Bangladesh a ‘failed State’ under Yunus, ripe for terrorists: Report

New York: Muhammad Yunus's transition from economist to head of Bangladesh's interim government has proven fatal for Bangladesh as the rise of radical Islamic influence under his watch threatens to transform the country from a secular democracy into a theocratic state, a leading American think tank detailed on Friday. 

The political situation under Yunus reveals a government sliding into being another failed state, ripe for terrorists, and unable to chart a constructive course, a Gatestone Institute report highlighted.

"Since assuming power in August 2024, Yunus has presided over a nation sliding into political chaos, radical Islamism, economic distress and social fragmentation. Bangladesh has devolved into a governance crisis that threatens Bangladesh's economic stability and democratic future," it stated.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Islamist party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami are two of the main beneficiaries of the protests led by the Students Against Discrimination which led to the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August, 2024. Since then, the secular forces in Bangladesh represented by Hasina's Awami League party have faced a backlash.

"Organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir openly rally for a caliphate, while Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, a Deobandi Islamist advocacy group, pushes against women's rights. Mufti Syed Muhammad Faizul Karim, who is the leader of the radical Islamist Jamaat-Char Monai, stated that his party wants to implement Islamic Sharia law and redesign the nation's system of governance based on Taliban-style rule in Afghanistan. The passive response of Yunus's interim government to these demands signals either weakness or tacit approval of the country's Islamization," the report highlighted.

As minorities, especially Hindus, continue to fight for their survival in Bangladesh, the report detailed the interim government's failure to protect them, calling it as its most damaging moral failure.

"Despite Yunus's attempts to downplay the violence against Hindu minorities and other religious groups, the systematic attacks on these communities have continued and increased. In 2024, at least 100 homes and shops of the indigenous people belonging to the Chakma community were burnt down in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Bangladesh Army did not intervene, revealing the government's passive complicity".

It added that, despite being an economist, Yunus's most visible failure has been its inability to control spiraling inflation, which reached 10.87 per cent, up from 9.92 per cent in September 2024, with food inflation soaring to catastrophic levels of 14 per cent. (IANS)

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