The Liberation War had ended. The memories of the war were still vivid. Yet the fighters were gripped by uncertainty. There was no constructive direction for the victors on what should come next. They scattered in all directions, each going their own way.

Having left his military post, Abu Taher was then a civilian. In his writing, filled with frustration, he argued that although the fighters of ’71 had emerged victorious, they were effectively losing because of the leadership. They had defeated Pakistan’s armed forces in the war, yet they could not remove the government officials who opposed the local population’s desire for freedom. Reflecting on that period, a poet wrote, “Osmani had received the paper that he, a freedom fighter, had signed—he too was a freedom fighter.”

There was an even deeper source of frustration. In ’71, the ’90s, and even in ’24, there was no programme that truly changed the economic and social reality in a way that eased the daily burdens of the majority. As a result, despite their victories, the fighters had effectively lost. Much of Bangladesh’s history of major political struggles follows a similar pattern.

Was the administration that collaborated with the illegitimate military rule from 1982 to 1990 ever brought under accountability by any government after 1990? Weren’t all the notorious elections over the past 15 years conducted with the cooperation of those senior officials of that period? We do not know how free from the participation of those officials the post-mass uprising 2026 election will be.