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People celebrate the one year anniversary since student-led protests ousted Bangladesh's former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 5, 2025.
Bangladesh a year later: democracy is easier said than done
Earlier this week, thousands of people flooded the streets in Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka to mark the one-year anniversary of a student-led protest movement that brought an end to 15 years of rule under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her political party, the Awami League. Hasina, who fled to India last August, had been accused of increasingly arbitrary and authoritarian rule.
The anniversary celebrations culminated with a nationally televised address by Bangladesh’s current caretaker leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pledged to honor the spirit of the protests by working towards an orderly and inclusive democracy in the densely-populated country of 175 million.
But one year on, that path remains rocky.
“There are many that are disappointed, particularly students,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, “The pledges for reform have taken much longer than we had earlier thought.”
While the climate of fear under Hasina has lifted, Bangladesh still faces challenges from security forces with a controversial human rights record, the rising influence of Islamist hardliners, and deeply entrenched political and communal divisions.
So why has reform stalled in Bangladesh? From the outset, Yunus faced an uphill battle. Under Hasina’s rule, Bangladesh’s key institutions – from the judiciary and civil service to the military and economy – were politicized and abused.
“[He’s] basically facing the challenges of putting a country back together after 15 years and increasingly autocratic rule,” says Jon F. Danilowicz, the former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Dhaka. “The system is overwhelmed.”
And although Yunus set up no fewer than 11 commissions to propose legal and constitutional reforms, political infighting has stalled progress at nearly every turn.
“Whatever change they’re hoping for hasn’t really happened that much,” says Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for South Asia and Southeast Asia at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Yunus tried to get all these reforms, but the political parties wouldn’t agree.”
Yunus, after all, is the unelected head of an interim government that lacks a popular mandate to push through difficult reforms or unify the country’s fractured political class.
While conditions have improved overall since the Awami League’s exit, the failure to bring needed reforms to the military and police has enabled Hasina-era abuses to resurface.
Mob violence, political unrest, and Islamist attacks targeting women, LGBT communities, and religious minorities have escalated sharply, while rights groups have accused the interim government of using arbitrary detentions to target its political opponents.
But experts stress that the current government still marks a significant departure from its predecessor.
“When there’s a charge that this government is acting just like its predecessor, I’d say that in this government, you have good people who sometimes do bad things,” says Danilowicz. “In the past government, you’ve had a lot of bad people who consistently did bad things.”
What’s next for Bangladesh’s fragile democracy? With national elections slated for February, Bangladesh stands at a crossroads. The incoming government will inherit the same hopes for change and challenges of reform as the interim one.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the traditional rival of Hasina’s Awami League, is positioning itself for a comeback, but it faces challenges from the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, as well as the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP), which was born out of last year’s protests.
Still, Danilowicz maintains a positive outlook.
“I’m still hopefully optimistic that the Bangladeshi people may take advantage of this opportunity and not squander it as they have in the past,” he says. “The spirit [of the protests] still exists… there is a group of empowered young people who don’t want to see the country move backwards.”
A woman walks past the peace wall that separates neighborhoods of Belfast, United Kingdom, on September 30, 2019.
Twenty years since the IRA put down its guns: What’s changed in Northern Ireland?
Twenty years ago, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) agreed to lay down its weapons and end the armed campaign to achieve a united Ireland free of British rule. The move came 11 years after an initial ceasefire in Northern Ireland, and seven years after the Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to the Troubles, a decades-long conflict between Irish nationalists and supporters of the union with Great Britain, which killed roughly 3,600 people.
“Dozens, if not hundreds, of people are alive today that perhaps wouldn’t be if this violence had continued,” former US special envoy to Northern Ireland Mitchell Reiss told GZERO.
As other militant groups around the world explore or proceed with disarmament – such as the Kurdish PKK in Turkey or, perhaps one day, Hezbollah in Lebanon – the peace that has held in Northern Ireland ever since the IRA’s disarmament shows what can be achieved if paramilitary groups drop their weapons. However, it also offers a cautionary tale: peace is one thing, but harmony is another.
