The killing of Bangladeshi student leader Sharif Osman Hadi in Dhaka, followed shortly by the attempted assassination of Motaleb Shikder in Khulna, has come at a delicate moment in Bangladesh’s political journey. These were not isolated shocks in an otherwise settled system. They landed during a period of transition, uncertainty, and contested authority—conditions in which political violence has historically carried outsized consequences.

Much of the immediate debate has revolved around responsibility. That is natural and necessary. But from a strategic perspective, the more consequential question lies beyond attribution. It lies in understanding how, once it occurs, violence reshapes political incentives and opens space for actors who did not need to initiate it to benefit from it.

Political violence during transitions is rarely accidental. Yet neither does it always require external engineering. Bangladesh today is operating under strain. Institutions are recalibrating. Political authority is being renegotiated. Competing groups are probing limits and testing responses. In such environments, targeted attacks often emerge from domestic rivalries, localised spoilers, or criminal-political intersections seeking relevance in moments of flux. History offers ample precedent for this.

These internal conditions are sufficient to explain how violence could occur. They are also sufficient to explain why its effects travel far beyond the immediate crime scene.

Once violence enters the political arena, it begins to alter behaviour. Public discourse compresses. Emotion replaces deliberation. Investigations, by necessity, methodical and time-bound, struggle to keep pace with a media environment that rewards immediacy and outrage. In the gap between what has happened and what is known, interpretation takes over. That gap is strategically significant.

Each unresolved incident weakens confidence in the........

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