Like many of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's political opponents, Amir Chowdhury was jailed the day the prime minister fled Bangladesh.
Chowdhury, a senior member of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was arrested by police in July, three weeks before mass protests swept across the country and a violent crackdown began. It was his third time in prison since Hasina came to power 15 years ago and launched a campaign to destroy the party.
This time it was university students, not the opposition, who started the protests, and as their movement gained momentum and public anger against Hasina grew, the BNP and other parties also took to the streets, along with garment workers, farmers, lawyers and intellectuals.
The government responded with beatings, tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition, but the protests grew and escalated into a full-scale revolution calling for an end to Hasina's dictatorial rule. Over the course of three weeks, thousands were arrested and more than 1,000 were killed, making it one of the bloodiest in Bangladesh's history.
On August 5, Chowdhury noticed a commotion in the surrounding prison cells filled with arrested students and BNP members, some of whom had smuggled in radios and were listening to the news. Reports began to spread that Hasina had fled by helicopter and that nearly a million people were marching to her residence.
“When I heard she had left, it was like a bomb had gone off in the prison,” Chowdhury said. The next morning, he and the other prisoners were released.
A little over a month after the collapse of Hasina's government, Bangladesh now finds itself at a crossroads. At the urging of victorious student leaders, Nobel laureate and Hasina's one-time political opponent, Mohammed Yunus, has agreed to return to Bangladesh from the United States to lead an interim government tasked with restoring democracy. Many of the advisers Yunus appointed are prominent NGO heads, lawyers, journalists, activists and students — people Hasina once considered enemies of the state.
There is still an air of optimism in the streets of the capital, Dhaka, as people rejoice in “Bangladesh's second independence” and express relief that freedom of speech was restored overnight and that they no longer have to look over their shoulders nervously to discuss politics.
Sitting in a Dhaka hotel lobby, prominent human rights activist Noor Khan Liton recalled that until a few weeks ago, he found it hard to imagine he would be able to assemble freely in public, under constant police surveillance. Many of the BNP's leaders face hundreds of criminal charges and were happy to no longer spend their days in court or jail.
But the country is yet to return to normal and remains unstable, with mass protests over the past month having led to the closure of hundreds of factories, devastating the economy of the lucrative garment industry.
The police, whom Hasina’s government routinely uses to terrorize and mistreat civilians, remain largely absent from the city for fear of civilian attacks. Several police stations have been burned, and in many cases civilians are now calling student organizations rather than the police to resolve cases or report wrongdoings.
This week, the caretaker government gave the military special powers to carry out police missions, including arrest and search warrants, in what many saw as an attempt to control the security situation. Though the government insisted the measures were temporary, lasting for two months, the move was met with some concern.
Analysts say the ambitious democratic reforms promised by Yunus and his advisers are complex, would require rebuilding key state institutions from the ground up and are likely to take years to implement. For the students spearheading the revolution — some of whom are now Yunus's right-hand men — the challenge will be to overhaul everything from the police to the judiciary, banking and electoral system to ensure authoritarianism never takes hold again. Many also spoke of the need to revise Hasina's revised constitution.
“It's a huge and complicated process,” said protest coordinator Rezwan Ahmed Refat, a law student at Dhaka University. “The main challenge is that many of the fascist systems installed by Hasina are still in place. There is a long way to go in reforming the civil service, police and judiciary. Nothing will change until these institutions are independent.”
“These reforms take time.”
Refat said that while Yunus still has the support of millions who have taken to the streets, students will not hesitate to protest again unless the government acts faster and quickly provides clear details about proposed reforms.
Several prominent figures privately expressed concern that the interim government seemed to have “lost its way” and was trying to take on too much, but few were willing to speak out publicly for fear of being seen as undermining Yunus.
After the national jubilation following Hasina's departure, the government acknowledged that the weight of expectations was enormous and the road to reform would be difficult, especially since she left the country during a severe economic crisis. Government advisers say tens of billions of dollars have been illegally laundered out of Bangladesh by Hasina's so-called “cronies” since 2014, and the scale of corruption and losses is Still unfolding.
Newly appointed foreign affairs adviser Tuhid Hossain urged patience, saying the outlines of what the caretaker government means by reforms are “still being finalized” and will probably “become clearer in the coming months.”
Hossain, like other members of the new government, stressed that he was simply standing up to implement the new vision for Bangladesh that young people risked their lives to achieve — including Yunus, who is 84 years old himself.
“Once we finish our job, elections will be held,” Hossain said. “Politicians will come and run the country and we will be gone. None of us have ambitions to hold a position in a future government.”
Still, the biggest question is how long they intend to stay in power. Initially, it was said it would be just a few months, but many now think it could be up to five or six years, to give them time to reform the country's key institutions. Activists tasked by the government to investigate issues such as enforced disappearances say the initial investigation alone will take at least 18 months.
“I won't speculate on a time frame, but I don't think it will be done in three or six months. These reforms take time,” Hossain said.
For now, political parties, particularly the BNP, have agreed to step back and let the caretaker government carry out reforms with their tacit support, in the hope that Yunus's strong ties to the United States and other Western countries will encourage much-needed foreign economic aid for the country.
“If this transitional government does not succeed, it will not only bring down the government but it will bring down Bangladesh,” said Abdul Moeen Khan, a senior BNP leader.
But the BNP opposed the proposal for an unelected caretaker government that would last several years. With Hasina's Awami League party in disarray and most of its leaders in hiding or abroad, it is widely accepted that the BNP would win elections in a landslide victory. Analysts say the BNP's eagerness to return to power could spark future unrest, with the first protests taking place this week. Some also warn that the ongoing political vacuum could give further strength to Islamist militants already present in Bangladesh.
But on the streets, most were hopeful about the future. Ghazi Jakaria, 35, was one of around 400 people who lost part of their sight after being shot by police during a protest and held in prison for weeks without medical treatment. “I don't regret the sacrifices we made to topple Hasina's government,” he said. “We went out on the streets and fought for change and that's what the Yunus government is doing so I'm happy. You can't solve everything overnight.”