So how has Northern Ireland fared over the past two decades?
First, the good news. The bloodshed has stopped, even as the PIRA didn’t achieve its goal of uniting the island of Ireland – Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. While there are regular displays of pride by nationalists, and unionists alike, these events are relatively peaceful. Gone are the car bombings, killings, and abductions that ignited fear across the country throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
What’s happened to the IRA? The Provisional IRA has officially demilitarized and pledged to pursue its aims peacefully, with the help of nationalist political parties like Sinn Fein.
While police believe parts of the armed grouping still exist, their influence, along with that of several other offshoot nationalist paramilitary groups, is limited. They may oppose the “promise of the Good Friday Agreement,” says Reiss, but “the good news is that they are generally small in number. They are marginalized.”
What the disarmament hasn’t achieved. First, Northern Irish society remains deeply divided. If you take a walk down the Shankhill Road in Belfast, you’ll see shopfronts lined with unionist memorabilia and odes to the late Queen. Meanwhile Falls Road, only a few hundred yards away, is still festooned with the Irish tricolor and monuments to slain nationalist fighters. Police still shut off access between the two roads at night as a precaution.
Secondly, while the IRA put down its weapons, the opposing Protestant paramilitary groups – like Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force – never had to do the same.. Though their influence isn’t as widespread as it was during the height of the Troubles, they continue to function as criminal gangs, exerting a corrosive effect of their own on Northern Irish society.
“For the last eight years, I’ve been talking to these [Protestant paramilitaries],” says Reiss “trying to see if we can achieve the same goal with them that we did with the IRA, that they could put weapons beyond use and commit to a purely political and peaceful way forward.”
Lastly there’s the continued dysfunction of the Northern Irish government. Under the GFA, there has to be a power-sharing agreement between the nationalists and unionists for the Northern Irish Assembly to function. However, the two sides have regularly failed to form a government, with impasses often lasting years.
None of this changes the significance of the achievement. If the number of people killed during the Troubles was projected proportionally onto the United States, the numbers would be akin to the American Civil War, notes Reiss, underlining the hostilities between the nationalist and unionist factions of Northern Ireland, and thus the challenge in achieving peace.
“Is it better than it was? Absolutely. Is progress continuing to be made? Absolutely. Do we need to do more? Absolutely,” says Reiss. “But Northern Ireland is fundamentally transformed from the way it was 20 years ago.”
Members of Syrian security forces ride on a back of a truck after Syrian troops entered the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, Syria July 15, 2025.
What’s behind Syria’s surging sectarian violence?
The latest round of deadly sectarian violence in Syria started off small. Last Sunday, a Bedouin tribe reportedly robbed and attacked a Druze man at a checkpoint in southern Syria, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The incident quickly escalated into a battle that has left more than 350 people dead and drawn in not only Syrian government forces, but also Israel, which intervened forcefully under the pretext of protecting the Druze.
The clashes add to a series of sectarian flare-ups since the fall of the Assad dictatorship seven months ago. In March, forces aligned with the government massacred nearly 1,500 Alawites in response to a failed rebellion by Assad loyalists within the community, and in April, dozens were killed when the Druze clashed with security forces near Damascus.
Violence of this kind has destabilized an already fragile post-war Syria, raising fresh doubts about the transitional government’s ability to maintain control and safeguard the rights of minority communities. Interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former jihadist who has restyled himself as a statesman since leading the militia coalition that overthrew Assad, has promised to unify and rebuild Syria after a brutal 14-year civil war and decades of dictatorship.
So, what are Syria’s main ethno-sectarian fault lines? Arabs make up the majority of the population, which is about 75% Sunni Muslim.
But there are tensions with several powerful minority groups. They include the Druze, an Israel-friendly community in the South which practices an offshoot of Islam considered heretical by Sunni fundamentalists, and the Alawites, the sect that the Assad family belonged to and conspicuously elevated throughout the dictatorship.
