After Bangladesh Win, What’s Next for Sheikh Hasina, at Home and Abroad?

Hasina’s main external security concern post-election is the intensifying war in neighboring Myanmar, which has sometimes spilled into Bangladesh.

(Photo: PTI)

With so much attention on Bangladesh’s controversial election, it’s easy to overlook all the challenges confronting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina post-polls.

She’ll have her hands full with both security and foreign policy—though her job will be somewhat easier on the foreign policy front, where much of the non-Western world will welcome her return. 

Internal and External Security Challenges 

One of Hasina’s most immediate challenges will be managing the risks of post-election unrest. The polls have exacerbated the country’s dangerous political polarization. The AL is galvanized by its victory, while the BNP is angry and aggrieved. A key signpost to watch will be the BNP’s next move. Will it lay low, or try to mount resistance? With many of its leaders and supporters now in jail, it may initially opt for the former option. But it has showed in the recent past that crackdowns haven’t eliminated its mobilization capacities.

Another key signpost is Hasina’s next move. If she were to make concessions—such as ordering the release of some jailed BNP leaders—that could reduce tensions, even if only modestly. But she appears in no mood for reconciliation: On election day, she described the BNP as a terrorist organization (separately, the government has recently warned of a newly established and banned terror group called Jamaatul Ansar, but the threat doesn’t appear that serious).

Hasina must be careful: If the BNP resumes street protests, perhaps to exploit growing public anger over economic stress (as it did in December 2022), Hasina may be tempted to crack down hard—and any resulting unrest, especially if serious and sustained, could deter donors and investors that Dhaka badly needs amid rising inflation, debt, and other economic stress.

Hasina’s main external security concern post-election is the intensifying war in neighboring Myanmar, which has sometimes spilled into Bangladesh. Hasina will need to walk a tightrope: Convey to the Myanmar junta Dhaka’s concerns about conflict spillover, while also taking care not to aggravate a regime that Dhaka is keen to negotiate with to allow for the phased repatriation of Rohingya refugees—likely a top priority for Hasina in her new term.

Another longstanding flashpoint, the India-Bangladesh border, appears to be under control, especially with warm bilateral ties enabling border security cooperation that has reduced threats on both sides. But it remains delicate, especially if Hasina’s close personal ties with Narendra Modi fan more anti-India sentiment among the Bangladesh public (parts of which have previously railed against Modi and his policies). Ironically, one of Hasina’s closest partnerships is also linked to a key, albeit presently under control, security challenge. 

Foreign Policy: Much Smooth Sailing, Some Stormy Seas 

It’s telling that within hours after the announcement of the election result, the ambassadors of India, China, and Russia issued formal congratulations to Hasina. This is reflective of a broader trend: In South Asia and the broader Global South, many countries will welcome her return. (Pakistan, for well-known historical reasons as well as its uneasiness about Hasina’s closeness to Modi, may be one of the only exceptions—but Islamabad was one of the first capitals to congratulate Hasina. Amid political and economic turmoil at home, the last thing Pakistan can afford to do is pick a fight with Dhaka).

Bangladesh’s strong economic growth under Hasina offers new trade opportunities, as well as financial assistance—which Sri Lanka received during a dark economic hour in 2021. Hasina’s push for connectivity resonates with Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, all of whom are pursuing new infrastructure initiatives with Dhaka. More broadly, her country’s continued contributions to global peacekeeping missions, and her willingness to host hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, have endeared her to many Global South governments.

So has her nonalignment policy, as seen by her balancing relations between rivals (economic and defense ties with Beijing have increased even as relations have grown with New Delhi) and her willingness to resist Western pressure (as evidenced by Bangladesh’s UN voting record on Russia’s war in Ukraine). Hasina would be the last person to discard her father’s foreign policy mantra of “friendship to all, malice toward none” (incidentally, a line borrowed heavily from Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration speech). Unlike the West, the developing world tends not to approach international relations from a values-based lens. It won’t let concerns around rights, democracy, and a flawed election cloud its generally cordial ties with Hasina’s Bangladesh. 

Hasina’s biggest foreign policy challenge will be the West. The countries that pressured Bangladesh the most about free and fair elections are its critical Western trade partners. The US is Bangladesh’s top export destination—for garments and everything else. Pre-election, Hasina proudly and publicly defied the pressure—due to considerations about a domestic political audience, but also her own longstanding grievances about US policy—going back to Washington’s support for Pakistan in the 1971 war.  However, she’ll need to be careful not to risk upsetting relations with Western trade partners—especially amid economic stress. There’s also the risk of the US, having seen its various pressure tactics for free and fair elections—issuing strong public messaging, cajoling different parties to work out their differences, imposing visa restrictions—fail to bear fruit, and resorting to harsher tactics that could hit Bangladesh hard. That includes trade sanctions. Ominously, the day after the election, a State Department statement asserted that the polls “were not free and fair.” 

However, the West may do Hasina a favor. It values its trade relations with Bangladesh, and it views the country—situated on the Indian Ocean in the heart of the Indo-Pacific—as a strategically significant state, especially with it becoming a battleground for great power completion. Washington made Bangladesh a test case for its values-based foreign policy, but post-election it may let interests-based considerations carry the day. The State Department statement suggested as much, noting that the US “remains committed to partnering with Bangladesh.” 

Hasina faces other foreign policy challenges, too. Relations with South Asia could experience some bumps if other regional states, uneasy about India’s disproportionate clout in the region, grow wary of her attachment to Modi—and if Bangladesh’s ongoing economic problems diminish prospects for trade and connectivity cooperation.

She’ll also have to manage great power competition, especially with three intensifying rivalries—the US and China, China and India, and the US and Russia—playing out in Bangladesh. An early test may be a new Chinese proposal to build reservoirs on the Teesta River—a rare case of a Chinese infrastructure project in Bangladesh that’s directly tied to India (the Teesta flows through India, and the project will be near India’s strategic Siliguri Corridor). Then there’s Moscow. Last year, Russian warships docking in Bangladesh and the first-ever visit by a Russian foreign minister signaled a potential Russian push for a bigger play in Bangladesh—something to which Washington wouldn’t respond well. 

Another challenge for Hasina will be minimizing the risks of growing instability in the Middle East to key interests back home. Aside from friendly relations with most Arab states and longstanding membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Dhaka has little diplomatic heft in the Middle East. But, like India and Pakistan, Bangladesh relies heavily on remittances and energy supplies from the region. At a moment of economic struggle and power shortages, their importance looms especially large. 

These are all weighty matters. But in order to give them the time and attention they deserve, Hasina will first need to ensure that the political powder keg back home doesn't spin out of control—especially with the looming threat of worsening economic stress.

(Michael Kugelman is director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses them, nor is responsible for them.)