Sheikh Hasina: How Bangladesh's Iron Lady Lost Her Throne After Decades of Autocratic Rule

On August 5, 2024, Bangladesh witnessed a seismic political upheaval as Sheikh Hasina Wazed, the world's longest-serving female head of government, fled into exile after more than twenty years in power. As thousands of protesters clashed with police in Dhaka and marched on the Prime Minister's residence, the woman known as the Iron Lady of Bangladesh abandoned her nation, marking the end of a months-long crisis that brought the country to the brink of revolution. Her departure represents one of the most dramatic hero-turned-villain stories in modern political history—from a youth defined by tragedy and brave resistance against tyranny, to a rule characterized by increasing authoritarianism, corruption, and violent repression. For a nation staggered by economic crisis, unemployment, and political violence, her exit came not a moment too soon.

Key Takeaways

• Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Bangladesh's Prime Minister for over twenty years combined, fled the country on August 5, 2024, following months of escalating protests that began in June over a controversial quota system for government jobs.
• The daughter of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina survived the 1975 military coup that killed most of her family and spent years in exile before returning to lead the Awami League.
• Her first term as Prime Minister from 1996 brought significant achievements including infrastructure development, a water-sharing treaty with India, and economic progress, but her return to power in 2009 marked the beginning of an increasingly autocratic rule.
• Over fifteen years, her government was accused of election rigging, human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, suppression of dissent through the Digital Security Act, and economic mismanagement that left Bangladesh nearly $100 billion in debt.
• The final crisis erupted when university students protested the reinstatement of a quota system reserving one-third of civil service jobs for descendants of independence war veterans, in a country where eighteen million young people face unemployment.
• The government's violent response, including internet blackouts, arbitrary detentions, and attacks by the pro-government Chhatra League student organization, resulted in over 250 protester deaths and ultimately forced Hasina's departure from power.

The Birth of Bangladesh and the Tragedy That Shaped an Iron Lady

To understand Sheikh Hasina's rise and fall, one must first understand the violent birth of Bangladesh itself. On March 26, 1971, Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan through a Bengali nationalist movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—Hasina's father. East Pakistan, geographically separated from the rest of Pakistan by over fifteen hundred kilometers and nearly encircled by India, faced an imminent military crackdown by Pakistani authorities determined to maintain the nation's unity. Sheikh Mujib, known variously as the Father of the Nation and Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal), made the fateful decision to declare independence on the eve of that crackdown.

For Sheikh Hasina, then in her mid-twenties, her father's leadership came at tremendous personal cost. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, she watched as Pakistani authorities kept her father as a political prisoner. She would later recall hardly ever seeing him during those years, understanding that his absence was the price of his love for Bangladesh and its people. While her father led the independence struggle, Hasina attended Dhaka University studying literature and started a family with her husband, a nuclear physicist, with whom she would have two children. When independence was won, Sheikh Mujib assumed leadership first as Prime Minister, then as President of the newly sovereign nation.

But on August 15, 1975, just four years after independence, tragedy struck with devastating force. A military coup d'état didn't just assassinate Sheikh Mujib—it systematically murdered Hasina's mother, three of her siblings, household staff she had known for decades, and virtually every family member the coup plotters could find. Twenty-eight-year-old Hasina wasn't spared through any special mercy; she was simply lucky. She, her sister Rehana, her husband, and her young children were traveling in Europe at the time. In the aftermath, the new military junta barred them from returning to Bangladesh.

Hasina found refuge in India, granted exile by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, whom Hasina would praise and thank at every opportunity in the decades that followed. During six years in exile, she worked to process the horror of what had happened to her family while simultaneously becoming far more politically involved than she had been before. It was under these extraordinarily difficult circumstances that she developed her distinctive political style. As former lecturer Avinash Paliwal told ABC News in January 2024, 'Hasina has one very powerful quality as a politician—and that is to weaponize trauma.' Relying on her legitimate claim to her father's personal legacy, Hasina became increasingly influential in the Awami League, the political party her father had led during Bangladesh's independence struggle.