Tensions also persist between Arabs and the Kurds, who operate a semi-autonomous government in northeastern Syria. Although the Kurds have agreed to merge with the new Syrian army, they remain deeply skeptical of al-Sharaa – particularly because of his recent overtures to Turkey, a long-standing opponent of armed Kurdish groups.
Lastly, there are fears of persecution among Syria’s ancient but shrinking Christian population – which came to a head last month when a suicide bombing left dozens dead at a church in Damascus.
The fact that al-Sharaa, a veteran of Al-Qaeda, overthrew the Assad regime atop a coalition of Sunni extremist militias has put all minority groups on edge, fearful of the intentions of a new government that is led largely by Islamists and former jihadists not known for their tolerance of ethnoreligious diversity.
What’s standing in the way of peace? For one thing, Syria’s newly formed army remains fragmented, with many fighters drawn from Islamist extremist groups. Lacking cohesion and a clear chain of command, al-Sharaa can’t rely on the military to effectively control the country.
In fact, the military itself has been part of the problem. Syrian troops were seen to be helping the Bedouins in the recent flareup, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights.
“There isn't a well disciplined national army that could take control of all the Syrian territories.” says Ibrahim al-Assil, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “Whenever there is an erupting cycle of violence…they just go and they start fighting, they start looting, and killing as well.”
But there’s also a question about the intentions of a government that often seems to be exacerbating precisely the tensions it claims to be concerned about.
“Whenever there are clashes and confrontations, the authorities in Damascus and Ahmad al-Sharaa try to utilize that as a ploy to gain political achievements,” adds al-Assil. “[While] people could argue if the government was behind that eruption of violence or not, it has certainly used this to gain more power.”
And external actors aren’t helping. Israel, which insists on the demilitarization of Southern Syria, has repeatedly attacked government troops and facilities there under the pretext of defending the Druze. On Wednesday, the IDF escalated tensions further, striking the Syrian defense ministry in Damascus. Al-Sharaa has since redoubled his pledge to protect the Druze amid a fragile ceasefire in the area, but also said Syria is “not afraid of war.”
At the same time, Iran – having lost a key ally in Assad – may also be seeking opportunities to reestablish a foothold in the country.
“Iran is trying to find a way to regain some influence inside Syria and any force or any group that challenges the authority in Damascus creates an opportunity for Iran to find a way back,” says al-Assil.
Can the “new Syria” survive these tensions? “It shows a huge challenge for Ahmad al-Sharaa and the legitimacy of the government inside Damascus,” al-Assil says. “Most countries, including the West, do want to see Damascus consolidating inside Syria. They do want to see territorial integrity in Syria.”
But the failure of the Syrian government to stabilize the country could also open the door for more regional interference, complicating things further.
“Violence and fragmentation won’t stay inside Syria,” al-Assil warns. “Most likely, it will spill over to the region.”
Belarussian dissident Syarhei Tsikhanouski hugs his wife, Belarussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, after he was released from prison, in this screengrab taken from a social media video released on June 21, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Belarus frees dissident, Farmers kidnap Colombian soldiers, Damascus church attacked, & More
5: Belarussian dissident Siarhei Tsikhanouski, husband of the de-facto opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was freed on Saturday after spending more than five years in jail. US special envoy Keith Kellogg reportedly helped foster the deal. GZERO recently interviewed Tsikhanouskaya here.
57: Colombian farmers in the southwestern region of Valle del Cauca have kidnapped 57 government soldiers. Authorities say the farmers were pressured by local rebel factions that have rejected the 2016 peace deal with the government. For more on rising political violence in Colombia, see our recent piece here.
25: At least 25 were killed in a suicide bombing at a church Damascus, Syria, amplifying concerns about sectarian violence under the government of former-jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa, who overthrew the Assad regime in December. Syria’s interior minister said the attacker was affiliated with Islamic State – the group itself has not claimed credit.
