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Only five medical evacuees were allowed to leave Gaza, and just 12 Palestinians were allowed to return to the war-torn territory due to delays imposed by Israeli authorities as the Rafah border crossing with Egypt finally reopened.

The long-awaited reopening of the territory’s southern border crossing with Egypt on Monday was supposed to alleviate more than 18 months of a punishing military siege on Gaza.

Instead, Israeli authorities continued with tight security restrictions and a complex bureaucratic process that allowed only a small number of people to travel in either direction – leaving or entering Gaza – and also blocked goods from passing freely through the border gate.

The number of people allowed to pass through the Rafah crossing – five sick patients leaving Gaza for treatment abroad and 12 people returning home on Monday – fell far short of the 50 people Israeli officials had promised would be permitted to move in each direction.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City early on Tuesday, said the reopening of the crossing was a long time coming, and the result was far less than promised.

“This is coming after a long time of waiting,” Mahmoud said.

“They were expected to be entering the Gaza Strip throughout the past hours, but they were held for long hours, and this is in part due to the long process of security clearance set by the Israeli military on the Rafah crossing,” he said.

“We expected to see 50 Palestinians returning from Egypt into the Gaza Strip throughout the day, and that was the expectation by the family members here in the Gaza Strip,” he added.

Instead, a bus carrying 12 people, the first of its type to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing in more than 18 months, brought the first group of people home early on Tuesday.

Among the many restrictions being imposed at the crossing by Israeli authorities is that only people who left Gaza during the war are being allowed re-entry through Rafah after undergoing an exacting security clearance process.

While only five Palestinian patients were allowed to leave the Strip on Monday through the crossing, an estimated 20,000 children and adults in dire need of medical care are waiting to depart on the Gaza side of the border for medical treatment in Egypt and elsewhere, according to Gaza health officials.

Ambulances queued for hours at the border on Monday, ready to ferry Palestinian patients across the border, Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera News channel showed.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, spoke with Randa Abu Mustafa, whose son lost sight in both his eyes due to injuries sustained in Israel’s war on the territory. He was among the five patients lucky enough to be approved to leave on Monday.

Another woman, Shimaa Abu Rida, told Al Jazeera that her daughter, Joumana, was seriously wounded in an Israeli air attack and she is still anxiously waiting to leave.

“Streams of people are lining up, hoping to cross to Egypt. But with 20,000 patients waiting for approval, most will be disappointed,” Al Jazeera’s Abu Azzoum said.

And with the entry of much-needed medicine and humanitarian supplies still blocked, Palestinian lives remain “at the mercy” of Israel, he said.

Tom Fletcher, United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the partial reopening of the Rafah crossing was insufficient, stressing that the border post must function as a genuine humanitarian corridor to deliver life-saving aid.

Qatar, which helped negotiate the “ceasefire” deal Israel continues to violate at will, welcomed the opening of the Rafah crossing as “a step in the right direction”.

In a statement, the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged Israel to fully implement the deal “to ensure the sustainable and unhindered flow of humanitarian aid to the Strip”.

“The Ministry renews the State of Qatar’s steadfast and permanent position in support of the Palestinian cause and the resilience of the brotherly Palestinian people, based on international legitimacy resolutions and the two-state solution, which guarantees the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” the ministry added.

Before Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Rafah was the main crossing for people moving in and out of the enclave.

The territory’s handful of other crossings are all shared with Israel, while Rafah, which links with Egypt, was seized by Israeli troops during the war in May 2024.

Violence continued across the territory on Monday, with Israeli attacks killing at least three Palestinians in central and northern Gaza.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli drones bombed a location close to an area where people had gathered for a funeral in Nuseirat in central Gaza, killing two people and injuring several.

Israeli forces also killed one Palestinian in Halawa Camp in the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza.

During Sudan’s civil war, which erupted in April 2023, both sides have increasingly relied on drones, and civilians have borne the brunt of the carnage.

The conflict between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group is an example of war transformed by commercially available, easily concealable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones.

