Writer and poet Farhad Mazhar has rejected the description of Bangladesh’s July-August 2024 student-led movement as an ‘uprising’, arguing that the events were influenced by international actors and that the movement’s key organisers were subject to external pressure.
In a recently circulated interview with the online new-media platform Alap, Mazhar said he had maintained regular contact with several coordinators during the movement. He claimed that he spoke by telephone with Nahid Islam, one of the prominent coordinators, on the night of 2 August 2024.
According to Mazhar, Nahid told him during that conversation that the movement was being forced towards a ‘compromise’ and that pressure was being exerted on the organisers to announce Sheikh Hasina’s resignation. Mazhar further claimed that the intention was not necessarily to dismantle the existing state structure, but rather to bring about a change at the top while retaining much of the existing institutional framework.
The most striking part of his account concerned the alleged involvement of the United States. Mazhar claimed that Nahid Islam and several other coordinators were staying at what he described as a ‘safe house’ associated with the US Embassy during a crucial phase of the movement.
He argued that the alleged arrangement was intended to ensure the safety of the organisers while helping create the conditions for Hasina’s resignation. In his interpretation, Washington’s involvement was not merely diplomatic observation but part of a broader effort to influence the political outcome.
Mazhar also referred to the period when Nahid Islam was receiving treatment at Gonoshasthaya Hospital. He claimed that a vehicle remained stationed outside the hospital around the clock and suggested that it was connected to the alleged safe-house arrangement managed with US involvement.
During the podcast, the presenter asked Mazhar whether his argument meant that the movement had been financed and planned by the United States. In response, Mazhar pointed to what he described as Washington’s publicly declared involvement in the political situation and maintained that the US had been engaged from an early stage.
He also referred to remarks he says he made at a discussion organised by the Gono Odhikar Parishad in 2023, before the July-August movement began. According to Mazhar, he had predicted at the time that there would be no need for a domestic movement because the United States would eventually remove the Hasina government.
The July 2024 movement initially centred on demands for reform of the government’s quota system for public-sector recruitment. It later expanded amid clashes, deaths and a widening confrontation between protesters and the authorities. The movement eventually developed into a broader anti-government mobilisation, culminating in Sheikh Hasina’s resignation on 5 August 2024.
Mazhar’s latest comments therefore offer a markedly different interpretation of those events. Rather than viewing the July-August mobilisation primarily as an uprising driven by students and subsequently joined by a wider section of the public, he has portrayed it as a political process in which international interests played a significant role.
However, the claims regarding an alleged US-managed safe house, pressure on the movement’s coordinators and American involvement in securing Hasina’s resignation remain claims made by Mazhar in the interview. The account, as presented in the original report, does not provide independently verifiable documentary evidence establishing those allegations as fact.
His remarks have nevertheless drawn attention because they challenge one of the dominant interpretations of the events of July and August 2024 and raise questions about the extent of foreign influence, the role of the movement’s leadership and the political negotiations that may have taken place during the final days of Hasina’s government.