12: A suspected female suicide bomber killed at least 12 people at a fish market in Borno state in northeast Nigeria on Friday night. Borno is the center point of Boko Haram’s insurgency movement – an insurgency that has been going on for 16 years.
1.8%: War, huh, what is it good for? The Israeli stock market, evidently. The country’s main index reached record highs on Sunday after rising 1.8% following the US attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Since Israel began wider airstrikes on Iran last week, the index is up a total of nearly 8%.
People in Damascus celebrate after the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to integrate into Syria's new state institutions.
Syrian government inks key deal with the Kurds
In a big step toward trying to unify post-Assad Syria, the government reached an agreement with the SDF, a US-backed Kurdish militia that has controlled large swathes of northeast Syria for nearly a decade.
President Ahmad al-Sharaa and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi inked the deal on Monday.
What was agreed: The SDF will integrate “civilian and military institutions” into the Syrian state by year’s end. This includes border controls and, importantly, oil fields, that before the war generated a fifth of Syria’s official government revenue.
The eight-point pact also guarantees the political rights of all Syrians, regardless of background, facilitates the return of Kurdish refugees, and recognizes the Kurds as “an indigenous community.”
The Syrian context: Last weekend, sectarian violence exploded in western Syria when Assadist holdouts from the Alawite community attacked a state checkpoint. Some government forces, dominated by al-Sharaa’s HTS jihadist militia, responded with a rampage of sectarian reprisals that left more than 1,000 Alawites and Christians dead.
The SDF deal, with its broader language about rights and citizenship in the new Syria, is a positive step. But implementing will not be easy in a context where the fledgling post-Assad state is still trying to solidify control, bolster stability, and navigate ferocious sectarian and ethnic crosscurrents. It will require good faith from both sides, and firm external support.
The Turkish angle: Ankara, a backer of the new Syrian government, has long disliked the SDF, which is linked to Kurdish PKK militants in Turkey. But with the PKK now laying down arms after 40 years of conflict, a bigger settlement between Kurds, Turkey, and the new Syria could be afoot.Syrian fighters and civilians carry the coffin of a member of the Syrian security forces during his funeral in Hama province after he and 11 other colleagues were killed in an ambush by groups loyal to the ousted President Bashar al-Assad in Latakia.
Sectarian violence erupts in Syria – in former Assad stronghold
The fighting started when some of Assad’s supporters — many of whom now feel under threat in this new Syria — ambushed a government security patrol near Latakia, prompting reprisals from Sunni militants in the Alawite heartland. New leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized power just three months ago, urged combatants to drop their weapons.
“We find ourselves facing a new danger — attempts by remnants of the former regime and their foreign backers to incite new strife and drag our country into a civil war,” al-Sharaa said Sunday, amid reports that foreign fighters were involved. Government forces said they have restored control of the coastal region.
The long and winding road to peace: It was just three months ago when al-Sharaa’s forces swept into power, ending Assad’s reign of terror. The interim leader has since tried to promote peace and national unity – even visiting Latakia last month, where he appeared to receive a hero’s welcome. But real progress will depend on al-Shaara’s ability to provide inclusive governance and enforce the rule of law to address the causes of sectarian tensions.Syrian forces head to Latakia after fighters linked to Syria's ousted leader Bashar Assad mounted a deadly attack on government forces on Thursday, March 6, 2025.
Syria sees worst fighting since Assad’s fall
The militants killed 16 police personnel, and the response from Syrian security forces killed 28 militants and four civilians.
Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, led jihadist militias in the overthrow of Assad back in December. He is now leading Syria through a transitional period before elections can be held. But sectarian violence continues, and tensions have been flaring in Alawite regions that have been subjected to attacks by Sunni militants.
Military reinforcements were sent to Jableh late Thursday, and curfews are in place in the region's Alawite-populated areas. Officials say everything is under control and are calling for an end to sectarian violence.