The Long Road to Power: Resistance, Exile, and Electoral Victory

The Awami League had been overthrown when Sheikh Mujib was killed, replaced by the military junta's Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which rose to enforced political supremacy. But the Awami League fought back from exile, even as its leaders faced imprisonment or execution at home. When Hasina finally returned to Bangladesh in 1981 as the newly elected President of the Awami League—a position she would hold through the end of her tenure as Prime Minister—she received no warm welcome. She would spend the 1980s cycling in and out of house arrest while maintaining her leadership of the opposition party.

In 1986, she led an electoral campaign under martial law that was doomed from the start, but her opposition challenge proved successful enough to galvanize genuine political upheaval. The late 1980s saw spreading strikes that paralyzed the Bangladeshi economy and acts of rebellion even from figures in civil government. By 1991, Bangladesh's paramilitary units were laying down their arms rather than firing on protesters, and government workers were resigning en masse. When the junta finally capitulated and allowed a general election, the Awami League performed well, though Hasina herself made a poor showing.

A few years later, when the dominant Bangladesh Nationalist Party was accused of blatant vote rigging in a special election, Hasina seized the moment to restart the Awami League's nationwide strike and protest movement. By the neutral nationwide election in 1996, Hasina was positioned to serve her first term as Prime Minister. Those years proved successful, marked by the signing of a major water-sharing treaty governing the Ganges River, political accountability for those who had killed her father, pacification of a major insurgency, and significant advances in Bangladeshi infrastructure, telecommunications, and agricultural production. Hasina put Bangladesh on its path toward industrial globalization, took major steps to improve the lives of women and children, and became a global icon for both women in government and the promise of developing nations.

Despite these successes, Hasina's Awami League didn't return to power in 2001, relegating her to opposition leader status. Hasina claimed the vote was rigged against her, setting the stage for difficult years ahead. In 2004, she narrowly survived a grenade attack that killed 24 people. Amidst political upheaval and military intervention against the government, she went into temporary exile in the United Kingdom in 2007. She faced murder and extortion charges in absentia—the murder charge alleging she was responsible for the deaths of four protesters during an anti-government demonstration that had devolved into a riot. She returned to Dhaka after less than two months once charges were dropped, only to be arrested on different charges, with the murder charges returning as well. In a bitter legal saga, her charges mounted until medical problems related to suspected negligence during detention sent her to the United States for treatment. Despite these sacrifices and personal hardships, Hasina and her political party ultimately succeeded in challenging the order that had replaced her. In late 2008, she was re-elected with a sweeping majority, assuming her place at the helm of the Bangladeshi government for the second time.

The Second Premiership: From Beloved Leader to Autocrat

When Sheikh Hasina returned to the premiership in Dhaka in 2009, she carried a bitter awareness of the hardship and strife that had brought her there. Elements in the country clearly wanted her downfall; some even wanted her dead. Now, however, she could assert direct control over the nation's levers of power again—and she would not be easily ousted a second time as she had been before. This second premiership, which began in 2009 and only ended in August 2024, would see Sheikh Hasina evolve from beloved daughter of the revolution to Bangladesh's Iron Lady, and finally to a dictator resembling those she had spent her entire life fighting against.

It's important to emphasize that while the harms and injustices of Sheikh Hasina's rule were substantial, they don't represent the entirety of her legacy in Bangladesh. Her years in power saw major advances across the country, including significant progress in infrastructure, education, sanitation, and health, a rapidly diversifying economy, and numerous social welfare programs that alleviated widespread poverty. She ensured electricity reached remote corners of the country, that girls and women could learn and work as equals, and that approximately twenty-five million people were raised out of poverty. Hasina herself faced constant danger—at the time of writing, she's known to have survived at least nineteen assassination attempts throughout her life, a situation that would lead any person in power toward political repression, mistrust of political opponents, and outright paranoia.

