Tarique Rahman kept count of the days spent in exile in London.
“Deergho chhao hajaar, teen sho choddo din por Bangladesher akaashe (In Bangladesh skies after 6,314 days),” Tarique, son of that country’s ailing former prime minister Khaleda Zia and interim chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), wrote on his Facebook page onboard a flight to Dhaka from Heathrow.
Tarique returned to Dhaka via Sylhet in a Biman Bangladesh flight accompanied by his wife, Zubaida Rahman, daughter, Zaima Rahman, and pet cat, Zeebu, on Thursday, ending his exile of 17 years.
The series of events that started with the ouster of Sheikh Hasina in August last year when a protest by students and snowballed into a public uprising paved the way for Tarique’s return.
A red and green bus, with portraits of the three key members of the Zia family – Ziaur Rahman, Khaleda Zia and Tarique – and with “Sabar Agey Bangladesh” (Bangladesh first) written on it was waiting outside the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
Tarique’s immediate task on return to Dhaka was a visit to his mother, Khaleda Zia, on life support at Dhaka’s Evercare Hospital, before a short stop at the 300 Feet area where he addressed BNP supporters.
Before stepping out of the airport, Tarique – clad in a light grey blazer, white shirt and dark-shade trouser – took off his shoes and picked up a handful of Bangladesh’s soil.
Arrested by the Bangladesh Army on the midnight of 7 March 2007, Tarique spent 18 months in military prison. The arrest was widely seen as a crackdown by the army against corruption.
Sources in Dhaka said Khaleda Zia had secured his release and departure from Bangladesh. He was granted bail on 3 September 2008.
Around the same time, Muhammad Yunus, who had by then won the Nobel Prize, was mulling a new party with the pledge to make Bangladesh corruption-free.
In the twists and turns of events, after the fall of Hasina, the interim government led by Yunus freed Khaleda Zia from imprisonment and has now allowed the return of her son and political heir.
Convicted in absentia on charges of money laundering, graft and a plot to assassinate Hasina, the rulings against Tarique were overturned last year. Hasina, now living in exile in India, was sentenced to death in Dhaka by a tribunal.
“Tarique does not have any fixed political ideology,” Sabir Mustafa, the former head of the BBC Bangla service, told The Telegraph Online from London. “He did not return to Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. Nor did he return when his mother was taken critically ill. He took his time to make his return.”
On 11 December, the interim government headed by Yunus announced the dates for Bangladesh’s next general elections. A day later, the secretary general of the BNP, Mirza Fakhrul Islam, made the announcement of Tarique’s return.
On 16 December, at a Liberation Day event in London, Tarique confirmed his return.
When Bangladesh goes to polls on 12 February, Tarique is expected to take the field, quite likely from Bogura-6 constituency, a BNP stronghold.
Tarique had started his political career as a primary member of the BNP from Gabtali, Bogura in 1988. However, he was disinclined to contest polls, and preferred campaigning for the five constituencies from where his mother was contesting.
After Khaleda returned to power in 2001, Tarique came to the forefront. Soon after, he was appointed the joint secretary of the party and Hawa Bhawan, the BNP office in Dhaka’s Banani and later Gulshan localities, became a parallel power centre, where he would meet ambassadors, industrialists, academics, political figures and journalists.
In the years between 2001 and 2006, Tarique was considered to be the next in line to become Bangladesh’s prime minister.
The Indian government, which has long been friendly with the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina, had at that time apparently tried to build bridges with Tarique.
“He went to India to meet a top business family. His attitude towards India has always been ambivalent,” said a source in Dhaka.
In the prevalent anti-India sentiments raging in Dhaka and the rest of Bangladesh, Tarique is expected to join the chorus.
“He is an opportunist. One may also call him pragmatic. He will be playing to the gallery,” said Mustafa.
On Saturday, Tarique will visit the grave of the slain Inquilab Mancha leader Sharif Osman Hadi, a virulent anti-India voice in Bangladesh who was gunned down by masked miscreants around a week ago.
The murder of Hadi sparked a fresh round of violence in Dhaka when cultural centres promoting syncretism and offices of media houses perceived to be pro-India were vandalized.
Tarique Rahman, 60, has returned to this fractured, fragile Bangladesh where the former ally of the BNP, the Jamaat-e-Islami, is now its main rival.
“I am not certain whether to be happy with his return,” said a Dhaka resident who had participated in the July movement but has since grown disillusioned with the interim government.
“Bangladesh is still paying the price of the mistakes that he made nearly two decades ago. The fundamentalist forces are even stronger now. Not just BNP, the future of Bangladesh is at risk.”