Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first female prime minister and for decades one of South Asia’s most combative political figures, has died in Dhaka at the age of 80 after a long and complicated illness, triggering an outpouring of grief, reflection and political anxiety at home and abroad just weeks before crucial national elections.
Breaking news: the final hours
Khaleda Zia died in the early hours of Tuesday at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka, where she had been under intensive treatment since late November. Her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) announced that the party chairperson “departed this life” after midnight local time, asking supporters to pray for her soul and calling her passing an “irreparable loss for the nation.”
Doctors treating her said she succumbed after a prolonged illness marked by advanced liver cirrhosis, diabetes, arthritis and serious complications affecting her heart, lungs and kidneys. She had been on ventilator support since 11 December, when a steep deterioration in her condition forced her medical team to escalate respiratory support as multiple organs came under what they described as “severe stress.”
According to her medical board, Zia had been admitted to Evercare Hospital on 23 November with a severe chest infection and worsening cardiac and pulmonary problems, before being transferred to the coronary care unit and later placed on elective ventilation as kidney function failed and new complications such as infective endocarditis and acute pancreatitis emerged. Her doctors and family had explored the possibility of flying her to London for advanced liver treatment, but concluded she was too fragile to travel and could not be stabilised for an air ambulance.
BNP leaders and family members, including her son and party acting chairman Tarique Rahman, kept vigil at the hospital in the final days, as appeals for prayers turned gradually into confirmation of her death. Outside the facility, party supporters gathered through the night, some reciting verses from the Quran, others holding aloft her portrait and the BNP’s sheaf-of-paddy flag in a sombre, almost stunned silence.
A life shaped by tragedy and power
Born in 1945 in what was then East Bengal under British India, Khaleda Zia spent much of her early life far from the epicentre of formal politics. She married army officer Ziaur Rahman in 1960, a future war hero of Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation struggle who would later assume the presidency and found the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Khaleda’s entry into politics was anything but preordained: it came after the assassination of her husband in a 1981 military coup, an event that propelled the young widow from the private sphere into the heart of a turbulent national stage. Initially seen as a reluctant political figurehead, she gradually emerged as the central rallying point for the BNP, assuming leadership roles in the party’s protests against military ruler Hussain Muhammad Ershad and becoming chairperson of the party in the mid‑1980s.
Her rise coincided with Bangladesh’s fraught transition from military rule to electoral democracy. In 1991, in the country’s first fully competitive parliamentary polls after the fall of Ershad, Khaleda led the BNP to victory and was sworn in as prime minister, becoming not only Bangladesh’s first woman to hold the post but also one of the first elected female heads of government in the Muslim‑majority world.
Governing a fragile democracy
Khaleda Zia’s first term in office (1991–1996) unfolded amid enormous expectations and severe constraints as the country sought to consolidate parliamentary democracy, rebuild its economy and extend basic services to millions living in poverty. Her government restored the parliamentary system after years of presidential and military rule, oversaw macroeconomic stabilisation and pursued policies aimed at expanding primary education and basic healthcare.
Under her leadership, Bangladesh made notable gains in primary school enrollment, particularly for girls, building on and expanding stipends and free‑tuition schemes that encouraged families to send daughters to school. These initiatives, combined with a broader ecosystem of non‑governmental efforts, helped improve literacy indicators and laid groundwork for the country’s later reputation as a relative success story in gender parity at the primary level.
Her second term (2001–2006) came after a period in opposition and was marked by continued economic growth as well as controversies over governance, security and rising political violence. The BNP‑led coalition, which then included Islamist parties, faced criticism over human rights abuses, the emergence of extremist groups and allegations of corruption that would later form the basis of legal actions against her and her son.
Throughout both tenures, Khaleda cultivated an image as a steely, often unyielding leader who defended what she called Bangladesh’s “nationalist” identity, stressing sovereignty, a more conservative social outlook and a foreign policy balancing ties with India, Pakistan and China. Admirers hailed her as a champion of the rural poor who expanded connectivity and opportunity; critics accused her of tolerating patronage networks and contributing to a corrosive winner‑takes‑all political culture.
The “Battle of the Begums”
Few political rivalries in modern South Asia have been as enduring or as consequential as that between Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, the long‑time leader of the rival Awami League and daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. For decades, the two women — often dubbed the “Begums” in Bangladesh’s political lexicon — personified a bitterly polarised system in which power alternated, sometimes violently, between their parties.
