In July 2024, mass protests erupted across Bangladesh. The government reacted violently, leaving between 650 and 1,000 demonstrators dead. Public anger escalated, and it led the people to topple the fifteen-year rule of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5, replacing it with a military-backed interim government. The popular narrative is that the government’s violence transformed reform protests into revolution. But what if the government did not fire those deadly shots? What if what happened was an Islamist coup based on a false flag plot?
Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan in 1971, with India’s backing. Crushed on the battlefield, Pakistan sought to reverse its defeat, adopting various strategies to re-establish its influence in Bangladesh. At their core was a systematic effort to spread armed Islamic extremism and political interpretations of Islam that encourage imperial expansion and embedding them among Bangladeshi Islamists. Behind its religious narrative, Jamaat-e-Islami helped form armed groups that became instrumental in spreading Islamic extremism within Bangladesh and across South Asia more broadly.
Jamaat-e-Islami helped form armed groups that became instrumental in spreading Islamic extremism within Bangladesh.
Jamaat-e-Islami faced significant pressure during the rule of the largely secularist Awami League, but the Bangladeshi government never fully suppressed it because religion-based political structures exert deep influence over the private lives of Bangladeshis, for whom the promise of paradise outweighs the realities of worldly existence. This mindset sustains and reinforces the foundations of extremism. After Bangladesh’s 2024 elections, Islamist groups prepared for the next stage and imported large quantities of weapons from Pakistan and Afghanistan, funded by certain Middle Eastern states and from Islamist networks in Europe and the United States.
Six months later, when people poured into the streets to protest the government’s job quota reform, and later its autocratic rule and rights suppression, Islamists hijacked the movement to transform it into armed rebellion, using those imported weapons to kill students and civilians in a calculated manner. Video and photographic evidence, however, show that police used rubber bullets that could not cause the high student death toll.
Subsequent forensic reports acquired inside Bangladesh revealed that 7.62 mm ammunition, typically fired from AK-47 rifles, killed most of the students. Only the Bangladeshi Army and specialized forces have access to such ammunition; police do not. Army intervention was minor, and witnesses report officers resisting orders to fire on civilian protestors. Investigations by domestic and international media, eyewitness accounts, and field-level assessments concluded that the army did not fire significantly on the protest groups. Thus, the question arises: Who used the 7.62 mm ammunition and AK-47s?
In many ways, falsely attributing deaths to secularists or more liberal forces is a plan previously used in Turkey during its 2016 “Reichstag Fire” coup. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the coup “a gift from God” and used allegations that coup proponents had fired into crowds of protestors as an excuse to imprison tens of thousands of political opponents, ranging from adherents to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secularist vision to adherents of ally-turned-rival theologian Fethullah Gülen. Subsequent forensic investigation, however, suggested the likelihood that Erdoğan’s own special forces were behind the sniper attacks to drive outrage and marginalize opponents.
Retired Brigadier General Sakhawat Hossain, then advisor to the Ministry of Home Affairs in the interim government, acknowledged the need for an impartial investigation to determine who fired the shots. Soon after, he faced an avalanche of criticism from Islamists. The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who gives the Islamist regime a face of legitimacy, demoted Hossain to a minor role and the interim government tried to walk back the statement, but was unconvincing.
Yunus has proven subservient to Islamists: withdrawing bans on Islamist groups while banning the Awami League and releasing death-row Islamists from Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Ansarullah Bangla Team, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Harkat-ul-Jihad, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. His regime issued a death sentence on Sheikh Hasina, who remains in exile in India, and turned a blind eye to Islamist attacks on religious minorities. Many Bangladeshis now realize that the shootings that propelled protestors to oust the regime were likely a successful Islamist plot to spark outrage that they could channel against an elected government in their quest to seize power.
Bangladesh is moving rapidly toward a dark and dangerous future, where Islamic extremism could become the dominant force.
Bangladesh is now a sanctuary for armed Islamists who push democratic forces aside, attack minorities, and reorient Bangladesh’s foreign policy away from India and toward Pakistan and China. More than 26 extremist groups operate in Bangladesh and stockpile weapons supplied by Pakistani, Chinese, and Turkish intelligence. They have expanded their networks in political parties, government institutions, the administration, and even the military—appointing their preferred individuals to key positions. Intelligence further indicates that over the past five years, the number of Islamic religious seminaries, especially in the Bangladesh-Nepal border region, has increased significantly, radicalizing and indoctrinating youth. Extremists hold public marches and rallies, demanding that Bangladesh become an Islamic state under Shariah. Their immediate focus is the impending 2026 election. Jamaat-e-Islami and affiliated groups are forming strategic alliances. Pakistan, China, and Turkey lobby to bring them to power.
The deepening Bangladesh-Pakistan relationship and the emerging tripartite defense coordination among China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh further strengthen armed Islamist groups, who expand their military capability both openly and covertly. They plan to foment attacks and unrest in India’s Northeast and are providing Myanmar extremist groups with financial and military assistance.
Consequently, Bangladesh is moving rapidly toward a dark and dangerous future, where Islamic extremism could become the dominant force. Without immediate preventive measures, the situation risks spiraling out of control. Driven by aggressive ideological conviction, these groups are advancing with expansionist ambitions. If decisive action is not taken now, the consequences will extend far beyond Bangladesh—threatening the stability and equilibrium of the entire South Asian region.
