On the night Sheikh Hasina’s regime collapsed in Bangladesh after weeks of violence, Syed Bipro and his neighbours in the capital Dhaka decided to take matters into their own hands.
With the police in hiding amid widespread looting, vandalism and arson attacks, the residents used wooden poles to barricade entrances to Mohammadpur, their western neighbourhood, armed themselves with cricket bats and other makeshift weapons, and went on patrol.
“Dhaka has turned into Gotham,” said Bipro, 33, who with dozens from the area has stayed up every night since the government fell last Monday to search vehicles, question strangers and subdue suspected criminals.
“We don’t have any law and order at all. We have the responsibility to look after ourselves.”
People across Bangladesh, a country of 170mn, have begun guarding their streets since long-governing prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled last week.
An estimated 500 people have been killed in violence that has surrounded the fall of her government.
Last month, Sheikh Hasina’s government deployed police and members of her Awami League party to attack student protesters, provoking a mass uprising that led to the collapse of her regime.
Police have since abandoned their posts amid a wave of retaliatory attacks, resulting in jailbreaks and fears of home invasions.
Restoring order has become the most urgent challenge facing Bangladesh’s new interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus.
With the military overstretched, his government has relied on volunteers including students and local residents to take on tasks from directing traffic to guarding buildings.
The mood in Mohammadpur and elsewhere has remained euphoric since Sheikh Hasina fled and residents see their night patrols as an exercise in civic duty.
Yet analysts warn rising vigilantism risks spiralling out of control, and that a fresh cycle of violence could destabilise Yunus’s fragile government, plunging the country further into a political, economic and security crisis.
The toppling of Sheikh Hasina was “a great victory”, said Zillur Rahman, executive director of the Dhaka-based think-tank the Centre for Governance Studies.
“But in the name of the revolution, what we’re doing, engaging [volunteers] to run the country, state machinery, the government, that is dangerous . . . It shouldn’t be the responsibility of me or the students or the masses.”
On a recent evening, Bipro and other men emerged from their homes around midnight, as the last shops were closing and Mohammadpur’s previously frenetic streets fell silent.
They took positions on street corners, waving down, searching and questioning the occupants of passing cars and rickshaws.
The mood was festive, with women joining them to chat and children playing cricket matches on the quiet roads.
“This situation has strengthened our bond,” said 38-year-old Syed Siam. “We’re all here to serve the people. We want to serve Bangladesh and we want to build a new Bangladesh.”
But the trauma of recent conflict is raw, and anger not far from the surface.
Residents said police had shot and killed an 18-year-old from an adjacent street during protests last month, and pointed to a bullet hole that tore through a lamppost as evidence of their brutality.
Since the government’s collapse, a nearby Awami League leader’s house was burnt down, and Mohammadpur residents said known party members from the area had not been seen.
“You have tortured the people for 15 years,” Shahidul Islam, a 42-year-old who joined the patrol, said of the Awami League. “You have to suffer . . . The revenge will come but we’re trying to minimise it.”
With no police, Mohammadpur’s residents argue they have little option but to take the law into their own hands.
On one recent night, locals stopped and searched a group of three men, one of whom they say was carrying a knife. Some residents beat the men and tied them to a post, handing them over to the military at dawn.
Bipro, who said he was not involved in the incident, said the residents only use force “for our self-defence”, adding that “We try to outnumber them and tie them up.”
“The police were no better,” he continued. “We’re doing a more honest job than the cops ever did.”
Fellow patrol member Khalid Usmani, 52, said Bangladesh’s current turmoil was the worst during his lifetime, but thanks to the residents’ efforts “no one will touch us”.
But ANM Muniruzzaman, a retired army major general and founder of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies think-tank, warned that the security situation “cannot be sustained”.
“There’s a security vacuum in the country,” he said. “We still see the students controlling the traffic in the streets. This needs to get back [to normal] ASAP. We need the police to be back on duty.”
As interim leader, Yunus faces a daunting list of challenges from fixing Bangladesh’s economy to reforming politicised institutions such as the judiciary.
His first task, he told foreign journalists this week, was to restore law and order “so that people can sit down or get to work”.
His office argues it is having some success. Local media on Monday reported that most police stations had reopened, and traffic police replaced students at some Dhaka intersections.
But residents in Mohammadpur said they would find it hard to accept a police force they accused of wielding violence against them on behalf of Sheikh Hasina.
“Without the police, no city — not just Dhaka — can be secure,” said Faisal Javed, a 34-year-old keeping vigil as the night wore on.
“We need the police but with a new thinking. People have sacrificed their lives for this.”
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