Modular, well-adapted to sanctions evasions and devastatingly effective, drones have killed scores of civilians, crippled infrastructure and plunged Sudanese cities into darkness.

In this visual investigation, Al Jazeera examines the history of drone warfare in Sudan, the types of drones used by the warring sides, how they are sourced, where the attacks have occurred and the human toll.

Janjaweed to RSF: The evolution of warfare

The RSF traces its origins to what at the time was a government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed. Sudan’s government mobilised it during the Darfur conflict in the early 2000s to suppress a rebellion in the western region.

The United Nations accused the Janjaweed of war crimes and crimes against humanity for its tactics, including burning villages, mass killings and sexual violence.

In 2013, the Sudanese government under President Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown in 2019 after sustained popular protests, officially formalised the Janjaweed militias into the RSF under the command of General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.

In 2015, Sudan joined the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen to fight the Houthis, who had seized the capital, Sanaa. In addition to regular soldiers, Sudan sent thousands of RSF fighters, allowing Hemedti to establish direct relationships with leaders in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

In the beginning, the Janjaweed relied on light weapons and trucks. Then as the RSF, it adopted heavy artillery and eventually drones, allowing it to strike from a distance.

On April 15, 2023, longstanding tensions between Army Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF Leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo escalated into war. This conflict was primarily ignited by disagreements regarding the integration of the RSF into the regular army, a key step in the planned transition to civilian rule.

The introduction of drones shifted the balance of power away from the Sudanese army, which used to control the skies with its fighter jets.

What drones do the SAF and RSF have?

Sudan’s flat terrain and limited cover make it well-suited to drone strikes and surveillance, according to the open-source intelligence initiative Critical Threats.

Since the war began, the SAF and RSF have used drones spanning from short-range systems to those with a range of up to 4,000km (2,485 miles), capable of reaching any target in Sudan.

Sudan measures 1,250km (775 miles) from north to south and 1,390km (865 miles) from east to west, distances easily covered by RSF drones like the Chinese-made Wing Loong II and Turkish Bayraktar TB2.

SAF drones

The Sudanese army’s drones, which it uses for reconnaissance and precision attacks, mainly come from Iran, like the Mohajer-6 combat UAV, which was supplied to the SAF in late 2023.

It can carry a multispectral surveillance payload and/or up to two precision-guided munitions with a maximum ordnance of up to 40kg (88lb) and a range up to 2,000km (1,243 miles)

The video below, verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification team, shows RSF drones targeting the Sidon fuel depot in Atbara, River Nile State, in April, according to Sudan War Updates.

RSF drones

Even though the RSF has no air force, according to a 2024 Amnesty International report, its allies have armed it with UAVs, including Chinese- and Serbian-manufactured drones.

One example, according to the Reuters news agency, is Chinese kamikaze drones reportedly used in high-profile RSF strikes with a range of up to 2,000km (1,243 miles) and a payload of 40kg (88lb). This long reach allows the RSF to strike as far east as Port Sudan from areas it holds in the west.

It is also deploying heavier FH-95 drones with a 200kg to 250kg (440lb to 550lb) payload that can drop laser-guided bombs. FH-95s have been spotted by humanitarian organisations at Nyala Airport in South Darfur in late 2024.

A video published in April appears to document an RSF suicide drone that crashed into a home in al-Dabba in Northern State. The post said it killed six people from one family, including two children.

Another weapon in the RSF fleet is a Serbian-made Yugoimport VTOL drone. The four-rotor drone can take off vertically and has reportedly been modified to carry mortar shells as dumb bombs.

What makes these drones significant is their ability to deliver artillery-level firepower without needing personnel on the ground.

The TikTok video below appears to show RSF fighters using a quadcopter drone, often made from commercial components and capable of carrying mortar shells.

These makeshift, lightweight drones with 120mm mortar rounds explode on impact, making them particularly indiscriminate.

Andreas Kreig, associate professor at the School of Security at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera: “On RSF adaptations, yes, there is ingenuity, and it is exactly what you would expect from a decentralised force with external supply options.

