So why would sections of the Western world want Jamaat? What does the Yunus-led interim administration gain from this? What role is it playing?

A recent report in The Washington Post cited a US diplomat working in Bangladesh, claiming Washington wants to build “friendly relations” with Jamaat-e-Islami. The diplomat reportedly made the remarks in a closed-door discussion with a group of Bangladeshi women journalists on 1 December. The newspaper’s report, we are told, was built around an audio recording of that conversation.

In that recording, the diplomat expressed optimism that Jamaat would perform far better in the 12 February election than it has in the past. He even suggested the journalists invite representatives of Jamaat’s student wing to their programmes and events.

When the journalists raised a fear that Jamaat, if empowered, could enforce Sharia law, the diplomat’s response was striking: he said he did not believe Jamaat would implement Sharia. And even if it did, he added, Washington could respond with measures such as tariffs. He was also heard arguing that Jamaat includes many university graduates in leadership and would not take such a decision.

The Washington Post further quoted multiple political analysts suggesting Jamaat could achieve its best result in history in the 12 February vote and might even end up in power.

So, is this report simply the product of an “audio leak” published just 20 days before the interim government’s election? I don’t think so.

First, it stretches belief that Bangladeshi journalists would secretly record a closed conversation with a US diplomat and then pass it to The Washington Post.

Second, The Washington Post would almost certainly have cross-checked the audio with the diplomat concerned. If the diplomat had objected, it is hard to imagine the paper moving ahead in this way. My conclusion is blunt: this was published with the diplomat’s planning, or at least with the US embassy’s consent.

Call it what it is: a soft signal. A carefully calibrated message designed to project reassurance about Jamaat and to normalise the idea of Jamaat as a legitimate future governing force.

And then came the echo.

At the same time, two other international outlets, Reuters and Al Jazeera, also published reports about Jamaat-e-Islami. Both pointed towards the possibility of a strong Jamaat showing in the 12 February election. Al Jazeera’s tone, heavy with praise, makes it difficult not to suspect paid campaigning. More tellingly, an Al Jazeera poll recently put Jamaat’s public support at 33.6%, compared with 34.7% for the BNP.

The goal is obvious: to “naturalise” Jamaat’s pathway to power. To make what should shock the public feel ordinary. To convert the unthinkable into the plausible, and the plausible into the inevitable.

Which brings us to the unavoidable question: can Jamaat really win?

History says no. The highest share of the vote Jamaat ever secured in a normal election was in 1991: 12.13%. In the next three elections, Jamaat’s vote share fell to 8.68%, 4.28%, and 4.7%. In a genuinely competitive election, Jamaat is not a double-digit party.

But Bangladesh is not heading into a normal election. An unelected, illegitimate interim administration is preparing a managed vote while keeping the country’s largest political party, the Awami League, effectively outside the electoral process.

In that distorted arena, behind-the-scenes engineering is underway to seat Jamaat on the throne. The diplomat’s “leak”, the favourable international coverage, and the publication of flattering polls are not isolated incidents. They are the components of a single operation.

If anyone doubts the direction of travel, they should remember what happened after 5 August. In his first public remarks after that date, the army chief repeatedly addressed Jamaat’s leader with reverential language, calling him “Ameer-e-Jamaat”. From that moment onwards, Jamaat has exerted an outsized, near-monopolistic influence over Bangladesh’s political field.

Yes, Khaleda Zia’s illness, Tarique Rahman’s possible return, and even the prospect of Khaleda Zia’s death have periodically given the BNP a breeze at its back. But the reel and string of the political kite are now held elsewhere. Jamaat controls the tempo.

And it did not happen in a vacuum. The Awami League has been driven off the streets through mob violence, persecution, repression and judicial harassment. With its principal rival forced away from political life, Jamaat has been able to present itself not merely as a participant, but as an authority.

Now look at the state itself.

Every major organ of power, it is argued, is being brought under Jamaat’s influence. Within the military, “Islamisation” is being used as a cover for Jamaatisation. Fifteen decorated army officers are reportedly jailed on allegations connected to the disappearance of Abdullah Hil Azmi, the son of Ghulam Azam, widely regarded as a leading figure among the razakars. Yet it remains unclear whether Azmi was even abducted at all.

The judiciary, too, is described as falling almost entirely under Jamaat’s control. Key administrative positions, especially DCs, SPs, UNOs and OCs, are increasingly occupied by Jamaat-aligned officials.

On campuses, the story repeats itself. Through engineered student union elections, Jamaat’s student organisation, Islami Chhatra Shibir, has established dominance in Dhaka University and other leading public universities. Even vice-chancellor appointments are described as being shaped by Jamaat-friendly influence.

And while this internal consolidation accelerates, external courtship intensifies.