Like many long-time rulers, including even a majority of dictators, many Bangladeshis can look back on their lives and say conclusively that they're better than they were when Hasina returned to power in 2009. But examining Sheikh Hasina's rule requires reconciling two truths simultaneously: although Hasina certainly did some good for her nation, she decisively earned the label of autocrat in the process.

The Descent Into Authoritarianism: Purges, Coups, and Crackdowns

Hasina's overreaches began quickly after she was sworn in for her second term. In the months following her assumption of power, she conducted a partial purge of her own Awami League, sending people who had voiced support for the previous government's reform policies into political obscurity. In the same year, a revolt by the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles delivered a one-two punch to her reputation: first because she refused to intervene until dozens were killed, and again because of leaked recordings in which Bangladesh's military officers blamed her outright.

A couple of years later, her ruling coalition abolished a longstanding policy in which short-term caretaker governments would assume control during national election seasons. Then she drew international condemnation for refusing entry to Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar in 2012. By 2013, she was coming off a successfully thwarted military coup attempt, only to face a case from the International Criminal Court for human rights violations. In that same year, a massive structural failure in a garment factory led to the deaths of 1,134 people and injured thousands more, in one of the worst structural failures and business-orchestrated human rights abuses in history. Hasina wasn't charged in the incident, but she had presided over it, and it pulled back the curtain on a corrupt and heavily government-involved garment industry that routinely put workers' lives at risk.

If Bangladeshis thought they might cordially arrange a farewell with their Iron Lady, they were sorely mistaken. The 2013 elections were decried for unfair conditions, widespread boycotts, and alleged ballot-stuffing, but Hasina surged back into office nonetheless. Turnout was low in an affair marred by violence, and her fourth election victory in late 2018 went much the same way. By then, organizations like Human Rights Watch were openly leveling accusations at Hasina, but it didn't matter much. Not only did Hasina begin her fourth term after that election, but the main opposition party was gutted, all but excluded from parliament with only eight seats secured. The UN's Human Rights office implicated widespread intimidation, harassment, and disappearances of minority individuals and government opposition members.

A Decade of Crisis: Terrorism, Economic Collapse, and Digital Repression

The actual content of Hasina's third and fourth terms can be summed up in three words: bad, bad, bad. Hasina led Bangladesh as it was racked by a wave of violence from Islamist extremists, including an Islamic State attack in 2016 that killed 24 people, and terrorist-perpetrated murders of a Muslim preacher, a Christian convert, a blogger, a university professor, a gay rights activist, a homeopathic doctor, and more. The attacks continued through 2017, including multiple Islamic State suicide bombings.

Although internationally she received acclaim for reversing her decision to exclude the Rohingya and instead accepting a million refugees, she made foreboding changes at home, restricting the role of the Bangladeshi legal system and further cracking down on political dissent. In 2018, she passed the so-called Digital Security Act, instituting prison terms for anti-government online criticism that the regime itself deemed inappropriate.

Worst of all were the money troubles. Bangladesh already risked buckling under the weight of its infrastructure and social welfare spending, even before a decision by the World Bank to cancel a massive loan. Money began to run low from other sources, global economic trouble made Bangladesh's foreign support unreliable, and many of the country's initiatives proved impossible to sustain without spending far more than initially expected. By 2022, Bangladesh had racked up nearly a hundred billion US dollars of debt and was forced to rely on the International Monetary Fund for support. Ordinary Bangladeshis increasingly felt the brunt of Hasina's economic decisions, and even the insurgency Hasina had put to rest in her first term—the rebels of the Chittagong Hill Tracts—made a violent return starting in that same year.

