Khaleda Zia, former Bangladeshi prime minister and archrival of Hasina, dies at 80

Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, whose archrivalry with another former premier defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died, her Bangladesh Nationalist Party said in a statement Tuesday. She was 80.

Zia was the first woman elected prime minister of Bangladesh.

She had faced corruption cases she said were politically motivated, but in January 2025, the Supreme Court acquitted Zia in the last corruption case against her, which would have let her run in February’s general election.

The BNP said that after she was released from prison due to illness in 2020, her family requested the administration of her archrival, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, at least 18 times to allow her to be treated abroad, but the requests were rejected.

Following Hasina’s ouster in 2024, an interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus finally allowed her to go. She went to London in January and returned to Bangladesh in May.

Zia’s fight against the military dictatorship

Bangladesh’s early years of independence, gained in a bloody 1971 war against Pakistan, were marked by assassinations, coups and countercoups as military figures and secular and Islamic leaders jockeyed for power.

Zia’s husband, President Ziaur Rahman, had grabbed power as a military chief in 1977 and a year later formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He was credited with opening democracy in the country, but he was killed in a 1981 military coup. Zia’s uncompromising stance against the military dictatorship helped build a mass movement against it, culminating with the ousting of dictator and former army chief H.M. Ershad in 1990.

Zia’s opponent when she won her first term in 1991 and in several elections after that was Hasina, the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a 1975 coup.

Zia was criticized over an early 1996 election in which her party won 278 of the 300 parliamentary seats during a wide boycott by other leading parties including Hasina’s Awami League, which demanded an election-time caretaker government. Zia’s government lasted only 12 days before a nonpartisan caretaker government was installed and the new election was held that June.

Zia returned to power in 2001 in a government shared with the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which had a dark past involving Bangladesh’s independence war.

Rivalry with Hasina

Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party was previously closely allied with the party, and her government maintained the confidence of the business community by following pro-investment, open market policies. Zia was known to have a soft spot for Pakistan and used to deliver anti-Indian political speeches. India alleged insurgents were allowed to use Bangladesh’s soil to destabilize India’s northeastern states under Zia, especially during her second term from 2001-2006.

During that term, Zia was also tainted by allegations that her elder son, Tarique Rahman, was running a parallel government and was involved in widespread corruption.

In 2004, Hasina blamed Zia’s government and Rahman for grenade attacks in Dhaka that killed 24 members of her Awami League party and wounded hundreds of people. Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, which she characterized as an assassination attempt, and subsequently won the 2008 general election.

Zia’s party and its partners boycotted the 2014 election in a dispute over a caretaker government, giving a one-sided victory to the increasingly authoritarian regime of Hasina. Her party joined the national elections in 2018 but boycotted again in 2024, allowing Hasina to return to power for a fourth consecutive time through controversial elections.

Zia was sentenced to 17 years in jail in two separate corruption cases for misuse of power in embezzling funds meant for a charity named after her late husband. Her party said the charges were politically motivated to weaken the opposition, but the Hasina government said it did not interfere and the case was a matter for the courts.

Hasina was bitterly criticized by both her opponents and independent critics for sending Zia to jail.

Health concerns trump politics

Zia was released from jail by Hasina’s government in 2020 and was moved to a rented home, from where she regularly visited a private hospital. Her family repeatedly requested Hasina’s administration to allow Zia to travel abroad for medical treatment, but was refused.

After 15 years in power, Hasina was ousted in a mass uprising in August 2024 and fled the country. Zia was given permission to travel abroad by an interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Zia was silent about politics for years and did not attend political rallies, but she remained the BNP chairperson until her death. Rahman has been the party’s acting chair since 2018.

She was last seen at an annual function of the Bangladesh military in Dhaka Cantonment on Nov. 21, when Yunus and other political leaders met her. She was in a wheelchair and appeared pale and tired.

She is survived by Rahman, her elder son and heir apparent in the political dynasty. Her younger son, Arafat, died in 2015.