“The RSF appears willing to weaponise commercial quadcopters, repurpose agricultural or logistics drones, and modify platforms beyond their original design.”

The tactical logic is pragmatic: Drones are used to harass, distract and strike targets of symbolic or economic value, not necessarily to deliver consistently precise battlefield effects.”

“That kind of adaptation thrives in militia structures because approval chains are shorter and the appetite for improvisation is higher. It is also consistent with external enabling. The more a group is plugged into a transnational support network, the more it can experiment with components, munitions and techniques until something works.”

Supply chains: Who is supplying drones? And how?

Most drones in Sudan are smuggled in by a network of foreign backers via land, sea and air, bypassing official embargoes, as foreign states exploit the situation to their advantage.

The SAF is believed to have drone technology and military support from Egypt, Russia, Iran and Turkiye, using Eritrea as a transit hub to Port Sudan, according to Krieg and Critical Threats, a project established by the American Enterprise Institute to analyse national security threats globally.

According to Reuters, the SAF has received Iranian drones and parts with Iranian Mohajer-6s reportedly arriving in late 2023 and 2024, often via cargo flights arriving in Port Sudan, which the army has not confirmed. Turkiye has provided Bayraktar drones via Egypt, according to Critical Threats.

Critical Threats and the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank have found that several of the foreign actors supplying drones to the SAF, such as Iran and Russia, have done so in exchange for a regional presence. Iran reportedly hopes to secure a Red Sea naval base while Russia is said to have switched from supporting the RSF via the Kremlin-funded Wagner Group to supporting the SAF in 2024 in exchange for reinstating a 2017 agreement for a Red Sea naval base. 

The RSF, on the other hand, has reportedly received drone technology and military support from the UAE through various transit points, including eastern Chad, South Sudan, southeastern Libya, northeastern Somalia and the Central African Republic.

Sudan’s UN ambassador, Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, has repeatedly and publicly accused the UAE at the UN Security Council of arming the RSF. While Abu Dhabi denies these claims, open-source analysis has documented dozens of UAE-operated cargo flights flying into eastern Chad since April 2023. According to Reuters, at least 86 UAE flights suspected of carrying weapons for the RSF landed at Chad’s Amdjarass airstrip.

“The UAE sits at the hub because it can combine procurement capacity, permissive commercial infrastructure, aviation connectivity and a dense layer of intermediaries that can move dual-use systems without a clear state signature,” Krieg said.

“From there, the spokes run through jurisdictions that offer cover, weak oversight or useful geography.”

Krieg said Amdjarass matters because of its proximity to Darfur and its mix of humanitarian and commercial traffic that provides cover.

According to Reuters, satellite images showed UAE-branded pallets being unloaded near RSF supply routes. From Chad, arms are trucked into Darfur or through areas controlled by eastern Libya military commander Khalifa Haftar. The RSF is also said to operate out of Somalia with Bosaso airport, located in Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region, being developed by the UAE. However, the UAE has denied this.

Eastern Libya is another route, drawing on Haftar-aligned networks already experienced in smuggling and convoy protection. Further afield, hubs like Bosaso and Entebbe, Uganda, are staging points where shipments can be broken down, redocumented and moved onwards in smaller consignments, “preserving plausible deniability”, according to Krieg.

“The drones themselves rarely need to travel as complete aircraft. The most resilient model is modular transport: airframes, engines, datalinks, optics, batteries, ground control components and munitions moving separately under commercial cover.

Mohaiminul Rafi, 27, has spent years preparing for Bangladesh’s civil service exams, chasing what he calls “the most reliable route to a secure life”: a first-class government job.

With election campaigning under way across the country, he is now hearing promises aimed squarely at people like him: cash support or interest-free loans for the jobless, and sweeping job-creation targets.

When asked about cash support or interest-free loans for unemployed graduates, Rafi chuckled. “Of course it would help,” he said. Then he paused. “But honestly, what matters more is a healthy job market and recruitment on merit.”

Rafi was among the wave of young people who joined the 2024 protests that began over a job reservation system many saw as unfair and later spiralled into a nationwide uprising that toppled then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government.