By the time Sheikh Hasina was rolling toward her fifth term in office, her fourth consecutive, Bangladesh appeared increasingly fragile. Long gone were the days when Hasina's reputation at home was unblemished, and although much of the nation still supported her, it was unlikely she would have been elected in a free-and-fair system. Unsurprisingly, she returned to office in an election boycotted by most opposition groups. But it's at about this time that Sheikh Hasina's position began to become increasingly unsteady, and the iron grip of Bangladesh's Iron Lady was slowly pried apart.

The Quota System Crisis: Unemployment and Generational Injustice

'One, two, three four, Sheikh Hasina is a dictator.' A year before her fall, to shout those words on the streets of Dhaka would have been unthinkable. To post them online would have almost certainly brought a knock at the door, and to utter them even in private risked a Bangladeshi skeptic learning the hard way that not everybody they loved and trusted shared their views on the Prime Minister. But in the months leading to her eventual ouster, they had become a rallying cry for a swelling series of protests that brought Bangladesh to the edge of outright revolt.

The protests broke out in June 2024, when university students organized peaceful demonstrations calling upon the Hasina government to abolish or reform its quota system managing civil-service government jobs. The quota system is a longstanding policy in Bangladesh that guarantees one-third of government jobs for relatives of people who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence from Pakistan in the 1970s. The rule had actually been abolished several years earlier, but was reinstituted by the country's Supreme Court in June 2024.

Long held up as a way to thank those families for their service and reward political fealty to the same Bangladeshi liberation movement Sheikh Hasina descends from directly, the quotas have had mixed effects in practice. In particular, the quota system has been implicated as a root cause for one of the biggest problems facing Bangladesh: unemployment. Despite the country's rising economic power, Bangladesh has approximately eighteen million young people who can't find jobs—about a tenth of the population. Those who have worked for a university education are even less likely to find employment than their non-college-educated peers, but both groups face significant hardship in trying to secure work.

In a country where employment is already a divisive issue, the reinstatement of the quota system for government jobs comes with a whole raft of problems. On one hand, it hands civil power to the same families generation after generation, but on the other hand, it outright incentivizes the Bangladeshi government to look past many of its qualified applicants in favor of rewarding people whose grandparents fought in a war half a century ago. Protesters called the return of the rule discriminatory, and since they began, the protests only continued to swell.

From Peaceful Protest to Violent Crackdown: The Final Days of Hasina's Rule

The protest movement began with a few key demands: cancelling the existing quota system, reforming it to include quotas for minorities and disabled people, and ensuring that in the reformed version, no fewer than five percent of government jobs were set aside for families of revolution veterans. Protesters took to the streets, blocking roads and highways in the capital, laying logs down on railway tracks, and organizing walkouts, blockades, and peaceful confrontations with police.

Before long, the protests turned violent, with police beginning attacks on protesters by the second week of July. Sheikh Hasina dug in her heels, vowing that there would be no change to the quota system and insisting that the protests were unjustified. Hasina even decried the protesters as terrorists and accused them of attempting to destabilize the country. Internet blackouts began to be instituted across the country, and the arbitrary detention of protesters started first as a trickle, then as a wave.

Members of the so-called Chhatra League, a student organization long accused of using torture, forced prostitution, assassinations, and more to clamp down on dissent, began to descend on protests by midway through the month. Hundreds of Chhatra League members descended on each of the many universities where students were protesting, but with the violence came far greater engagement from private universities, secondary schools, and other portions of the population. People began to die, with figures rising, at the time of writing, to well over 250 protesters dead, as well as several from the Chhatra League and multiple police officers.

At approximately three in the afternoon local time on August 5, 2024, as protesters clashed with police in Dhaka and thousands upon thousands took to the streets in a march on the Prime Minister's residence, Bangladesh's long-time ruler fled first the capital city, and then the country. After a combined total of more than twenty years in office, Bangladesh's long-time autocrat—and the world's longest-serving female head of government—fled her nation into exile, marking the end of a months-long saga in which the fate of her nation hung in the balance. The Iron Lady of Bangladesh had fallen, and for a fracturing country staggered by the weight of a thousand crises at once, she hadn't gone a moment too soon.

