Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh

A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image (of a Jamaat e-Islami campaign rally) and much of the information below is sourced from here and here.

In 2024, the government of Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League, was overthrown in a student-led protest movement which was boosted by US interests. In the interim, Nobel laureate and dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal Muhammad Yunus was made president, and introduced a series of economic and political reforms (e.g. IMF packages and banking sector restructuring) which have sidelined the working class and aligned the country with US financial interests. Regardless of anybody's personal feelings towards Hasina (who did indeed make many mistakes and caused many deaths), it is now very clear that the reason why Hasina was overthrown was not due to a humanitarian, anti-authoritarian impulse, but because Bangladesh had at least some measure of sovereignty while she was in power, as she accepted Chinese infrastructure investments. Certainly, the US is perfectly comfortable with genocidal dictators if they are allied with US interests.

Last week, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party won over two thirds of parliamentary seats - the Awami League was banned from participating at all, and worker-aligned parties were either disallowed or decided to withdraw from participating due to repression. I haven't personally been able to nail down what exact economic/foreign policies they want to introduce, but because of what Yunus has set up in the interim, it might not matter that much - the economic stage has been set such that no matter what party took power, they would have to accept a fait accompli. As Vijay Prashad put it, the competition between the parties is reduced to "which faction will administer austerity"?

One of the many upsetting aspects of this election was that the student movement that helped overthrown Hasina have been forced into irrelevance, despite their legitimate grievances. The "Gen Z" protestors, displeased by the prospect of being ruled by the BNP about as much as the Awami League, found themselves with odd bedfellows, and allied with the now-opposition party (the hardline Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami). They are now in a tough bind, lacking much of the necessary left-wing organization to assert a genuine political project.

This is an instructive moment for many people who are desperate for better conditions in countries that are economically struggling, including Iran with its recent protests. If your country has sovereignty from the US, you walk a very dangerous tightrope - how do you organize for better conditions in such a way that it cannot be co-opted by the US to overthrow your government and put something even more terrible in its wake? Shortly after a jubilant revolutionary moment, you are left without influence, power, or even media representation, and now yet further under the repression of Western imperialism. This is one of the many problems that the population of the non-NATO world will need to find ways to overcome.

Last week's thread is here.The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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