Since August 2024, Jamaat leaders have reportedly held at least four meetings in Washington with US authorities. Their close contact with the US embassy in Bangladesh continues. Meanwhile, the British High Commissioner has held multiple meetings with Jamaat’s ameer, widely reported in the media. Jamaat’s ameer has also visited the United Kingdom recently.

In short, Jamaat has reached a level of favourable conditions never seen since its founding. Not even in Pakistan, the birthplace of its ideological ecosystem.

So why would sections of the Western world want Jamaat? What does the Yunus-led interim administration gain from this? What role is it playing?

The answer offered here is uncompromising: the current interim government has signed multiple agreements with Western powers, particularly the United States, including an NDA arrangement and various trade deals that are described as being against public interest. Some may be public. Much remains opaque. The government wants these agreements protected. It also wants long-term leverage over Bangladesh’s politics and territory.

From a broader geopolitical perspective, Bangladesh’s land matters. It sits at a strategic crossroads. For those intent on consolidating dominance in the Asia-Pacific and simultaneously containing the influence of both China and India, Bangladesh is useful. This is part of a long game.

And if Jamaat, with weak popular legitimacy, can be installed in power, external agendas become easier to execute. The argument is stark: Jamaat, as a party of war criminals and anti-liberation forces, has no natural sense of accountability to Bangladesh’s soil or its people. In exchange for power, it would hand foreign actors a blank cheque.

Now to Dr Yunus.

The claim here is that since taking power, Yunus has already fulfilled his personal ambitions. He has rewarded loyalists with state titles and positions, creating opportunities for them to accumulate money. He has satisfied the demands of the “deep state” that installed him. In doing so, the country’s interests have been sacrificed at every step.

And throughout, Jamaat has offered Yunus unconditional support.

After the election, Yunus’s priority will be survival: a safe exit for himself and his circle. That is tied to securing the future of the student leaders who claim to have been the principal stakeholders of July. In this narrative, Jamaat is stepping in again. The NCP has already aligned with Jamaat. To maintain international lobbying strength, Jamaat will ensure Yunus’s safe exit. It may even install him in the presidency if that serves the arrangement.

So what will the BNP do?

The answer given is grim: very little. Blinded by the hunger for power, the BNP has nodded along as Yunus and his circle pushed forward actions described as hostile to the national interest. Mirza Fakhrul has publicly claimed to see Zia within Yunus. Tarique Rahman has repeatedly been seen praising Yunus. All of it, the argument goes, for a single purpose: to reach power.

But the BNP, it is suggested, failed to understand the real game. At the grassroots, many of its leaders and activists have become disconnected from the public through extortion, land-grabbing and violent intimidation. Even when visible irregularities occurred in student union elections at universities, the BNP’s student wing, Chhatra Dal, either did not protest or could not.

If Jamaat takes power through a staged election on 12 February, the BNP will have no meaningful recourse left.

And the country?

The conclusion is bleak: Bangladeshis should not expect their suffering to end any time soon. Just as a meticulously designed operation removed an elected Awami League government, another meticulous design is now being finalised to seat Jamaat-e-Islami, a party branded by the author as one of war criminals, with the backing of foreign powers.

Yunus’s anti-national agreements, it is argued, will be implemented through Jamaat’s hands. Independence, sovereignty and the constitution will be thrown into the dustbin. Secularism, women’s freedom, and minority rights will be locked away in cold storage. The destination is spelled out without ambiguity:

Bangladesh will become the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

In a cruel twist of fate, the criminals’ progeny now don the robes of righteousness while the true patriots stand accused.

In the dismal theatre of Bangladesh’s recent political tragedy, a new act of deception unfolds. Draped in the solemn garb of justice but driven by blood-soaked ambitions, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) Bangladesh now stands as a grotesque caricature of its former purpose.

The very institution once designed to mete out justice for the heinous atrocities of 1971 has been infiltrated—occupied—by those whose ideological ancestors – Jamaat-e-Islami mass-murderers bathed this soil in the blood of innocents.

Today, the hangman wears a wig, and justice lies gagged beneath his boot.

The ICT Bangladesh, once hailed as a beacon of national redemption, is now but a blighted husk—a sanctimonious facade controlled by those who once sought to crush the very birth of Bangladesh in 1971. Its judges, its prosecution panel, and its operatives are no longer guardians of truth. They are, in many cases, ideological descendants or direct cronies of the very Jamaat-e-Islami mass murderers who collaborated with the Pakistani army to massacre our people in 1971.

This is no idle allegation. It is a scream from the soul of a wounded nation. How did the butchers of Al-Badr and Al-Shams—the enforcers of genocide—regain the power to adjudicate truth and fiction? How dare they now point a crooked finger at the very architects of our liberation?

Those who once carried the green flag of Pakistan into our neighborhoods, who torched our villages, raped our mothers, and hanged our fathers, now sit in judgment over HPM Sheikh Hasina—the daughter of our founding father—and the Awami League stalwarts who carried the torch of independence through blood and fire.

