POST-JULY BANGLADESH: Institutional crises and deep state’s shadow

by Abdul Monaiem Kudrot Ullah

The flood that could not be contained 

THE crisis that engulfed Bangladesh in July–August 2024 was not a sudden implosion, but the inevitable outcome of long-standing institutional decay. The Monsoon Revolution, as it came to be known, was not merely a reaction to a court ruling — it was a developmental reckoning. A society that had made strides in health, education and poverty reduction found itself confronting the limits of progress without accountability.

For over a decade, democratic institutions were steadily undermined. Parliament ceased to be a forum for deliberation, the judiciary lost its independence and the Election Commission became symbolic. The constitution, once a foundation for inclusive governance, was repurposed to legitimise centralised control. Legal frameworks like the Digital Security Act institutionalised repression, silencing civil society and criminalising dissent. As illustrated in the infographic ‘The Pillars of Control,’ the regime’s authority was not singular but structurally reinforced — an ecosystem of politicised bureaucracy, coercive forces, crony capitalism and a compromised media-judiciary nexus, all converging to consolidate authoritarian power.

This was not just political mismanagement — it was a failure of governance architecture. The bureaucracy, intelligence services and media were absorbed into a patronage system that prioritised loyalty over competence. The result was a state apparatus incapable of responding to public demands, especially those of the youth, whose aspirations were shaped by global connectivity but constrained by domestic authoritarianism.

The eruption in July was a generational revolt. Students, born into emergency laws and raised in a climate of surveillance, demanded not just policy change but structural transformation. The regime’s response — violent suppression, media blackout and mass detentions — exposed the fragility of its legitimacy. The departure of prime minister Sheikh Hasina marked a turning point, but not a resolution.

In the aftermath, the emergence of Dr Muhammad Yunus as a transitional figure signalled a shift — but not yet a restoration. His global stature brought hope, but the absence of democratic mandate and institutional reform left the deep state intact. The language of reform returned, but without mechanisms for justice or reconciliation, it risked becoming performative.

What Bangladesh faces now is not just political transition, but a developmental crossroads. True reform requires rebuilding institutions, restoring public trust and embedding accountability into governance. It demands a new social contract — one that aligns economic progress with democratic resilience. Without this, the republic remains vulnerable to relapse, its future hostage to recycled elites and unhealed wounds.

When power is fragmented, responsibility evaporates

THE post-July landscape in Bangladesh is not defined by clarity, but by competing sovereignties — four heads pulling the republic in divergent directions. Each actor is constrained by legitimacy, haunted by history and animated by short-term gains. Yet, they are united by a single tendency: to govern without grounding in popular will.

1. The interim government: governance by brand, not mandate

Led by Dr Muhammad Yunus, the interim government represents not a transition of power, but a substitution of legitimacy. His ascent was not forged through public struggle or electoral negotiation but sourced from a global network of development conferences and economic advisory circles. The authority he holds is externally affirmed rather than internally demanded.

In practice, Yunus operates less as a transitional head of state and more as a custodian of foreign expectations. His language is one of reform, inclusion and soft accountability — terms that resonate in Washington, Brussels and Geneva — but carry little traction in Narayanganj or Kurigram. The government under his leadership has increasingly come to resemble a nepotistic enclave — relying on a familiar coterie of NGO-era technocrats and loyalists, some of whom now stand accused of incompetence, bureaucratic overreach and unearned influence.

More critically, the interim has failed to assert control over the civil administration. The bureaucratic class, sensing the fragility of the political transition, has reasserted itself as the de facto decision-making authority. Procurement processes, regulatory interventions and service delivery are now routed through an informal layer of executive gatekeepers. In the absence of a strong political centre, bureaucrats have become the new arbiters of governance, unencumbered by either electoral pressure or transparency. Public trust has consequently entered free fall — eroded by visible inaction, opaque appointments and the widening perception of systemic self-preservation.

2. The military: quiet control through constitutional back channels

General Waker-uz-Zaman represents an evolved form of civil-military influence — not through coercive force, but through institutional embedding. While earlier regimes relied on overt military domination, this moment is defined by silent authority: control exercised not from cantonments but from magistracies, security briefings and administrative levers.

To the uninformed observer, General Waker’s restraint may appear as democratic discipline. In reality, it reflects a matured understanding of influence. The military need not seize the state when it can supervise it. Following the collapse of the Hasina government, Waker did not install a regime — he simply allowed the regime to form itself in ways that preserved core strategic interests: internal cohesion, economic stabilisation and control over national security narratives.

That said, the general has faced internal pressures — social media ridicule from partisan influencers, speculation about his standing with junior officers and whispers about his decisiveness. Yet, this critique misreads the posture: the military’s objective was never theatrical dominance; it was systemic stability without public exposure.

