The World This Week | Bangladesh bids adieu to Khaleda Zia, UAE-Saudi conflict in Yemen, protests in Iran

Khaleda Zia’s legacy

Zia, along with Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, dominated the country’s politics since the 1980s. During her time in office as the PM, Zia is credited with introducing key reforms, including free and mandatory primary education, particularly for girls, and overseeing significant GDP growth and economic liberalisation.

Court battels

In recent years, Zia was mostly in the news over the various legal battles that she got entangled in. In 2018, she was convicted in the Zia Orphanage Trust Case and the Zia Charitable Trust Case and was sentenced to a total of 17 years in prison. However, in 2024, following the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government, the Supreme Court overturned her convictions in the two cases, along with a few other charges for which she was found guilty.

Who will succeed Khaleda Zia?

Zia passed away less than a week after her son, Tarique Rahman, returned to Bangladesh, ending his 17-year exile in the UK. Rahman, the Acting Chairman of the BNP, returned to Bangladesh ahead of the general elections in February, which the party is widely expected to win. If Rahman can lead the BNP to victory in the February elections, it will also mark the BNP’s return to power in Bangladesh for the first time since 2006.

UAE-Saudi Arabia conflict in Yemen

The longstanding rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Yemen escalated into a full-blown conflict this week over Abu Dhabi’s support of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group seeking an independent South Yemen.

UAE and Saudi Arabia – From friends to foes

The UAE entered the conflict in Yemen in 2015 as part of the Saudi-led mission against the Houthis to restore the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. Since then, their interests have diverged, with the UAE backing the STC while Saudi Arabia sided with the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), also known as the internationally recognised government of Yemen.

Though the UAE began pulling its troops from Yemen in 2019, it maintained a small presence in the country.

South Yemen

The recent escalation between the UAE and Saudi Arabia was caused by the STC’s seizure of the resource-rich Hadhramaut and al-Mahrah provinces. The STC, which initially supported Yemen’s internationally recognised government against the Houthi rebels, captured two areas that were part of South Yemen, also known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. They are also strategically important for Saudi Arabia as they border the Kingdom and contain Yemen’s largest oil fields.

What happened in Mukalla?

On December 30, Saudi-led coalition forces bombed the port of Mukalla, targeting an unauthorised shipment of weapons and armoured vehicles from the UAE, which was to be delivered to the STC. Following this, on December 31, the UAE announced it would withdraw its remaining military personnel from Yemen.

Protests erupt in Iran

At least seven people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in Iran as demonstrations that began on Sunday, December 28, continue to spread. The protest was started by a group of traders in Tehran over the record-low rates of the Iranian rial, which fell to 1.45 million against the US dollar.

Biggest protests in three years

Since then, the protests have spread to major cities, including Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Kermanshah, with university students also joining the demonstrations. The protests are said to be the biggest in three years, since nationwide demonstrations triggered by the death of a young woman in custody in late 2022 paralysed Iran for weeks.

Iranian President pledged dialogue

Unlike in the past, in the initial days of the unrest, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian struck a conciliatory tone, pledging dialogue with protest leaders over the cost-of-living crisis. Pezeshkian’s government is attempting a program of economic liberalisation, but one of its measures, deregulating some currency exchange, has contributed to a sharp decline in the value of Iran’s rial on the unofficial market.

Trump jumps in to warn Iran

On Friday, January 2, President Donald Trump warned that the US would come to the aid of protesters in Iran if security forces fire on them. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he said in a social media post.

Trump’s threat suggesting another intervention in Iran comes more than six months after the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities. The US strike in June is widely believed to have significantly damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities and delayed Tehran’s capacity to develop a nuclear bomb by years, if not decades.

China puts Taiwan on notice with military drill

China staged massive military drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, December 30, in one of the biggest war games in the region. The exercise, named ‘Justice Mission 2025’, saw China fire dozens of rockets towards Taiwan and deploy a large number of warships and aircraft near the island.

Simulated encirclement of Taiwan

According to China’s state news agency, Xinhua, the simulated “encirclement” demonstrated the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to “press and contain separatist forces while denying access to external interference – an approach summarised as ‘sealing internally and blocking externally’.”

Will China invade Taiwan in 2027?

Military exercises have become frequent around Taiwan in recent years, and US intelligence and Taiwanese defence officials believe that China is preparing to invade the island by 2027. China claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, and it has not ruled out using force to take it under Chinese control.

What Xi Jinping said

In his New Year message, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the reunification of China and Taiwan is unstoppable. “The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable,” Xi said.

Taiwan vows to defend

Responding to the Chinese aggression, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on Thursday vowed to defend the island’s sovereignty. “In the face of China’s rising expansionist ambitions, the international community is watching to see whether the Taiwanese people have the resolve to defend themselves,” Lai said in his New Year’s address.

US response

The US, which on Thursday criticised the military exercise, said it unnecessarily heightened tensions in the region. “China’s military activities and rhetoric towards Taiwan and others in the region increase tensions unnecessarily. We urge Beijing to exercise restraint, cease its military pressure against Taiwan, and instead engage in meaningful dialogue,” US State Department Spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.  

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