The July–August 2024 events in Bangladesh—twisted into a grotesque narrative of state-led genocide—are being weaponized by these impostors. 98% murders were committed by the Jamaat-Shibir butchers and their direful mango-twigs! But they have now seized the ICT Bangladesh as their instrument, not of justice, but of revenge. They seek to rewrite history, to humiliate the legacy of 1971, to exonerate the traitors and criminalize the freedom fighters.

This is a blasphemy of the highest order.

The tribunals have become kangaroo courts where truth is the first casualty. The prosecutors do not seek justice; they seek retribution for the defeat their fathers suffered in 1971. The judges do not interpret the law; they distort it, drape it around the gallows they build for patriots. These are not courts of law. They are execution chambers for history itself.

Let us remind these usurpers: HPM Sheikh Hasina’s government did not commit genocide in July–August 2024. Her government sought to preserve order when chaos was unleashed by foreign-backed infiltrators, aided by the very ideological heirs of Jamaat-e-Islami.

The arson, sabotage, and killings were not orchestrated by the state, but by a coalition of dark forces determined to unseat the legitimate government and restore the regime of direful collaborators.

Let there be no confusion—this is not merely a judicial matter. It is an existential crisis. The ICT Bangladesh has mutated into a Trojan horse of the Jamaati-Shibir nexus. Its continued existence in this form is a mockery of every martyr who bled on the soil of Bengal for freedom. The very men who once branded the war of 1971 as “haram” and pledged allegiance to the occupying Pakistani forces are now masquerading as custodians of justice.

How far have we fallen when the freedom fighters must plead their innocence before the ideological descendants of their oppressors?

In courtrooms darkened by deceit, verdicts are preordained. The hallowed robes of justice are smeared with the filth of hypocrisy. And those who cry for a fair trial for Sheikh Hasina and her colleagues are dismissed, vilified, and condemned.

Yet it is the nation that must rise.

We must speak not just as citizens, but as inheritors of a sacred cause. We must rise in unison against this vile masquerade of justice. We must denounce the ICT Bangladesh for what it has become—a collaborator’s tribunal, a platform for vengeance, a stage for the desecration of our liberation war.

The institutions that betray the soul of a nation have no right to exist.

It is, therefore, imperative that ICT Bangladesh in designedly the current form be disbanded—tout de suite. Its structure, infiltrated by Jamaati sympathizers, has lost all credibility. Its verdicts are poisoned, its judges compromised, its mission perverted. The house must be torn down, brick by brick, and a new temple of justice must be built upon its ashes—one that honors the martyrs, that reveres the truth, and that punishes the real criminals of our blood-stained past.

This is not merely a political stance. It is a moral imperative.

Let us revisit the history these court jesters now seek to erase. In 1971, over three million of our people were butchered. Over three hundred thousand women were raped. The killers were not nameless shadows—they wore uniforms provided by Pakistan and were guided by the murderous hands of Jamaat-e-Islami and their Al-Badr militias. They swore to crush the dream of Bangladesh. They failed—because brave men and women stood tall, among them Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his true-blue lieutenants and his indomitable daughter HPM Sheikh Hasina.

And now, fifty-four years later, we see the grotesque irony of history: the children of those butchers deciding the fate of those who built this nation.

No! A thousand times, no!

We cannot allow this to continue. We must name the imposter judges. We must unmask the collaborators in prosecutor’s clothing. We must confront every verdict that reeks of vengeance and vendetta. The ICT Bangladesh, as it stands today, is a dagger in the back of our history. It has become a safehouse for the ideological murderers of 1971.

If we stay silent, we become complicit.

This is the hour to rise—not with arms, but with truth. Not with blood, but with remembrance. Let every Bangladesh’s people who still feels the heartbeat of 1971 throb in their veins raise their voice. Let the youth know that justice is not a costume, that truth cannot be handed over to traitors, that history must be defended.

Sheikh Hasina is not on trial. Bangladesh is.

This tribunal is not about the past. It is a cold war for the future.

Do not allow the hangman’s wig to fool you. Beneath it is the same rotting head that once declared our liberation illegal, our flag a provocation, our language a blasphemy.

Disband ICT Bangladesh as it is twisted now to serve their evil designs. Root out the Jamaati infestation. Purge the judiciary of traitors. Let the nation reclaim the moral compass of 1971.

And to those who sit in judgment today—be warned. The people of Bangladesh are not blind. The river of our memory runs deep. And when justice returns, as it must, it will not be cloaked in hypocrisy. It will come roaring like a storm, not to hang patriots, but to redeem them.

History does not forget.

And neither shall we. A vile masquerade of justice – The International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh beneath Jamaati-Shibir butchers’ cloak.