Who is responsible for what is happening every day on Dhaka’s streets now?
The college students blocking Farmgate?
The transport workers laying sieges in Mohakhali?
No.
The real culprit is the system that deliberately plunged the country into chaos in July 2024 and overthrew an elected government through a planned coup. Expecting order from the illegal power grab by Muhammad Yunus and his so-called advisory council is foolish. Those who came to power by tearing up the constitution, crushing democracy, and wading through the blood of thousands—how could they possibly guarantee the safety of people’s normal lives?
The anarchy on Dhaka’s streets is, in fact, a direct outcome of the July 2024 riots. The violence carried out at that time—with foreign funding, active participation of Islamist militant groups, and support from elements of the military—had one clear objective: to dismantle a functioning state. And they succeeded. What exists now is not a state, but a vacuum—without authority, without legitimacy—occupied only by an aging patron and his circle of cronies.
The question now is: how can order return to the streets under these conditions? A government that sits in power without a public mandate, without any moral or constitutional foundation—how can it compel ordinary citizens to obey the law? The youths who beat police officers to death and burned government buildings in July see road blockades as trivial acts. They have learned that violence delivers results— even the power to rule a country.
What Muhammad Yunus and his group have done is systematically dismantle every institutional pillar of the state. The police force has been broken. The judiciary has been subjugated. The administration has been filled with partisan loyalists. In this situation, forget traffic management—basic law and order itself is impossible. The police officers who were beaten to death on the streets in July, whose families still await justice—how are their colleagues supposed to return to the streets and enforce discipline?
This government has no plan to solve traffic congestion—and it never intended to. They did not come to govern the country; they came to plunder it. Just as Yunus’s microcredit empire grew by extracting the blood of the poor, this illegal regime is now draining the entire country. The suffering of a rickshaw puller or a garment worker trapped in Dhaka’s traffic means nothing to them. They travel in air-conditioned cars and helicopters.
More importantly, this government does not want order to return. Chaos is the very foundation of its power. As long as people remain trapped on the streets and life remains unbearable, they can continue claiming that the country is “not yet stable” and therefore elections cannot be held. This is a calculated strategy. Every crisis is being exploited to prolong their illegal rule.
In a country where power is seized with the backing of the military, what remains other than martial rule? Yunus’s so-called advisory government is essentially a disguised military regime. And under military rule, civilian problems are never solved—because military rule operates through fear, not solutions.
The students blocking roads in Dhaka also know that this government lacks legitimacy. That is why they can do whatever they want. A government that is itself illegal cannot stand against illegal actions by others. This has become an anarchist’s paradise—where everyone knows there is no punishment and no accountability.
[Dhaka’s Turbulent Streets: The Root of the Chaos Sits in Jamuna]
The most dangerous aspect is that this government came to power with the support of Islamist militant groups. Those groups are now consolidating their influence across the country. The chaos on Dhaka’s streets is also fueled by them, because instability serves their agenda.
The Yunus government is not even a transitional administration. A transition has a destination and a timeline. Here, there is neither. This is merely an opportunity for plunder, where domestic and foreign powers are dividing up the country among themselves—while the suffering of ordinary people counts for nothing.
What is happening on Dhaka’s streets today reflects the condition of the entire country. When a nation falls into the hands of illegal rulers, every sector collapses—education, healthcare, transport, law and order. Every day, ambulances are stuck in traffic. Patients fail to reach hospitals. People die on the roads.
This is not an accident.
This is the natural consequence of a failed state.
