The hand of Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence is suspected in bloody rioting in Bangladesh, known as “East Pakistan” before winning  independence in a war that cost 3 million lives more than half a century ago 

The long-time prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, resigned before fleeing by army helicopter to neighboring India amid riots in which 300 people have already died. They are protesting a quota system under which descendants of those who fought Pakistan rule in 1971 are guaranteed government jobs. 

“Is Pakistan ISI behind Bangladesh Unrest”: This is a headline in a major Indian newspaper, the Economic Times, reporting that the leader of a banned student group backed by the ISI was “inciting violence and turning student protests into a political movement in Bangladesh.”  

The paper said Pakistan’s army, through ISI, sought to “destabilize” the government of Sheikh Hasina, whose father, Bangladesh’s first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated in 1975 along with his wife and three other children. Ms. Sheikh Hasina and her sister were in Germany at the time. 

The world’s longest-serving female leader when elected for a fourth five-year term as prime minister in January, Sheikh Hasina, now 76,  is letting it be known she won’t attempt to regain power. The army chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, forming “an interim government,” appealed  for an end to violence while promising “your demands will be fulfilled,” according to New Delhi Television.

The rioting peaked on Sunday with the deaths of 98 people as protesters stormed the palace. Video shows them destroying furniture, decorations, and a portrait of the late prime minister.

At the crux of the protest is a law guaranteeing 30 percent of jobs in the government to children and grandchildren of those who fought in the “war of liberation” from Pakistan. Protesters were not mollified when the government reduced the quota to 5 percent.

The protesters say the quotas represent the government’s attempt to perpetuate the rule of Sheik Hasani’s Awami League, which  reportedly strongly sides with India against Pakistan long after Pakistan gave up what was then called “East Pakistan.” Most of the 175 million citizens of Bangladesh, like almost everyone in the adjacent Indian state of Bengal, are ethnically Bengali. 

The unrest by now “has escalated from a student protest over job quotas into a broader political movement,” the Economic Times said, “with opposition party members reportedly infiltrating the protest groups.”