Apa has abandoned us: Hiding Awami League leaders blame Gang of 4

Awami League leaders who are now in hiding told a journalist of an Indian newspaper now in Dhaka that they were abandoned by their leader Sheikh Hasina.

Over the last one week, the Indian Express journalist talked to a number of hiding AL leaders and was able to meet a couple of them at undisclosed locations.

There's a common refrain: "Hasina has abandoned the party and its people".

"Apa has abandoned us," an Awami league leader said, referring to Hasina, wrote Subhajit Roy of the newspaper in an article titled "Sheikh Hasina gone, her party leaders in hiding: We could sense the anger, she didn't listen."

"This feeling of abandonment is shared by many of them who did not foresee the events of 5 August — it was the day Hasina quit, and along with her sister Sheikh Rehana, fled the country. Her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy is in the US, while daughter Saima Wazed is in India," it wrote.

The report further said, her cabinet, even her closest aides, were taken by "complete surprise" when she decided to leave, sources in the Awami League said. "We learnt about it from TV," a leader said.

"This put their lives in danger, and the angry mob — a mix of protesters, activists from political rivals BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami and opportunists — targeted the homes and businesses of Awami League leaders and the party offices. They were burnt, damaged, vandalised, looted."

One of the Awami League leaders told the journalist: We were able to get out of our homes just in time, when the Army chief was addressing the nation around 3pm and people were glued to TV screens.

"My family and I would have been lynched and burnt alive had we been caught," another leader, who was a minister, said.

The report recalled, "During the 16-and-a-half years of Awami League rule, Opposition leaders had been targeted by the Hasina government which jailed them, beat them up, intimidated and harassed them. Suddenly, the shoe was on the other foot."

Looking back at the developments, some of them expressed regret at the turn of events, especially the firing at the students and protesters in July, and then on August 3-4 when people came out on the streets. The protesters defied curfew orders on the fateful August 5, the day the government collapsed.

"She stopped listening to us," one of the leaders said as he blamed the inner circle of Awami League, the coterie — one of them called it "the Gang of Four" — which he said had cut her off from the ground reality."

The leader named Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, investment advisor Salman Rahman, Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader and the then Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan.

"This Gang of Four led to her downfall. She had blind faith in these people, and lost the political instinct that she had in the past," he said.

The mistake of not bringing the BNP on board for the elections in January this year is being described as Hasina's "major mistake".

Sources told the Indian Express that some leaders of the Awami League were put in touch with Tarique Rahman in London through intermediaries — he is the son of Hasina's bete noire, BNP leader and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

"There was a proposal of a backchannel that we thought of establishing with Tarique in January 2023, a year before the elections in Bangladesh in January 2024… But Hasina did not give a green light to the proposal," a source told the Indian newspaper.

According to an Awami League leader, it said: her refusal to engage with the BNP chief's son was a "blunder" because getting BNP ready for elections — under a caretaker government — would have quietened the anger and grievances on the ground.

"We could sense the anger among the people due to corruption, chandabaaji (extortion), police atrocities… and getting BNP on board for the elections would have taken that steam off. We could have still won and kept the party in power," the leader said.

Leaders and activists felt that Hasina, especially after winning the January 2024 elections, became much more stubborn and would not pay heed to any advice. "She became overconfident after the fourth consecutive win, and failed to see the scale of anger when the quota reform protests broke out," the leader said.

Quoting unnamed sources, the Indian newspaper wrote: Despite appeals from some of the leaders, who tactfully asked her to meet the student protesters early July, she refused, sources said. The last nail in the coffin was when the Detective Branch picked up the student leaders in July and released them after intimidating them and extracting a commitment to withdraw the agitation.

The tactic backfired, and the students made it public how they had been forcibly asked to withdraw the agitation.

This triggered a chain of events, leading to her flight from the country, the report said.