreliance on state violence, and deep patronage ties to a privileged clientele class had long disconnected her from the Bangladeshi public. She perhaps did not see the extent to which she had lost the support of the majority until the very end, leaving her with no choice but to flee the country. The collapse of her 16-year rule renders both a cautionary tale to dictators worldwide and a proof of the sheer willpower of a nation’s disillusioned youth.

The irony is that Hasina herself rode the wave of young people’s support when she returned to the country in 2008 to lead the Awami party in contesting the elections, which it won with a landslide.

During her first term, she capitalised on youth sentiments in order to go after political leaders accused of committing war crimes during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. She started executing opposition leaders while sparing the guilty of the same sin in her party. In 2013, she ordered a brutal crackdown on a sit-in by religious school students whom she had labelled radical Islamists, resulting in dozens of deaths.

In hindsight, that should have been a warning sign to the Bangladeshi public. But they chose to keep faith in