After ousting Bangladesh's leader, Gen Z protesters are figuring out how to govern

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A boy scout, neckerchief in place, whistles three times to halt traffic at an unruly intersection. An ambulance is coming. One man shouts over a megaphone: “Volunteers! Go to your places!”

About a dozen students race to all four sides of the intersection. They use sticks and whistles to halt a melee of motorcyclists, double-decker buses, rickshaws adorned with flowers. The ambulance passes.

This is a scene repeated across Dhaka, a city of more than 10 million. Young men, madrassa boys, women in headscarves. Girl scouts in braids. They keep pedestrians safe, and traffic more or less flowing.

It’s been over a week since Bangladeshis overthrew their autocratic prime minister in a movement largely led by Generation Z college students, high schoolers, teenagers. Now they’re taking charge — or trying to.

Many volunteer as traffic monitors because the police melted away after the former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, fled the country on Aug. 5 as protesters marched onto her residence.

Police were widely seen as leading the crackdown on protesting students that killed hundreds. That deadly violence transformed protests into a movement to topple Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister.

Days on, some police are filtering back to work in Dhaka. But mostly, it’s young adults and teenagers, like Sejwana Ahmad Sreshta, with her whistle at the ready, who are taking on the job most urgently needed on the streets — trying to control Dhaka’s chaotic traffic. She’s 20 and hopes to study business administration.

“Because Bangladesh became independent because of the students, they are listening to us,” she says of the motorists. Rickshaw cyclists inch onto a crosswalk. She nudges them back with her stick.

Students are treated like superstars — for now. A medic in a white coat turns up at the intersection to distribute discount coupons and take selfies. A distributor for an egg company swings by and hands out orange and green umbrellas, emblazoned with the company name, “Golden Harvest.”

Across the city, young people clump on sidewalks, painting city walls with murals celebrating their movement. Mumtahana Monu Miti, 19, works with her sister and friend, painting a Bangladeshi flag on a wall, green with a red center.

“This city is a city of youth,” she smiles. More than one-quarter of Bangladesh's population is between 10 and 24, broadly straddling the Generation Z age group. “We youth are not only the generation of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram," she says. "We also love our country. And we also love to participate in rebuilding our country.” Miti says they’ll emblazon their mural with “Be Fearless, Be Bangladeshi.”

Down an alleyway, teenagers are painting their school walls. Murio Mata Mim, 16, and her girlfriends squeal as they try to wipe the paint off her hands. But it’s speckled on her peach headscarf and robe.

She and her classmates are taking a break from studying for upcoming exams by painting a water bottle with a halo and wings — it honors another student, Mir Moghdu, killed while giving water bottles to protesters. “When people pass by, when they see our art, they’ll remember Mughdo,” she says, and perhaps, remember that young people died for Bangladesh’s freedom from a prime minister who many believed would never loosen her grip on power.

Across town, high school seniors lead an effort to clean up the torched Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre, run by the Indian High Commission. It was burned down by rioters in the hours after Sheikh Hasina fled to India. They were likely enraged that India is sheltering the hated former leader.

Students salvage what they can: old videos of Bollywood films, tattered books. “We are actually against this vandalism and damaging other private property,” says Fouad Khan, one of the volunteer high school seniors. “We are helping to clean this up and rebuild this place as soon as possible.”

Others guard another important site that was burned down — Sheikh Hasina’s childhood home, turned into a museum dedicated to her father. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan in 1971. He was largely celebrated as a hero. For now, his legacy is indelibly linked to his daughter’s.

High school students patrol the road leading to what is left of the museum. Around the remains of the building, girl scouts and boy scouts check people’s papers. But patrolling soldiers suggest who has the final say.

The tension of who, exactly, is in charge, plays out at the top of Bangladeshi politics, where both the military and a new interim government hold sway. It was students who pushed for the fast formation of an interim government helmed by Bangladesh's Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus. Two student leaders also joined. They’re both 26 years old.

That government has a big job.

It has to undertake legal reforms so the next elected prime minister can’t amass autocratic powers. It has to rebuild the police. It has to grapple with high food prices and high unemployment, particularly among young people: highly educated young graduates appear to have the highest unemployment rates in the country. And it must arrange the next elections.

This is uncharted territory — even supporters of the government worry they can’t pull this off.

Recent history, after all, is replete with revolutions led by young people that went terribly wrong.

“It’s a difficult time, it’s a transition that none of us have ever dealt with before,” says Shahidul Alam, a prominent rights activist, photographer and writer. “And this requires skill sets that I personally think is lacking, not just within this cabinet, but even outside of this cabinet.”

Yet, Alam adds, “We as a nation cannot afford to fail. This is a moment in history that may not be repeated.”