Related Coverage

• The UAE is Destabilizing the Entire Middle East
• How the UAE's Regional Meddling Triggered a Historic Realignment Across the Middle East
• The UAE's Regional Ambitions Collapse as Middle East Powers Push Back

FAQ

Who is Sheikh Hasina Wazed and why is she called the Iron Lady of Bangladesh?

Sheikh Hasina Wazed is the daughter of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and served as Bangladesh's Prime Minister for a combined total of more than twenty years. She earned the nickname 'Iron Lady' for her resilience in surviving at least nineteen assassination attempts, enduring years of exile and political persecution, and maintaining an iron grip on power through multiple terms in office.

What was the quota system that triggered the 2024 protests in Bangladesh?

The quota system is a longstanding Bangladeshi policy that reserves one-third of civil service government jobs for relatives of people who fought in Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. It had been abolished years earlier but was reinstated by the country's Supreme Court in June 2024, sparking outrage among university students in a country where approximately eighteen million young people are unemployed.

How did the 1975 military coup shape Sheikh Hasina's political career?

The 1975 coup assassinated her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with her mother, three siblings, and household staff. Hasina survived only because she was traveling in Europe at the time. She was barred from returning to Bangladesh and lived in exile in India for six years, during which she became deeply politically involved in the Awami League and learned to leverage her family's tragic legacy as a powerful political tool.

What were the key achievements of Sheikh Hasina's time in power?

During her years in power, Hasina oversaw significant advances in infrastructure, education, sanitation, and health. She signed a major water-sharing treaty governing the Ganges River, helped diversify Bangladesh's economy, brought electricity to remote areas, promoted gender equality in education and work, implemented social welfare programs, and helped raise approximately twenty-five million people out of poverty.

What were the main accusations of authoritarianism against Sheikh Hasina?

Hasina's government was accused of conducting political purges within her own party, abolishing caretaker government policies during elections, rigging multiple elections, passing the Digital Security Act to imprison people for online criticism, presiding over extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, gutting the opposition party, and using the Chhatra League student organization to violently suppress dissent through torture, assassinations, and forced prostitution.

How did the 2024 protest movement evolve from its initial demands to Hasina's ouster?

The movement began in June 2024 with students demanding reform of the quota system. After violent government crackdowns killed over 250 people, the Supreme Court reduced the quota to five percent on July 21. However, by then protesters had expanded their demands to include a public apology from Hasina, reopening of schools, and dismissal of police involved in violence. On August 3, the movement transformed into the Non-Cooperation Movement with a single demand: Hasina's resignation. On August 5, as tens of thousands marched on Dhaka, Hasina fled the country.

What role did Bangladesh's economic crisis play in Hasina's downfall?

Bangladesh accumulated nearly $100 billion in debt by 2022 due to unsustainable infrastructure and social welfare spending, compounded by the World Bank cancelling a massive loan and unreliable foreign support amid global economic troubles. The country was forced to rely on the International Monetary Fund, and ordinary Bangladeshis increasingly bore the brunt of economic mismanagement, fueling widespread discontent that contributed to the protest movement.

What happened after Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh on August 5, 2024?

Hasina turned up in India after fleeing. Bangladesh's military chief made a televised address announcing a transition to an interim government. Celebrations broke out across the country, but there were also incidents of looting, attacks on police buildings, the tearing down of a statue of Hasina's father, and violence in parts of Dhaka. Her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy stated that Hasina did not intend to seek a political comeback and would accept her ouster.