By remaining behind the curtain, the armed forces have safeguarded their institutional autonomy while delegitimising civilian actors who fail to deliver. This is coercive institutionalism in its most refined form — governance shaped not by generals in uniform, but by their quiet confidence that the state cannot function without them.

3. The BNP and Tarique Rahman: the unstable axis of potential and paralysis

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, long relegated to political exile and organisational fatigue, now stands as both a symbol of popular fatigue with the status quo and a structural uncertainty. Tarique Rahman, leading from abroad, carries the burden of legacy and the promise of disruption. The challenge facing BNP is not only to return but to reinvent itself in a post-July landscape defined more by civic rupture than party loyalty.

Despite years of narrative warfare — projected as reactionary, as collaborators, as the ‘other face’ of the Awami League — the BNP has shown signs of organic re-legitimisation, especially across rural constituencies and urban peripheries. For segments of the electorate disillusioned with both Hasina’s authoritarianism and the current unelected arrangement, BNP remains a reluctant yet plausible vessel for democratic restoration.

But potential does not equal readiness. The party’s strategy has been cautious to a fault — oscillating between engagement and abstention, signalling support to the interim government only to be promptly marginalised. Meanwhile, the deep state continues to define BNP by what it used to be, not what it could become, hoping to suppress reformist momentum by tying it to past failures.

To survive, BNP must not merely contest elections. It must out-narrate the manufactured consent that paints it as anti-reform, foreign-aligned or ideologically obsolete. At present, it remains a strategic wild card — capable of reclaiming legitimacy, yet vulnerable to regime co-option, internal disunity and historical inertia.

4. The Jamaat–NCP alliance: masters of delay, architects of ambiguity

In the shadow of official politics lies the quiet coalition of Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizens’ Party (NCP) — an alliance forged not in ideology but in strategic delay. Both groups recognise the advantage of time as a political resource. The longer the transition, the more normalised their influence becomes. Their goal is clear: defer elections until the July uprising is archived as an aberration, not a foundational challenge.

This coalition excels in ambiguity. While they do not formally lead, they have embedded themselves in local administration, appointment boards and advisory positions. Their media ecosystem — fuelled by well-placed social media influencers and selective narrative engineering — has allowed them to shape discourse far beyond their formal footprint.

Their growing leverage has allowed them to act as informal gatekeepers within the interim government, particularly in pressuring BNP, diverting public attention and stalling election timelines. At the same time, allegations of corruption, lobbying and patronage have stained their legitimacy, particularly among urban voters and segments of the civil society elite.

Still, in a low-information, high-volatility environment, they may function as a transitional kingmaker. And that is precisely the risk. By filling institutional vacuums with opaque influence, they threaten not only the credibility of the interim arrangement but also the very prospect of democratic normalisation.

The Khalilur Rahman vector: a study 

in strategic irritation

AT THE centre of this murky apparatus is Dr Khalilur Rahman, a man whose portfolio expands in inverse proportion to his accountability. Parachuted in as ‘High Representative for Rohingya Affairs’ — a role marked by a glaring lack of results — he now operates as a roving agent of influence across trade, foreign policy and defence.

His ascendancy is not accidental, nor is it based on competence. Khalil is a strategic irritant. He is injected into negotiations to disrupt and provoke, undermining both the military’s consolidation of power and the BNP’s attempts at political restoration. His presence is a tool of insulation, designed to keep established power blocs off-balance. He is the archetypal post-revolution technocrat: unaccountable to any domestic constituency, legitimised by external validation, and serving as a Trojan Horse for a permanent, unelected bureaucracy.

Architecture of control: Bangladesh’s 

engineered stasis

BANGLADESH stands at a precarious crossroads, where the language of reform belies a more sinister ambition: the creation of a technocratic deep state. The proposals of Ali Riaz Commission and the mooted constitutional shifts — be it a bicameral parliament or intricate proportional representation systems — are not, it seems, genuine overtures to empower the citizenry. Rather, they are institutional firewalls meticulously designed to hobble future elected governments and embed a permanent, unelected power structure. This is, in essence, the construction of a fascist ecology draped in the garb of development — a system engineered for shock absorption, the sterilisation of dissent, and the pre-ordained management of political outcomes. In this chilling framework, elections cease to be an authentic expression of popular will, transforming instead into a carefully choreographed ritual of consent management, designed primarily to appease international observers before power inevitably reverts to the unelected few.

The current political landscape is one of perplexing stalemate. The interim government, while fluent in the rhetoric of reform, conspicuously lacks genuine institutional control. The military, a formidable arbiter of stability, simultaneously stifles democratic agency. The BNP, though offering an alternative leadership, finds itself strategically cornered, its options constrained. And the Jamaat-NCP alliance, while adept at thriving in chaos, contributes little of substance to the structural repair Bangladesh so desperately needs. What emerges is not a transition in any meaningful sense, but a delicate standoff, a curious equilibrium where no single actor possesses the strength to govern decisively, nor the humility to yield. Should this inertia persist, Bangladesh risks drifting into a new political era defined not by overt repression, but by a profound sense of disorientation — a state ungoverned by clear mandate, unreformed in its essence and increasingly adrift from the consent of its own people.

