Lessons from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh

When Lee Kuan Yew first took on the task of transforming Singapore from a Third World port city to a First World peaceful and prosperous nation-state, his initial model was Sri Lanka. What happened to Sri Lanka today and why?

Since the 1980s, Sri Lanka, once the island paradise, started falling into the quagmire of ideological and ethnic conflicts. The leaders who led the campaign to militarily end the devastating ethnic conflict were elected several times. But after their last election victory, the serious financial crisis exacerbated by Covid-19 turned into a crisis of political-economy and governance. The same electorate bringing the Rajapaksas to the presidential and prime ministerial palaces repeatedly also forced them not just to flee their palaces but also their country. The Rajapaksas’ fall from power started worrying many others, hence the question: “Are we going to be the next Sri Lanka?”

In South Asia, when Bangladesh first gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, it was described as a “Basket case”. Defying all odds, Bangladesh not just survived but also thrived. In recent years, it was one of the models of stability and prosperity, with highest rates of economic growth and ready to graduate from the grouping of Least Developed Countries to a developing country.

And then suddenly, in August 2024 what do we see? Angry mobs ransacking the official residence of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who not only presided over the longest period of stability and prosperity but was also the surviving heir apparent to the leader of the new nation, Bangladesh. Not only was assassinated leader Sheikh Mujib’s daughter forced to flee the country, but angry mobs were seen breaking the statue of Bongo Bandhu, the Father of the Nation. It brought back memories of the statues of Lenin being downed after the fall of the Soviet Union or Saddam Husain’s after the Iraq War and the fall of Baghdad.

When leaders fall and nations fail

Starting from the Greek City States to the Vietnam War era US, Barbara Tuchman, in her fascinating book The March of Folly, explains how even intelligent people become blind in the seat of power. In my article, ‘Why do nation-states fail?’ I have related the story of the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko and his role in the failure of one of the largest and richest nations of Africa and indeed the world. Working on a research project, causes of state failure, Mobutu’s case caught my attention for many reasons. His is a classic case of crisis of governance leading to the fall of a leader and state failure.

In 1961, after the assassination of the democratically elected leader Patric Lumumba, Col Mobutu was installed as the President of one of the most naturally endowed countries, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the darling of external powers, he ruled that nation for close to four decades with an iron fist, further impoverishing his destitute people but enriching himself and his mentors. He had stashed unlimited amounts in foreign banks and had numerous luxury villas all over the world, including one in the lakeside of Geneva, where I used to live at that stage of my own life and world history. Besides my extensive travels and sympathy for the common African people, that was another reason his case caught my attention.

Mobutu’s misrule became so intolerable that his own unpaid security forces eventually started welcoming the rebel leader Laurent Kabila and his forces. On 26 May 1997, as the rebels reached the outskirts of the capital Kinshasa, Mobutu fled on his waiting jet to an uncertain destination. As his stars started falling, the external actors, who initially installed him in power, had already disowned him. Countries where he had amassed his wealth also did not give him permission to land. As the airplane carrying him, his family and closest associates started running out of fuel, France gave permission to land in one of its military airfields on the condition that immediately after refueling he would leave.

The King of Morocco finally agreed to give him asylum until he could find a place to go. As he was suffering from cancer, he soon died there. The irony is, stolen from his poor people, he had so much money and palaces all over the world, but couldn’t find even a place to die in peace.

Lessons from the neighborhood

Rajapaksa and Hasina are not Mobutu and knowing the resilience of the people and leaders there, Sri-Lanka and Bangladesh are certainly not going to be DRC. In fact, Sri Lanka is already on the path of recovery and under the enlightened leadership of Nobel Laureate Prof Mohammad Yunus, whom I have the honor of knowing, Bangladesh will be back on its path of stability and prosperity soon.

I recounted the Mobutu story simply to illustrate that leadership motivations and roles explain why despite plentiful natural and human resources, some countries fail whereas other less naturally endowed countries prosper and succeed. With this in mind, how can leaders and nations avoid what happened to Rajapaksas in Sri Lanka and Hasina in Bangladesh?

Once a leader reaches the top, popular demands for a more equitable sharing of political power and economic benefits within and across societies creates a crisis of global political-economy and governance. Dynamics of time and technology, demonstrated by the power of social media, has completely changed state-society relations. The fall of the Berlin Wall saw the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Of late, the relationship between the governors and the governed under liberal democracy, as defined by periodic elections, has also changed. Today leaders are under constant vigil. Any misbehavior and anger of the same electorate, which gives leaders the mandate to rule for a certain number of years, can force them to flee halfway or even before. So, the first lesson is, never take people for granted, just because you have been elected. Leaders too must remain watchful of the popular mood.

Both in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, there is at least one other significant common denominator. International relations is the study of great power relations and how they affect the rest of the world. It was important to comprehend the Great Game or the Cold War to fully understand the rise and fall of Mobutu yesterday. Today, it is even more important to understand the simultaneously cooperating, competing and confronting nature of great power relations and how it affects leaders and societies in one of the new epicenters of the current global paradigm flux, South Asia. These complexities and challenges demand knowledge and wisdom in leaders interested in managing state affairs successfully.

There is also a lesson for great powers. It is futile to intervene in the politics or electoral processes of other countries as democracy only works if and when popular will is allowed to prevail without considering with me or against me. In this day and age, it will not take much time for people to know who is real and who is a proxy. And when they do, as Newton’s Third Law, it will also create an equal and opposite reaction from the people. 

So, understanding the motivations and mindsets that conditioned the leadership roles and behaviors of Rajapaksa and Hasina, elite culture that supported and later disgraced them, external factors that first helped and sustain them in power and later precipitated their fall, are all important for anyone interested in avoiding their experiences. Amidst these complexities of personal behaviors, national and international challenges, if there is one single but significant lesson from both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, it is this. In this age of instant information and communication, remote listening, viewing, networking, and great power games, ignorance and arrogance are weaknesses of leaders which can easily turn success into failure, victory into defeat. Sadly, when leaders fall and states fail, mostly it is the people who suffer. The DRC, Somalia and Afghanistan, are examples which must be avoided. South Asia can ill afford another Afghanistan.

Views are personal