Turmoil Between Political Leaders Has Harmed Bangladesh’s People - nytimes

The battle of “the two ladies,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh and opposition leader Khaleda Zia, has led to over 100 deaths and hurt the crucial garment industry.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — The quickest way to grasp the nastiness of Bangladesh’s season of political turmoil is to visit the high dependency unit at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

This is the ward for burn victims from roadside firebomb attacks, collateral damage from the long battle between Bangladesh’s “two ladies,” as the country’s two most important political leaders are known. On a recent morning, Mohammad Nazmul Mollah looked down the row of beds at three men who had been riding beside him in a truck, after unloading a shipment of sand, when a firebomb thrown by a protester smashed through the windshield.

Mr. Mollah, 25, was the lucky one, having jumped out the passenger-side window so quickly that his worst injuries were fractures to bones and kneecaps. The eight men to his right were unlucky: five died, and others came out with seared tracheas, faces stripped of skin, eyelids swollen to slits. Asked what he would say to the country’s political leaders, he spoke dully.

“They are killing ordinary people,” he said. “They are killing their own brothers.”

There are few in Bangladesh who do not sound exhausted this spring. The country was thrust into disarray in January, when the opposition leader Khaleda Zia declared an indefinite campaign of strikes and transport blockades, hoping to pressure her rival, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, into holding new national elections. Yet if Mrs. Zia was expecting compromise, none came.  Read More at NYT

Turmoil Between Political Leaders Has Harmed Bangladesh’s People