Banned But Not Broken: Awami League's Fight for Political Survival

I never thought I'd write a sentence like this: the party of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the party that led this nation to independence in 1971, has been formally banned from politics. Sit with that for a second, whatever your politics are.

I'm not naive about the accusations leveled at party leadership over the crackdown during the unrest. I know those are serious matters and I'm not going to pretend I have every answer about what happened behind closed doors during those chaotic weeks. But banning an entire party, one with tens of millions of members and supporters across the country, rather than pursuing accountability through normal legal processes against specific individuals, feels like something else entirely. It feels like erasing an inconvenient opposition rather than delivering justice.

I think about my own family's history with this party, my grandfather who fought in the Liberation War, my mother who grew up under military rule and always said Awami League was the party that gave her the right to vote that meant something. That history doesn't disappear because an interim government issues an order.

Whatever happens next, legally or politically, I don't believe you can erase seventy-five years of a party's roots in this country's soil that easily. Supporters like me aren't going anywhere, even if we have to wait this out quietly for now.