Inside Sheikh Hasina’s virtual war room: How Awami League runs from exile

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina - File Photo

Even after being exiled and facing a formal ban in Bangladesh, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League are far from being silenced. A News18 exclusive details how the party has pivoted to a digitally coordinated international network to stay politically active and keep its message flowing to supporters back home.

On August 5 last year, Hasina resigned and fled to India after protesters stormed her official residence after weeks of deadly anti-government demonstrations in the country.

Soon after, the Awami League leadership switched to what former state minister Mohammad A Arafat called the “Covid-19 era set-ups” — a now-familiar work-from-home model powered by video conferencing and social media.

“The learnings of Covid-19 came in handy for us. We need not teach what Zoom is, how one needs to join the Zoom link anymore. Most of our work gets done on a work-from-home basis. Those who work for us have the requisite equipment with them," Arafat told News18.

Despite the leadership being scattered across different continents, the party maintains daily communications. Hasina herself is said to be holding three-to-five hour daily Zoom calls with district-level committees in Bangladesh. These sessions are recorded, edited for key messages, and circulated across Awami League’s five active social media channels — Facebook (3.9M followers), Twitter (over 658K), YouTube (466K), Instagram (12K), and Telegram (93K+ subscribers).

“Every day, Sheikh Hasina meets the support base... We record the entire conversation and extract the operative portion,” Arafat explained.

While Facebook remains the most popular platform among mass supporters, Telegram has become Hasina’s preferred tool for secure and targeted communication. Pro-AL content continues to be published through these digital channels, including strategic messaging aimed at specific voter groups, such as a recent post highlighting the arrest of ISKCON’s Chinmoy Prabhu to appeal to Hindu voters.

The operational structure of the party now spans across Kolkata, where Arafat leads a six-to-seven members team, and Washington DC, where Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy oversees a smaller digital coordination cell. Additional teams in London, Brussels, and the Middle East also assist, mostly composed of non-party diaspora members sympathetic to Awami League’s ideology.

In a telling sign of the anxiety within Bangladesh’s interim government, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus admitted at a recent Chatham House event in London that he had personally requested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to limit Hasina’s ability to communicate.

“I said to PM Modi: ‘You want to host her? I can’t force you to abandon that policy... But please help us in making sure she doesn’t speak to Bangladeshi people.’”

“India is not doing what I asked. Modi’s answer was: ‘It is social media, we can’t control it.’ What can you say? It’s an explosive situation,” Yunus added.

Meanwhile, Hasina reportedly continues to push forward, having already interacted with 63 out of 64 district committees, according to sources familiar with the digital operation.

“She is reading a lot. She believes we will triumph (over Yunus),” Arafat said with a smile.

As the Hasina-led Awami League fights a digital resistance from exile, the News18 report paints a picture of a party that may be banned on paper, but is far from politically irrelevant. In fact, its virtual revival may be laying the groundwork for a future resurgence.