Jamaat–Awami League nexus: The fault line beneath Bangladesh’s politics |
Politics in South Asia rarely moves in straight lines. It moves in circles, sometimes spirals—alliances forming in the shadows, enemies turning into tactical partners, and yesterday’s rivals quietly discovering shared interests. Bangladesh, at this moment, may be entering precisely such a phase. Beneath the visible competition among political parties, a subtler realignment appears to be taking shape—one that could produce a political earthquake in the not-so-distant future.
The recent visit of US Assistant Secretary of State S. Paul Kapur to Dhaka offered a revealing glimpse into this shifting landscape. Officially, the trip revolved around strengthening economic and strategic cooperation between Washington and Dhaka. Trade negotiations, defense cooperation, and Indo-Pacific security discussions formed the public agenda. Yet in South Asian politics, the formal agenda often tells only half the story.
Diplomatic gestures—small, symbolic, sometimes easily overlooked—can speak louder than official communiqués.
During his visit, Kapur broke with a long-standing diplomatic custom. Instead of laying a wreath at Bangladesh’s National Martyrs’ Memorial, the traditional tribute offered by visiting dignitaries, he paid homage to the mausoleum of former President Ziaur Rahman and Begum Khaleda Zia. For seasoned observers of Bangladeshi politics, the symbolism was unmistakable. Washington appeared to be signaling a romantic engagement with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its political legacy.
At the same time, Kapur reportedly cancelled a planned meeting with leaders of the National Citizen Party (NCP)—a political formation linked with the July student movement that played a role in the upheaval surrounding the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government.
Diplomacy rarely deals in coincidence. Signals are deliberate.
The broader narrative that has emerged over the past year suggests a complicated trajectory of political engineering. In the turbulent months leading to the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s government, political momentum was driven in large part by two forces: Islamist mobilization centered around Jamaat-e-Islami, and the energy of student movements demanding political change.
For a moment, these forces appeared to converge into a powerful political coalition. The street protests, the organizational strength of Jamaat, and the international pressure campaign created the conditions that ultimately forced a change in government.
But political coalitions forged in moments of upheaval rarely remain stable. Revolutions, as history repeatedly demonstrates, tend to devour their own allies.
What has followed looks increasingly like a recalibration. The United States, after the parliamentary election, now seems to be developing a closer relationship with the BNP. The US administration has dumped their working forces against Sheikh Hasina’s regime (especially Jamaat and student leaders) into the dustbin. In the arithmetic of Bangladesh’s electoral politics, this makes practical sense. The BNP was the only opposition party with a nationwide organizational structure capable of forming a government.
Yet the sidelining of other actors—particularly Jamaat and certain student factions—creates its own risks. Political groups that feel discarded rarely disappear quietly. They search for new alliances, sometimes in the most unexpected places.
And this is where Bangladesh’s political equation becomes particularly intriguing.
In recent months, whispers have circulated in Dhaka’s political circles about discreet contacts between leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, figures associated with the NCP, and elements of the Awami League leadership currently outside the country. None of this has been formally acknowledged. Yet the signals are accumulating.
A recent visit by an adviser connected to the Yunus-era administration to Nepal reportedly included meetings with Bangladeshi political figures residing in India. At the same time, social media has carried photographs showing unusually cordial interactions between NCP leaders and officials at the Indian embassy.
For a party that has built much of its political narrative around anti-India rhetoric, such imagery raised eyebrows.
In South Asian politics, however, ideological consistency often yields to strategic necessity. If Jamaat-aligned groups and Awami League leaders perceive a common interest—namely, preventing the consolidation of BNP power—the possibility of quiet coordination cannot be dismissed. In 1996, Jamaat e Islami and Awami League jointly organized a nationwide protest against the BNP government.
So, such alignments would not be unprecedented. South Asia’s political history is filled with unlikely partnerships born of tactical convenience. In Pakistan, Islamist parties and secular political forces have repeatedly cooperated when confronting a common adversary. In Nepal, former Maoist insurgents eventually joined mainstream democratic coalitions. Even in India, regional parties with radically different ideologies often unite to challenge dominant national forces. Politics, after all, is less about ideological purity than about power.
Meanwhile, the domestic governance environment in Bangladesh is creating additional vulnerabilities. The law-and-order situation has deteriorated visibly. Reports of extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and violent crime have become increasingly frequent. Such conditions do more than erode public confidence—they weaken the political legitimacy of the government.
For Tarique Rahman, widely seen as the central figure in the BNP’s leadership, this presents a serious dilemma. On one hand, he has attempted to project an image of political renewal—promising to modernize the party and reshape its governance agenda. On the other hand, many of the individuals occupying key positions in the current administration belong to the older generation of BNP leadership.
In political terms, the optics are problematic. The rhetoric of reform sits uneasily beside the reality of familiar faces from earlier eras of governance.
The energy sector provides a revealing example. Bangladesh currently faces the looming consequences of instability in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of global oil shipments passes. Any prolonged disruption in that strategic chokepoint could dramatically affect Bangladesh’s energy imports.
Yet critics argue that the country’s energy management remains plagued by familiar controversies. Bangladesh’s current Minister of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources is Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku, has long been associated with the “Khamba” electricity scandal during the BNP government of 2001–2006—a period when numerous electricity infrastructure projects were approved but never fully implemented.
Such historical baggage complicates the government’s efforts to project competence and credibility.
Compounding the challenge is the bureaucratic landscape inherited from previous administrations. During the transitional period under the Yunus-linked interim structure, many officials with ideological ties to Jamaat or sympathies toward alternative political movements entered administrative and diplomatic positions. Bureaucracies, once politically aligned, rarely transform overnight.
If elements within that bureaucracy remain loyal to rival political forces, the potential for internal sabotage becomes a real concern.
Taken together, these factors create a volatile political environment: external geopolitical maneuvering, emerging covert alliances, administrative fragmentation, and rising public frustration over law and order.
In such conditions, political stability can erode surprisingly quickly. Within just a few months of the current government’s tenure, public conversation has already begun drifting toward an unsettling question: can the government sustain itself for a full year?
The irony is that the BNP’s political opportunity is simultaneously its greatest vulnerability. The party has returned to power after years of opposition, carrying enormous expectations from supporters who believe this moment represents a historic reset for Bangladesh’s democracy.
Yet revolutions of expectation are unforgiving. When hope rises quickly, disappointment often follows even faster.
If the BNP leadership cannot demonstrate decisive governance—particularly in restoring security and economic stability—it risks opening the door to precisely the kind of unlikely alliances now rumored to be forming in the political shadows.
A Jamaat–Awami League tactical convergence may sound improbable today. But South Asian politics has a habit of turning improbabilities into realities. And when such realities emerge, they rarely arrive quietly. They arrive like earthquakes—sudden, disruptive, and capable of reshaping the entire political landscape overnight.
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