Her ouster came after weeks of relentless protests and clashes with security forces that have killed nearly 300 people since mid-July, according to local media reports. What began as peaceful demonstrations by students frustrated with a quota system for government jobs unexpectedly grew into a major uprising against Hasina and her ruling Awami League party.
How it all began
Hasina first became prime minister in 1996, and then returned in 2008 to win the office she held until Monday. Analysts who have tracked her rise say her political life was driven by tragedy. On Aug. 15, 1975, her father and the first leader of independent Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujib Rahman was assassinated in a military coup.
That fateful night, while 28-year-old Hasina was in Germany with her younger sister, a group of army officers burst into the family’s Dhaka home and killed her parents, three other siblings and the household staff — 18 people in all. Some say the brutal act pushed her to consolidate unprecedented power. It was also what motivated her throughout her political career, analysts say.
Two women, two parties
What followed was a decadeslong power struggle between Hasina and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, who's now ailing and under house arrest. The two women ran the country alternatively for years in a bitter rivalry that polarized Bangladesh politics.
Years of turmoil
After Hasina lost the general election in 2001, she became the leader of the opposition. Political violence, unrest and military interventions marked the years until she was reelected. Back in power, she fixed her sights on the economy and built infrastructure previously unseen in Bangladesh. A strong electricity grid that reaches far-flung villages; big-ticket projects such as highways, rail lines and ports. The country’s garment industry became one of the world’s most competitive.
Opposition rises
Her government employed the same heavy-handed approach when these protests began, which inflamed tensions even more, analysts said. The student-led movement also came as Bangladesh underwent an economic churn given the recent global slowdown. Ahead of the January polls, there was labor unrest and dissatisfaction with the government.
What's next?
After 15 years of Hasina's administration, it’s not clear what comes next. Shortly after she was seen on TV boarding a military helicopter with her sister, the country’s military chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, said he would seek the president’s guidance on forming an interim government.
He promised that the military would launch an investigation into the deadly crackdown on student-led protests that fueled outrage against the government. Thousands of protesters celebrated in the capital, waving Bangladeshi flags as the news broke, while others looted her official residence, carrying out furniture and even fish from the kitchens.
It is an “end of a regime that delivered a lot of development but was increasingly authoritarian, as we saw with the mass killings these past weeks,” said Naomi Hossain, a research professor specializing in Bangladesh at the London-based SOAS University.
The country has seen interim governments in the past, Hossain said, adding that for now the hope is that the army will ensure peace. But there are fears of reprisal violence. “It could get ugly if the army isn’t able to calm people down and defuse the issue. It could be a while before we are out of the woods,” she added.