Narrative warfare: the erasure of July

BEYOND the political manoeuvring, a far more critical battle is unfolding — not in the streets, but in the very realm of memory. The interim regime is engaged in a systematic and aggressive campaign to rewrite the narrative of the July uprising. What was undeniably a spontaneous, organic mass movement is now being cynically recast as a ‘meticulously designed’ or foreign conspiracy. This is, at its heart, a cognitive war. By stripping the uprising of its legitimacy, the regime seeks to transform martyrs into militants and citizens into mere pawns. It is an attempt to erase the inconvenient truths of Abu Sayeed’s death and the six lives unjustly buried on July 16. The revolution, in this perverse logic, is not being crushed by the brute force of tanks; it is being suffocated by footnotes, op-eds and insidious prime-time innuendo.

Yet, memory possesses a remarkable resilience. It persists, stubbornly, in oral histories passed down, in the defiant graffiti etched onto alley walls, and in the collective trauma of a populace that steadfastly refuses to forget. What the regime conveniently labels ‘stability’ is, in reality, little more than stagnation. If this carefully constructed illusion remains unchallenged, what began as a tentative transition will inexorably crystallise into the next default setting of control — a junta in slow motion, impeccably attired in a designer suit.

The unfinished revolution

IN THE end, the real battle will not be over ballots or reforms. It will be over stories. Who gets to tell the story of July? Was it a rebellion? A conspiracy? A glitch? Or the last gasp of a people denied voice for too long?

The regime has its microphones. The people have their dead. And in that grim arithmetic lies the future of Bangladesh.

They will tell you the storm has passed. They will say peace has arrived, a gentle, cleansing rain to wash the blood from the streets. They will parade new faces in front of old cameras, men with clean hands and foreign degrees, and they will ask you to believe them. They will ask you to turn the page. To trust the process.

To forget.

But listen. Can you not hear them? The ghosts. They are not in the headlines or the curated timelines. They are in the suffocating silence we are now meant to call peace. They are in the architecture of the state’s denials. The ghosts of students who marched for freedom and were swallowed by the earth, their bodies the very scaffolding of this New Republic. Their absence is the indelible ink on the treaties of reconciliation. And for this, you are expected to be grateful. To bow. To be silent.

They whisper that the worst is over. Don’t demand too much, they coo. Don’t ask so many questions. We have waited our turn through decades of orchestrated betrayals, through bridges built on bone. Now, as the old edifice crumbles, they warn us: Do not grieve too loudly. Do not point fingers. Do not remember.

Because memory, in a land like ours, is a dangerous, venomous thing. Memory holds grudges. Memory asks the most inconvenient questions. Who hijacked a revolution and turned it into a televised procession of polite technocrats? Who replaced the chaos of real democracy with the sterile order of the boardroom? Who profits from this quiet, managed forgetting?

Let us be clear. This is not a revolution. It is an inversion. One crisis superimposed on another, where institutions, shattered like glass, are simply reassembled by a different set of hands. There are no clean hands here. No unblemished party, no righteous general, no innocent professor. This is not tyranny in uniform. It is occupation in a necktie.

What we face is not the end of the story, but an unveiling. The revolution they declared over was merely a changing of the guard. The real one — the one that has no closing date — has only just begun to curdle in the bellies of those told to be quiet. It ferments in the unfinished poems of the defiant, in the sleepless rage of mothers who still search for their children. It breathes in the stubborn refusal to mistake erasure for healing.

To forget is to become an accomplice. To be patient now is to be complicit.

The future will not be delivered by saviours, for heroes are just another form of captivity. It will not be drafted in conference rooms. It will be clawed back, inch by bloody inch, by the disobedient. The unruly. By those who know that true freedom is never a gift bestowed by the powerful, but a promise wrested from them.

The real revolution whispers not from the podium, but from the pavement. It has already begun.

Abdul Monaiem Kudrot Ullah, a retired Captain of the Bangladesh Navy, is a public commentator and strategic voice on geo-strategy, state power, civil-military relations, supply chain dynamics, institutional fragility, and democratic transitions across the Global South. His writing interrogates the architecture of control and aims to disturb the politics of forgetting. During the July Revolution of 2024, his two seminal essays—’The Military Mind and Clientelism’ (New Age, July 10, 2024) and ‘A Nation’s Descent into Crisis’ (New Age, August 4, 2024) — offered early, unflinching critiques of expanding security force overreach and foreshadowed the regime’s eventual collapse.