Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladeshi prime minister who had to flee her country on Monday, August 5, was, all at once, the daughter of the hero of Bangladesh's war of independence against Pakistan; one of the figures behind the democratization of a country that had long been locked down by authoritarianism; and the architect of a relative economic boom for this young nation that was once synonymous with overpopulation and misery. The adjectives that had once been used to define her before she descended into autocratic rule now serve to underscore the irony of the highlight of the end of her reign, a meteoric fall from grace.

After 15 years in power and three successive mandates – she had just begun her fourth following the country's January elections and had previously been the prime minister from 1996 to 2001 – the 76-year-old "iron lady" had barely had time to jump into the helicopter that was set to transport her to neighboring India. The police chief had just warned her that tens of thousands of demonstrators, bent on revenge after the brutal police crackdown on student protests – more than 400 dead over three weeks – were marching toward her residence in the capital city, Dhaka.

She didn't even have time to compose the resignation speech she had wanted to write: In the city engulfed by insurrection, no one could guarantee her safety. A few hours later, Bangladesh's army chief announced that he would oversee the formation of an interim government.

At this stage, and given the influence long wielded by the country's military – whether at the helm or behind the scenes – over the country's 53 years of existence as an independent nation, no one can say for sure how the generals will behave going forward, now that they are de facto back in power. Even though they were keen to show, in every possible way, that their return to power was not a coup d'état.

Political violence is a permanent fixture in the former East Bengal: The "Bengali country" (Bangla-desh) was painfully brought into being in 1971, following a bloody insurrection against its former "colonizer," Pakistan. When the British Raj in India was partitioned in 1947, Pakistan was established in territories with Muslim majority populations, thereby becoming a geopolitical anomaly: The country was divided, between a western part with Karachi as its capital, and an eastern, Bengali part with Dhaka as its capital, separated by the whole of India. As the two entities were entirely culturally different, only Islam could serve as a national unifying force.

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