This rivalry was rooted in competing narratives of the country’s birth, ideology and identity: the Awami League emphasised secular nationalism and the legacy of the 1971 independence war under Mujib, while the BNP under Zia championed a more explicitly nationalist and religiously inflected vision that critics said downplayed the Awami League’s role in liberation. The result was an adversarial style of politics that often translated into street confrontations, general strikes, transport blockades and frequent shutdowns of public life.
In parliament and beyond, the two leaders seldom met halfway, and periods of co‑existence were overshadowed by accusations of election rigging, political persecution and refusal to accept defeat. At various points, the opposition of the day boycotted parliament for months on end, undermining legislative oversight and weakening democratic institutions as governance oscillated between tense coalition rule and caretaker arrangements.
Public sentiment toward the “battle of the Begums” was complex: many Bangladeshis admired both women as symbols of resilience in a patriarchal society, yet large segments also grew weary of the personalised antagonism that seemed to lock the country into cycles of confrontation. Over time, analysts argued that this duopoly narrowed space for alternative voices and contributed to a politics more defined by loyalty to leaders and historical narratives than by policy debate.
Illness, imprisonment and a long decline
The final chapter of Khaleda Zia’s life was marked by a combination of legal battles, incarceration and deteriorating health that turned her from street campaigner into a largely bedridden figurehead. In 2018, during Sheikh Hasina’s long incumbency, she was convicted in two corruption cases and sentenced to prison, charges she and her party denounced as politically motivated.
Her time in custody — in jail and later under house arrest — coincided with the BNP’s marginalisation from formal politics, as opposition parties boycotted or were effectively sidelined from national elections widely criticised by Western observers and rights groups. In 2024, amid student‑led protests and a mass uprising that ultimately forced Hasina from office, Khaleda was released from house arrest and several charges against her were subsequently dismissed by the courts.
Yet freedom did not bring recovery. Advanced liver cirrhosis, cardiac complications, diabetes, arthritis and repeated infections left her increasingly frail, and she spent long stretches in hospital or at home under close medical supervision. In late 2023, she had undergone a TIPS procedure for her liver and was in and out of intensive care over the following year.
Her health crisis deepened in November 2025, when she was rushed to Evercare Hospital with a severe chest infection, rapidly declining lung function and signs of multi‑organ stress. Doctors reported that by early December her kidney function had “stopped completely,” requiring dialysis and blood transfusions, while imaging detected infective endocarditis and acute pancreatitis on top of existing cardiac disease.
On 11 December she was placed on ventilator support after a sharp drop in oxygen levels and rising carbon dioxide in her blood, with her medical board framing the move as an attempt to “give rest” to her lungs and other vital organs. “It cannot be said that her condition has improved. She is passing through an extremely critical phase,” one of her physicians, Dr AZM Zahid Hossain, told reporters at a late‑night briefing outside the hospital, urging the nation to pray for her recovery.
Even in this state, her political shadow loomed. Her son Tarique Rahman, who had returned from long exile in London to register as a voter and position himself at the centre of the coming campaign, visited her bedside, with party officials depicting the reunion as both a family farewell and a symbolic passing of the torch. Plans mooted by BNP leaders to airlift her to London for a transplant never materialised as doctors concluded she was too unstable for international travel, leaving her to spend her last days in Dhaka, the city where she had risen to prominence and where she would die.
Shock, grief and political messages
News of Khaleda Zia’s death spread quickly across Bangladesh, where the BNP had already called for prayers and vigils amid reports of her “extremely critical” condition. The party released a formal statement expressing sorrow and calling her “the leader of democracy,” with senior figure Ruhul Kabir Rizvi describing her death as an “irreparable loss” that had left colleagues “devastated.”
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who had been a close confidant and key organiser for years, told reporters outside the hospital that “the mother of democracy has left us,” a phrase echoed by supporters chanting slogans honouring her sacrifices and years in jail. In many towns, local BNP offices lowered party flags to half‑mast, while calls went out on social media for nationwide prayers and black‑badge mourning.
The reaction from the ruling establishment, now reshaped after Hasina’s ouster, was more measured but still acknowledged the historic nature of her role. Leaders of the Awami League and allied parties issued condolences that balanced recognition of her contribution to the country’s political history with reminders of the polarisation and conflict that defined the BNP‑Awami rivalry. Civil society figures and rights activists, many of whom had criticised both camps over the years, offered tributes that focused on her personal resilience and the symbolic importance of two women dominating politics in a conservative, male‑dominated society.
