Manash Ghosh | Yunus Bid For Silent Coup To Humiliate B’desh Army

Bangladesh’s interim government chief adviser Muhammad Yunus, after publicly confessing in New York last year that Sheikh Hasina’s ouster was made possible by the execution of a meticulously designed plan, now seems to be working on a similar sinister gameplan to create discontent and disaffection in the rank and file of the country’s only surviving disciplined institution: the 1,60,000-strong military. This is intended to turn the military into a demoralised toothless tiger so that the armed cadres of the Jamaat-e-Islami and other radical Islamic terror groups can have a free run across the country.

Mr Yunus’ real objective is to raise an armed Islamic militia on the lines of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, whose prime task will be to preserve and protect the country’s “second revolution” of August 5, 2024, when Sheikh Hasina was ousted.

Just as Iran’s IRGC was raised by Ayatollah Khomeini as a force loyal only to his new government, Mr Yunus wants to rely on a force which his solely his own. He finds the Bangladesh Army not wholly reliable as it is riven with factions, and has a sizeable pro-Awami League section wedded to the ideals of “muktijudhdho”, the 1971 freedom struggle, which he feels may obstruct plans to establish the supremacy of his new National Citizens’ Party (NCP) and make it the key arbiter to determine its Islamic destiny.

But the inherent danger of this anti-military strategy is that will invariably lead to a confrontation with the Army, whose officers and men will not accept such a move lying down, and will surely hit back, that may snowball into a serious law and order issue. Mr Yunus, therefore, must be extremely careful about what he says and does in this respect.

Having already demoralised the police and reducing it to an almost non-performing outfit by targeting its officers and personnel in mass killings during the “oust Hasina” movement, Mr Yunus is now trying to make the Army play second fiddle to his unconstitutional civilian government. He is taking the unprecedented step of allowing the country’s International War Crimes Tribunal put 25 senior Army officers of the rank of colonel, brigadier, major-general and lieutenant-general on trial for “crimes against humanity” during the Hasina era. Trials by military court under the Army Act was deliberately avoided to affirm his civilian government’s supremacy.

When a non-military court like IWCT issues arrest warrants on senior officers, the morale, honour and pride of the military are severely undermined and challenged. Worse, the IWCT framed extraordinary rules specifically for trying these officers, which provided for instant termination of service as soon as the arrest warrants were issued. The purpose was to humiliate the Army while providing amnesty to the Islamic militants responsible for the mass slaughter of policemen. The Yunus administration’s first act, on being installed in power, was to release 12 top Islamic terrorists, including those jailed for the manslaughter committed at Dhaka’s Holey Artisan Bakery in 2016. Besides, 346 convicts of at least 10 Islamic militant outfits, including those involved in arms smuggling, were given bail. Also, 724 convicts were allowed to flee from jail, and no effort has been made to apprehend them. More worryingly, 5,753 automatic weapons were allowed to be looted from 500 police and prison armouries before and after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. Also, the mystery over the widespread use of modern sniper rifles to kill policemen and student demonstrators before and on the day of Hasina’s ouster remains unresolved. This is because these guns are solely used by the Bangladesh military and by the police and paramilitary forces.

Some of these specialised weapons are now being recovered in secret alcoves or bedding piles of students’ homes in recovery drives conducted by the Army. One of Mr Yunus’ advisers, a retired brigadier, made a startling revelation that he himself had become the target of sniper rifles and it was only a timely tipoff that saved his life.

It is no secret that relations between Mr Yunus and Army chief Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman are severely strained. Both have tried to outsmart each other many times to get the upper hand. This is another reason why Mr Yunus wants his own loyal militia. For his government to bring order in the country, he needs an enforcement mechanism which only an armed militia, with policing and judicial powers, can deliver.

Mr Yunus’ greatest dilemma now is whether to give in to rising international pressure to hold free and fair inclusive elections in which the Awami League will be allowed to participate. For that he will have to lift the ban imposed on the Awami League’s political functioning. In an open letter to Mr Yunus, six leading Western human rights bodies, including Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, have urged him to lift the ban on all kinds of political activities that the country’s biggest and oldest party has been subjected to since May and create a level playing field which will facilitate its participation in the forthcoming February 2026 elections.

What has come as the worst indictment of the Yunus regime’s “gross violation” of human rights is from the prestigious British lawyers’ forum, Doughty Street Chambers (DSC), which with documentary proof and irrefutable evidence has accused his government of being solely responsible for killing 400 Awami League leaders and workers and also the custodial death of 21 party followers tortured to death while held in jail custody without trial. DSC has officially placed its complaints against the Yunus government before the IWCT, which the tribunal might find hard to reject. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is one of the key members of this forum. Sources said it was Mr Starmer’s dim view of Mr Yunus’s brutal repression of the main Opposition party that made him reject Mr Yunus’ request for an appointment when he visited London in July.

But the biggest pressure to lift the ban on the Awami League’s political activities has come from Sheikh Hasina’s New York-based son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who told a US news agency in a recent interview that the country’s unstable and turbulent situation could worsen if the Awami League was forcibly kept out of elections. Any such exercise without the Awami League, which gets over 35 per cent of the vote, would be a “sham” election and the results would not be credible both at home and abroad. Mr Joy also said that allowing the Awami League at the eleventh hour would also not be acceptable as that would help Mr Yunus rig the election to bring the Islamists to power.

Manash Ghosh is a veteran journalist who had covered the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, and is the author of several books including, most recently, Mujib’s Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing