Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned on Monday after weeks of deadly anti-government demonstrations gripped the South Asian nation.
The announcement from Army Chief Waker-uz-Zaman came after protesters stormed the official residence of the prime minister in the capital, Dhaka.
BANGLADESH
Images showed flames billowing from vehicles near Hasina’s house, with police unable to contain throngs of people charging towards the neighborhood. Earlier in the day, the military and police had attacked demonstrators rallying in the area, according to a CNN fixer working in Dhaka.
At least 91 people have been killed in Bangladesh since mid-July, according to Reuters, during violent confrontations between police and protesters demanding the scrapping of quotas for government jobs.
SRI LANKA
As Sri Lanka battled its worst economic crisis in seven decades, then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee from his official residence in July 2022, ahead of protests during which agitators stormed his house and demanded his resignation. The island nation, which is home to 22 million people, suffered months of lengthy blackouts, acute food and fuel shortages and galloping inflation in its most painful economic meltdown.
The nation defaulted on its $46 billion foreign debt in 2022 after a foreign exchange wipeout left it unable to import food, fuel and other essentials. Sri Lanka saw months of civil unrest at the peak of the economic crisis, culminating in the ouster of Rajapaksa.
The International Monetary Fund released the first tranche of a $2.9 billion four-year bailout loan to Sri Lanka in March last year under a reform programme that saw taxes raised and prices sharply increased.
Cash-strapped Sri Lanka is “gradually” emerging from its worst economic crisis after the austerity of an IMF bailout, the president said in February 2024 in a speech to mark independence day.
PAKISTAN
Amid the country’s financial crisis, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan was ousted from office through a no-confidence vote in April 2022. Shehbaz Sharif served as prime minister of a coalition government from April 2022 to August 2023. In November 2022, Khan sustained three bullet injuries on his legs after a gunman opened fire on the container-mounted truck carrying him during his protest march near Allahwala Chowk of Wazirabad in Punjab province.
In May 2023, massive violent protests erupted in several cities across Pakistan after Khan was arrested during his appearance before the Islamabad High Court for one of the dozens of cases pending since he was ousted. Protesters stormed the Army and ISI headquarters.
Khan, 71, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a lower court on charges of making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington in 2022. He has been in jail since August 2023. In June 2024, a high court in Pakistan overturned his conviction on charges of leaking state secrets, but Khan will remain in prison for now due to a conviction in another case.
In March 2024, Sharif became the prime minister of Pakistan for a second time to lead a coalition government.
Pakistan has planned to borrow a minimum of USD 23 billion in the next fiscal year, including the rollover of a bilateral debt of USD 12 billion, to finance its development plans and meet its external financing requirement which will keep the cash-strapped country’s foreign and economic policies dependent on global financial institutions like the IMF, according to a media report.
MYANMAR
Myanmar has spiraled into a devastating civil conflict since the junta’s 2021 coup was overwhelmingly spurned by the people, as the military wages a ruthless war against a nationwide armed resistance determined to oust it from power.
On July 25, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a rebel force of the ethnic Chinese Kokang minority, announced it had “won a decisive victory” against the junta and declared Lashio “fully liberated” following a 23-day operation.
If confirmed, the capture of Lashio would be the biggest victory for the resistance since the coup and mark a turning point in the three-year civil war that has been characterized by increasingly brutal attacks against civilians by junta soldiers and warplanes, and the mass displacement of more than 3 million people.
Video and images posted to social media and on the MDNAA’s accounts in recent days appeared to show their troops in central Lashio, including at the railway station, prison and a broadcast station, and within hundreds of meters of core military infrastructure.
Myanmar’s military regime acknowledged Monday it had lost communications with the commanders of a strategically important army headquarters in the northeast.
With Agency Inputs
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