For ordinary citizens, reactions were often deeply personal. Some remembered her as the leader who presided over periods of economic improvement and expanded schooling for girls; others recalled the hartals, blockades and violence that had occasionally paralysed cities during BNP‑led protests. In mixed neighbourhoods of Dhaka, residents described a mood of reflective silence more than spontaneous protest — a sense that whatever one’s political leanings, an era was closing.
International condolences and regional stakes
Beyond Bangladesh’s borders, messages of condolence underscored Khaleda Zia’s significance as a regional figure who had navigated complex ties with South Asian neighbours and major powers. India, whose relationship with the BNP has historically been more ambivalent than with the Awami League, expressed sympathy over her passing while noting her role in “strengthening democratic processes” in the early 1990s and working with New Delhi on trade, connectivity and security.
From Islamabad, Pakistani leaders paid tribute to her as a “steadfast voice” for the poor and a key player in regional diplomacy who had engaged with Pakistan on trade and historical reconciliation despite the shadow of the 1971 war. Western governments, including the United States and European Union members, issued statements that combined condolences with renewed calls for free, fair and inclusive elections in Bangladesh in the wake of her death.
Regional analysts noted that her passing removed a major, if increasingly frail, actor from South Asia’s political stage at a time when the Bay of Bengal region is central to wider geopolitical competition. Her career spanned the Cold War’s end, the rise of India as a regional power, China’s growing footprint and recurring concerns over Islamist militancy, giving her an outsized role in debates about Bangladesh’s strategic orientation.
BNP’s uncertain future and Tarique Rahman’s rise
Khaleda Zia’s death comes at a delicate moment for the BNP, which has been trying to reinvent itself after years of electoral marginalisation and repression. With national elections scheduled for February, her absence reshapes the party’s internal dynamics and public messaging, even though she had already been physically absent from active campaigning due to her illness.
Her elder son, Tarique Rahman, long seen as her political heir but also a deeply controversial figure, has formally assumed the role of BNP chairman after years as acting head from exile in London. Having returned to Bangladesh this year, cleared in some cases but still facing a cloud of past graft and violence allegations, he is expected to lead the party into the February polls as its prime ministerial face.
For Tarique, his mother’s passing is both a personal tragedy and a political test. On one hand, her legacy gives him a powerful narrative of sacrifice, persecution and commitment to multi‑party politics that he can harness to galvanise the BNP base. On the other, her absence removes a moderating, widely recognised figure whose moral authority among older supporters and rural voters he may struggle to replicate.
Within the BNP, succession questions that had been simmering for years are likely to surface more openly. Some senior leaders worry about over‑concentration of power in the Rahman family and advocate a broader leadership collective; others see a united front behind Tarique as essential to confronting the Awami League and other rivals in a high‑stakes election. The weeks ahead will reveal whether Khaleda’s death produces a rally‑around‑the‑flag effect for the party or deepens internal rifts over strategy, alliances and candidate selection.
Impact on the February elections
The immediate electoral impact of Khaleda Zia’s death is likely to be felt on multiple levels — emotional, organisational and strategic. In the short term, the BNP will enter a period of mourning and may temporarily pause full‑scale campaigning, even as Tarique and other leaders use memorial gatherings to frame the vote as a referendum on her legacy and the future of democracy.
Sympathy could translate into a modest surge in support for the party, especially among older voters and women who associate her era with expanded schooling and modest gains in social mobility. At the same time, the ruling camp and its allies may quietly calculate that an opposition led by a polarising, corruption‑tainted successor is easier to attack than one backed by a revered, ageing matriarch.
Election administrators and international observers will watch closely to see whether her passing prompts calls for a postponement of the polls, though early indications suggest the timetable will hold, with only procedural accommodations for mourning and funeral arrangements. For many voters, the deeper question is whether the country can move beyond the cycle of vendetta that defined the Khaleda‑Hasina era and produce a less confrontational, more policy‑focused politics in which parties compete on visions for jobs, climate resilience and governance rather than on legacy and grievance.
Bangladesh’s long, difficult transition
To understand the weight of Khaleda Zia’s passing, it is necessary to situate her within Bangladesh’s tumultuous journey since independence in 1971. The country emerged from a brutal war of secession from Pakistan, followed by famine, coups and assassinations that shattered early hopes for stable parliamentary rule.
