2024 is the yr of elections, with bigger than 100 worldwide locations across the realm, at the side of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the US and Syria, having held elections.
Whereas most were contentious, the fallout from two – Bangladesh and Syria – grew to turn out to be into protests and uprisings.
The yr began with the Bangladesh elections on 7 January. The election modified into as soon as largely criticised as biased and unfair.
This modified into as soon as the third consecutive election below the rule of thumb of Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president.
One match after every other led to a mute student-led motion in opposition to the quota design for govt jobs in July.
The then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime launched worthy crackdowns on the protesters, turning the mute divulge into an rebellion in opposition to the regime.
Hasina fell and fled the country on 5 August when folks from in each place the country entered Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and started their march in opposition to Gonobhaban.
Hasina ruled Bangladesh for 15 years earlier than fleeing, usually claiming that she modified into as soon as following her father’s legacy.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad furthermore shares a identical fate.
Bashar assumed energy on 17 July 2000 following the loss of life of his father, Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president who ruled the nation since 1971.
Born and raised in the capital metropolis of Damascus, Bashar wasn’t supposed to be the president as he had an elder brother, an heir apparent after his father’s loss of life.
So he graduated from clinical faculty, specialising in ophthalmology, and started working as a health care provider in the Syrian Navy.
However it completely all modified in 1994.
Bashar’s elder brother, Bassel al-Assad, died in a automobile accident.
This role the stage for Bashar to be recalled to Syria to blueprint discontinuance over Bassel’s role as the heir apparent.
The ophthalmologist all straight away needed to enter a protection drive academy and blueprint discontinuance cost of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 1998.
Stunning petrified of a month after his father’s loss of life, Assad needed to blueprint discontinuance the role of Syria’s president.
Even calling Bashar’s 24-yr-prolonged rule a rollercoaster run could presumably well be an underestimation. It modified into as soon as marred by protests, violence, civil war, and extreme human rights violations that resulted in millions of Syrians searching for refuge in diversified worldwide locations.
To for the time being, Syria is mute the realm’s excellent refugee disaster, representing with regards to 25% of the worldwide refugee inhabitants, consistent with Field Worldwide.
Bashar’s rule ended on the unusual time (8 December) with him fleeing the country and heading to an undisclosed intention.
This reminds us of how Hasina fled. The country didn’t know the put its fallen premiere modified into as soon as heading earlier than she entered Indian airspace.
Bangladesh and Syria: Republic on duvet, autocratic in pages
Both Syria and Bangladesh are republics. One is “The Syrian Arab Republic”, and the diversified is “The Folks’s Republic of Bangladesh.”
Nonetheless, primarily, neither Bashar nor Hasina’s rule exhibited the qualities required for a democratic design.
Syria had been a one-celebration direct for a protracted time, whereas Sheikh Hasina, over her 15 years of rule, successfully muzzled the country’s media and centered the opposition leaders in an strive to cripple somebody who would dare to inform her.
In each worldwide locations, voters knew the outcomes of the next elections even earlier than the dates were published.
Even amid the full govt crackdowns, folks revolted a astronomical quantity of cases. In her rule, Hasina successfully contained the full protests introduced out in opposition to her regime other than the July rebellion.
On the diversified hand, a lot of the 24-yr-prolonged rule of Bashar contained the continuing Syrian Civil Battle that began in 2011, adopted by Arab Spring protests that known as for political reforms and the reinstatement of civil rights in Syria.
Syria had a direct of emergency since 1963. The protesters furthermore demanded that it pause.
A ways flung places powers began entering Syria, making the inform critical more refined than in any diversified country across the realm.
For the leisure of the Arab worldwide locations, it modified into as soon as a wake-up call when the Arab Spring protests, starting in Tunisia, unfold to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.
However when Bashar ordered a crackdown on protesters in March 2011 that spiralled the country into a civil war and killed with regards to half 1,000,000 folks, the Arab League suspended Syria from the league.
In the end, the US intervened, with the then-US president Barack Obama imposing restricted sanctions in opposition to the Bashar govt in April 2011.
Russia, on the diversified hand, took Bashar’s aspect.
Even in 2015, at a time when all hopes gave the impact bleak for Bashar, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia modified into as soon as offering the Bashar govt with sufficiently “serious” attend, each logistical and army.
At some stage in the Syrian Civil Battle, Bashar’s govt confronted allegations of extreme human rights and warfare violations, at the side of accomplishing on the least 300 chemical attacks.
More impartial impartial today, France issued an arrest warrant in opposition to Bashar over the verbalize of banned chemical weapons in opposition to civilians in Syria on 15 November 2023.
Syria is what Bangladesh can also appreciate turn out to be
The occasions that led to the fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria are critical more refined than the occasions that ousted Hasina.
Nonetheless, the historic previous of Syria foreshadows what can also were if the July rebellion modified into as soon as now not winning.
Bashar modified into as soon as the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces. With the military at his disposal, he led the war in opposition to his folks.
Shooting at your appreciate folks, main to millions turning into refugees, is the worst ingredient any leader can enact.
Bashar al-Assad did precisely that.
From the discussions that got here to mild between Sheikh Hasina and the navy earlier than she fled the country, this would presumably well be very determined that Hasina wished the safety forces to intervene and quit the protesters who were heading to Gonobhaban.
In accordance with sources, the safety forces declined to avert additional bloodshed without reference to Hasina blasting them for their “failure,” ordering them to resist the oldsters and declining to resign.
They argued it could possibly presumably well role off more casualties. There will be a sea of blood but no assurance of preserving folks away from the Ganobhaban.
