A year after the ouster of long-serving Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the reality on the ground looks very different from the ideal future that protesters had envisioned. Despite grand assurances from the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus–led interim government about overhauling the country’s political, economic, and security structures, the outcomes tell another story. Most troubling is the shift in counter-terrorism strategy—marked by neglect and misplaced priorities—which risks normalising radical Islamist ideologies and endangering regional stability already hanging by a thread.

In a recent article in The Diplomat, based on insights from multiple security and intelligence sources, Iftekharul Bashar reveals that the interim government has adopted a “too soft approach" to counter-terrorism, rendering security agencies “toothless tigers".

This has been done in a variety of ways. Firstly, the interim government has blatantly deployed the country’s security infrastructure to enact political vengeance on opponents, particularly the Awami League (AL), as was also highlighted in a recent Human Rights Watch report. In May this year, the former ruling party was effectively forbidden from all activities,........

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