Sources

• https://www.nytimes.com/1972/01/18/archives/he-tells-full-story-of-arrest-and-detention-sheik-mujib-describes.html
• https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/the-independence-of-bangladesh-in-1971/
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mujibur-Rahman
• https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/who-was-mujibur-rahman-sheikh-hasinas-father-who-founded-bangladesh-101722859735636.html
• https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/mournful-day-681882
• https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/Hasina-recalls-her-historic-moment-with-Indira-Gandhi/article16837325.ece
• https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2017/Apr/11/when-we-were-homeless-countryless-indira-gandhi-called-us-to-india-sheikh-hasina-1592209.html
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Awami-League
• https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0026669/
• https://thediplomat.com/tag/awami-league-government/
• https://freedomhouse.org/article/fighting-back-against-awami-leagues-clampdown-democratic-space
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/2642956
• https://www.justice.gov/file/294136/dl?inline
• https://worldleaders.columbia.edu/directory/sheikh-hasina
• https://www.councilwomenworldleaders.org/sheikh-hasina.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/05/bangladesh-prime-minister-hasina-resigns/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20090212165307/http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/22/asia/AS-GEN-Bangladesh-Leaders-Return.php
• https://www.thedailystar.net/back-from-death-only-to-suffer-38058?__cf_chl_tk=FeIm.Gseca7lm.caElNG6YiRKQ9BwG9PAMgjTjs8qOI-1722877660-0.0.1.1-3946
• https://archive.thedailystar.net/2004/08/25/d4082501011.htm
• https://web.archive.org/web/20121110023611/http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/08/stories/2007050811720100.htm
• https://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-07-16/former-bangladeshi-pm-arrested-reports/2503992
• https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/profile-sheikh-hasina-iron-lady-whose-reign-has-fallen-after-student-protests-in-bangladesh/3295836
• https://web.archive.org/web/20180627062235/https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1824562351.html
• https://www.voanews.com/a/un-bangladesh-mired-in-election-violence-and-repression/4730032.html
• https://webapps.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/Stories/Country-Focus/rana-plaza
• https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2014/04/rana-plaza-disaster-the-unholy-alliance-of-business-and-government-in-bangladesh-and-around-the-world/
• https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/23/rana-plaza-factory-collapse-history-cities-50-buildings
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/4982518/Bangladeshi-army-officers-blame-prime-minister-for-mutiny.html
• https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/quit-now-protesters-govt-3668751
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpv3kn5v565o
• https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/reaction-resignation-flight-bangladesh-prime-minister-2024-08-05/
• https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/bangladesh-protesters-call-march-dhaka-defiance-curfew-2024-08-05/
• https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-hasina-student-protest-quota-violence-fdc7f2632c3d8fcbd913e6c0a1903fd4
• https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ckdgg87lnkdt
• https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sheikh-hasina-back-tragedy-lead-bangladesh-protests-forced-112575063
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg3ee303yxpo
• https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/05/world/bangladesh-protests
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9033zpv0nvo
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6p27g628k6o
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5xye1d285o
• https://www.npr.org/2024/08/05/g-s1-15332/bangladesh-protests
• https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/08/05/bangladeshs-dictator-flees-leaving-behind-a-dangerous-vacuum
• https://time.com/6330463/bangladesh-sheikh-hasina-wazed-profile/
• https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bangladesh-prime-minister-reportedly-ousted-student-led-protests-rcna165110
• https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2018/02/13/sheikh-hasina-emerging-dictator/
• https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/05/24/sheikh-hasina-is-asias-iron-lady?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=17210591673&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8MG1BhCoARIsAHxSiQnku3jQ671pvTf0GCsZ55pG1gIb-QgS-2_CCl2ev-20Qhv9VQ31rUQaAv75EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
• https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240107-sheikh-hasina-bangladesh-democracy-icon-turned-iron-lady
• https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/as-bangladesh-buries-one-dictator-another-holds-firm/
• https://www.economist.com/banyan/2010/01/22/in-bangladesh-sheikh-hasina-settles-scores
• https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/11/bangladesh-repression-security-force-abuses-discredit-elections