Zia’s husband, President Ziaur Rahman, played a central role in reintroducing multi‑party politics and encouraging a more market‑oriented economy before his own assassination in 1981. Khaleda’s subsequent political rise coincided with popular movements against military strongman Ershad, the restoration of parliamentary democracy and the institutionalisation of a caretaker system to oversee elections — a model that for years was hailed as an innovative mechanism to ensure alternation in power.
Yet, as the rivalry between the BNP and Awami League hardened, the same system was eventually scrapped, and politics drifted toward what many analysts described as “electoral authoritarianism,” particularly under Hasina’s later terms when opposition parties complained of rigged polls and mass arrests. Khaleda’s own record was far from unblemished, with corruption allegations, governance failures and strong‑arm tactics by security forces during BNP rule contributing to a growing cynicism about the political class as a whole.
Her periods of imprisonment and house arrest, however, also turned her into a symbol — for supporters, of resistance to one‑party dominance; for critics, of a system in which political leaders repeatedly use the courts and police to settle scores rather than strengthen institutions. This duality runs through assessments of her place in Bangladesh’s story: a pioneering woman who both advanced and, at times, constrained the development of democratic culture.
Themes of controversy and resilience
Khaleda Zia’s legacy cannot be disentangled from the corruption cases that dogged her later years and the broader critique that the BNP entrenched patronage politics. Anti‑graft bodies and courts accused her and members of her family, including Tarique, of embezzlement and abuse of power; rights groups and opposition figures argued that some of these cases were selectively pursued to weaken the BNP.
At the same time, she is widely credited with helping normalise women’s leadership in a society where female labour force participation and education were still limited when she first took office. The image of two women — she and Sheikh Hasina — commanding the country’s major parties over several decades had a powerful symbolic impact, even as it obscured the structural barriers still faced by ordinary women in politics and the economy.
Her stance on key national questions, from the role of Islam in public life to relations with India and the handling of the Rohingya refugee crisis, often reflected an attempt to balance nationalist rhetoric with geopolitical pragmatism. Critics accused her of pandering to Islamist forces and undermining war‑crimes trials; supporters countered that she defended Bangladesh’s sovereignty and pushed back against what they saw as undue foreign influence in domestic affairs.
Voices on her place in history
Historians and political scientists are already beginning to frame Khaleda Zia’s death as the end of a definitive chapter in Bangladesh’s political evolution. One South Asia scholar quoted in international coverage described her as “a product of Bangladesh’s coup‑ridden 1980s who nonetheless became one of the architects of its flawed but real democratic experiment.” Another analyst called her “a figure of immense contradictions — a conservative nationalist who presided over meaningful social progress for women, and a democrat who sometimes undermined democratic norms.”
Among ordinary Bangladeshis, memories are no less complex. Some recall her as “Khaleda apa,” the elder sister who stood up to generals and refused to flee the country even when jailed; others remember the violence of street confrontations and the paralysis caused by hartals during BNP‑led agitations. For many younger citizens who grew up under Hasina’s long rule, she was more legend than living presence — a name in textbooks and family conversations, suddenly brought back into view by the drama of her final illness and the prospect that she might once again influence an election from a hospital bed.
International commentators have emphasised her role as one of the few Muslim‑majority‑country leaders who broke gender barriers at the top level of government in the 1990s, alongside figures such as Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia. That symbolic resonance, they argue, will endure even as debates continue over her record on rights, corruption and institutional reform.
A legacy still being written
Khaleda Zia’s death closes a personal story marked by loss, power, controversy and resilience, but it does not end the political currents she helped set in motion. The BNP she led for decades now faces the task of redefining itself without its matriarch at a time when Bangladesh stands at a crossroads — between a more pluralistic politics and the continued temptation of winner‑takes‑all confrontations.
Her legacy will be debated for years: she will be remembered as the country’s first woman prime minister who expanded education and helped entrench electoral politics, as well as a combative leader whose confrontational style and entanglement in graft allegations contributed to deep polarisation. For supporters, she was a “mother of democracy” who chose prison over exile and stood firm against what they call authoritarian rule; for detractors, she was an embodiment of a political culture that put party and family above institutions.
As her body is prepared for funeral prayers and burial, Bangladeshis are mourning not only a leader but also an era in which two rival matriarchs dominated the national stage, for better and for worse. The election ahead, and the choices of voters and leaders in the months to come, will determine whether the country can move beyond the unfinished battles of the Khaleda‑Hasina years toward a more inclusive, less vengeful politics — or whether the patterns she helped shape will continue to define the republic she leaves behind.
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