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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   30074 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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The government has collapsed and is now in the hands of student protesters - generally these types of arrangements are unstable and it’s quite possible there could be a civil war.

I think this is a bit over-excited, isn't it? The unpopular PM has already left, no one is going to fight on her side. The key policy demand of the protesters (that government jobs be allocated based on merit rather than on identity-based quotas) has been met. There's an interim government headed by a respected elder statesman that is going to hold new elections.

It's certainly been an eventful period in Bangladeshi politics but I think it's highly unlikely that a civil war erupts.

It's the 'new elections' part that may have a cascading effect resulting in civil war in the end, with Islamist groups active in the political field, for example.

How so? Jamaat e-Islami are a small player and the BNP is more of a lip-service-to-Islam party than an actual Islamist party.

Edit: Also I think Jamaat is currently banned?

All this may very well be true for now.

Can’t see the BNP letting the hardline Islamists come to power, and neither Yunus nor the army want that to happen either. It’s not like the Islamic Revolution where the middle class socialist students were highly naive about the Islamists, the entire Bangladeshi establishment (which, let us not forget, a lot of the ‘protest leaders’ were always part of) is against them.

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