Khaled Zia, Bangladesh’s First Woman Prime Minister, Dies at 80
Bangladesh’s first female premier, Khaleda Zia, has died at 80, closing the chapter on a turbulent political dynasty that shaped the South Asian nation for four decades.
The Iron Lady of Dhaka Takes Her Final Bow
Dhaka—The chandeliers inside Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University flickered twice at 3:17 a.m. local time, as if the building itself were registering the moment Khaleda Zia—the woman who twice steered Bangladesh through tempests of coup, cyclone and constitutional crisis—stopped breathing. She was 80.
From Homemaker to History
Long before the black-veiled portraits appeared on every street corner tonight, Zia was a quiet army wife raising two boys in Dhaka cantonment. History intervened on 30 May 1981 when a group of officers assassinated her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, thrusting the 35-year-old widow into the cockpit of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Within six years she had ousted military ruler H.M. Ershad and become the first woman to govern a Muslim-majority nation.
"She walked into every room as though she had already won the argument," recalls former Indian high commissioner Veena Sikri, who watched Zia charm a skeptical Delhi durbar in 1991. "And usually she had."
Two Terms, Two Coups, Two Decades of Feuds
Zia’s first term (1991-1996) delivered the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord and a privatization wave that birthed today’s garments boom. Her second (2001-2006) ended in a military-backed caretaker government that jailed her on corruption charges she always denied. The bitter rivalry with arch-rival Sheikh Hasina—what locals call the Battling Begums—defined an era and left a polarized republic.
Illness, Exile and a Final Homecoming
Doctors diagnosed advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2019; the government, citing humanitarian grounds, suspended her 17-year sentence and allowed treatment in Dhaka. Tonight her son Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of the BNP, live-streamed from London: "Amma has left us, but not the dream of a democratic Bangladesh."
What Happens Next
- The cabinet has declared a three-day national mourning; flags will fly at half-mast.
- Police have been ordered to maintain 24-hour vigilance amid fears of street violence.
- Funeral prayers will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at the BNP headquarters in Naya Paltan before burial next to her husband at Chandrima Udyan.
Legacy in the Balance
Even critics concede Zia broadened Bangladesh’s international footprint, coaxing China into building the Padma Bridge and nudging Washington to label the Rohingya crisis genocide. Yet the economy she helped liberalize now faces 9 % inflation and a dollar crunch, while the democracy she championed languishes at 102nd in the World Press Freedom Index.
As news of her death crackled across rickshaw radios, 22-year-old student activist Anika Hossain stood outside the hospital clutching a candle. "I didn’t agree with her politics," she said, "but tonight we lost the last leader who still felt like a person, not an algorithm."
With Zia gone, Bangladesh enters its first election cycle in 32 years without either Begum on the ballot—a seismic shift in a nation whose modern identity was forged in their duel.