U.S, Feb. 17 -- History does not replay itself in identical frames; it resurfaces in altered forms. In 2009, Sheikh Hasina presided over a political order in which the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was steadily marginalized and pushed to the fringes of meaningful electoral contestation. Seventeen years later, the wheel has turned. In 2026, the BNP-now led by Tarique Rahman, heir to Khaleda Zia's political legacy-has reclaimed centre stage, while the once-dominant Awami League finds itself absent from the arena it once controlled.

The protagonists have exchanged roles, and the language of exclusion sounds familiar. Yet Bangladesh in 2026 is not Bangladesh in 2009. The economy is more deeply integrated into global supply chains, its export ...