The assassination of Bangladeshi student leader Sharif Osman Hadi in Dhaka, followed days later by the attempted killing of Motaleb Shikder in Khulna, has intensified speculation over responsibility and motive. In politically charged environments, the search for a culprit often precedes careful analysis. Yet in strategy, attribution is rarely the starting point. Incentives are. A clearer understanding of the violence emerges not by asking who could have done it, but by examining who gains and who loses once the violence has occurred.
Bangladesh itself is the first and most obvious loser. The killings have deepened political uncertainty during a fragile transition. Institutional credibility has taken a hit, public confidence has weakened, and the security environment has become more volatile. Each unresolved incident narrows political space, empowers hardliners, and makes stabilisation more difficult. No rational domestic stakeholder interested in long-term order benefits from this outcome.
India, often drawn into speculative narratives by default, also fares poorly under any incentive-based assessment. Instability in Bangladesh directly complicates border management, regional security coordination, trade, and connectivity. It fuels anti-India sentiment on the streets and introduces friction into diplomatic engagement at a time when predictability is critical. For New Delhi, political violence next door is a liability, not a lever. The incentive structure simply does not align.
The actors who plausibly gain are not those associated with governance or stability, but those who thrive on disorder. Domestic spoilers inside Bangladesh—factional actors, radical networks, or criminal-political nexuses—benefit from chaos that weakens enforcement and blurs accountability. Violence elevates their relevance, intimidates rivals, and reshapes political debate in their favour.
Beyond Bangladesh’s borders, the beneficiaries are indirect and opportunistic rather than operational. Pakistan does not need to execute violence in Bangladesh to derive strategic value from it. Its advantage lies in what violence enables after the fact.
Political killings rapidly alter the narrative environment. Emotion overtakes evidence. Suspicion crowds out nuance. In this atmosphere, long-standing ideological narratives find renewed traction: questioning historical settlements, reframing accountability as instability, and portraying disorder as inevitable rather than criminal. These frames do not require instruction to circulate. They resonate because the environment is receptive. This is where incentive alignment becomes visible.
Pakistan gains narrative leverage without incurring operational risk. There are no fingerprints to explain, no direct actions to deny. The violence itself does the work—weakening institutions, fragmenting discourse, and opening space for aligned messaging to travel through sympathetic commentators, diaspora conversations, and digital ecosystems. Influence is exercised without ownership.
Crucially, this model only works when domestic conditions allow it. Pakistan cannot manufacture such openings reliably from the outside. It waits for them. The Dhaka and Khulna attacks, occurring in quick succession, have created precisely the kind of perception-driven momentum that opportunistic actors seek: a sense of pattern, drift, and fragility.
The cumulative effect matters. One incident can be contained. Two suggest escalation. A perceived pattern invites reinterpretation of the political landscape itself. That shift alone alters incentives, encouraging further risk-taking by spoilers and amplifying external narratives that thrive on instability.
This does not mean every actor who benefits had a hand in causing the violence. Strategy does not require authorship to extract advantage. In modern conflicts, influence often flows toward those best prepared to exploit events they did not initiate.
The danger lies in misreading this reality. If Bangladesh focuses primarily on external attribution, internal reform is delayed. If it ignores narrative exploitation altogether, the information space is surrendered. The most effective response lies elsewhere: swift and credible investigations, visible enforcement, and political restraint that denies spoilers the oxygen they seek.
For external observers, the incentive map offers clarity. Actors invested in stability absorb costs. Actors invested in disruption gain leverage. When violence produces more confusion than resolution, more symbolism than accountability, the beneficiaries are usually those least exposed to consequences.
The lesson from Bangladesh’s recent assassinations is therefore not about hidden hands or secret orders. It is about structural advantage. Violence, once unleashed, becomes a strategic asset in its own right—one that rewards patience, narrative agility, and deniability.
Following the incentives leads to a sobering conclusion. The actors who lose are those who value order. The actors who gain are those who can exploit disorder without being blamed for creating it. In geopolitics, that distinction often explains more than attribution ever will.