Now, Bangladesh is heading to an election on February 12.

With Hasina’s Awami League barred from the ballot, the race is expected to largely revolve around a Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led coalition and a bloc led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, which has courted liberal allies, including the uprising-born National Citizen Party.

Senior figures from both camps are crisscrossing the country, headlining rallies and stage programmes as campaigning enters its final stretch. From platforms to doorsteps to social media, candidates and party activists are tapping familiar anxieties: jobs, price relief, tax cuts, and an end to corruption and discrimination.

But analysts and voters say that while many of the promises go to the heart of people’s insecurities, the scale of what is being offered might be difficult for any government to realistically deliver at a time when Bangladesh is grappling with multiple economic challenges.

“Everyone is promising jobs and social security like it’s a switch they can turn on overnight,” Rafi said.

The promises land in an economy in which growth has slowed to about 4-5 percent in recent years – after expanding above 8 percent before the pandemic in 2019 – while food and overall inflation have remained in the high single digits for a prolonged period, squeezing people’s purchasing power and driving up the cost of living.

Private investment has remained largely stuck at roughly 22–23 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and the nation’s tax-to-GDP ratio is still under 7 percent. This is compared with roughly 12 percent in India and 10 percent in Pakistan, and is far short of the roughly 15 percent many economists cite as a minimum for a state to sustainably fund basic services without chronic fiscal stress.

Hossain Zillur Rahman, an economist and the executive chairman of the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), a nonprofit think tank based in Dhaka, said the interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus that took over after Hasina’s ouster brought “some measure of immediate stability to macro indicators”.

But the Yunus administration, he added, has been “extraordinarily inattentive to economic distress at [the] household level” and to “engaging with the business community to jumpstart the economy”.

“The economic reality at this moment is marked by persistent inflation, poverty reversals, employment emergencies, stagnant wages,” he said, adding that the government has “failed to generate business confidence, which is why the investment rate is at a standstill”.

Against that backdrop, he added, an election matters because it may end the uncertainty freezing decisions. “Bangladesh urgently needs a restart,” Rahman said. “[The] election opens the possibility of that, but it is unlikely to produce any dramatic improvements.”

Competing promises

Amid this tense economic mood, both the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, also known as Jamaat, are selling a broad menu of pledges. The parties are yet to release manifestos, but officials from both camps told Al Jazeera that policies unveiled at separate recent high-profile events in Dhaka, and now circulating throughout the campaign, will feature prominently.

The BNP’s flagship pledge is a “family card” issued in the name of a woman in each household. The party says it would initially cover 4 million households, providing either 2,000 to 2,500 Bangladeshi taka (about $16–$20) a month in cash, usable at designated stores, or an equivalent monthly basket of essentials such as rice, pulses, oil and salt.

Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, a BNP leader and former minister of commerce, said that if elected, the BNP plans to govern by investing in people, “in health, in education, and upskilling”, and by supporting “artisans, the weavers” and small industries with credit, as well as helping them access international markets, including by helping them with their branding.

Economists say the challenge lies in scale and delivery. Bangladesh currently spends about 1.16 trillion taka a year (roughly $9.5bn) – about 2 percent of GDP – on social protection across more than 130 programmes, such as old-age allowances and widow benefits.

The BNP’s family card pledge, if fulfilled nationwide, would cost roughly 1.2 trillion taka (about $9.8bn) a year, assuming 2,500 taka ($20) per card. Bangladesh’s current outlay on social sector protections would effectively need to double to make this work.

“You cannot ensure quality social security with just 2 percent of GDP,” Towfiqul Islam Khan, additional director (research) at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said.

For Rahman of the PPRC, social protection pledges amount to an “acid test” for the parties. “The key challenge here is not just extra budget”, he said, “but avoiding leakage and ensuring delivery to the right target groups”.

The BNP argues its answer lies in shrinking the bureaucracy and digitising services. Khasru described Bangladesh as “an over-regulated country” where layers of permissions raise the “cost of doing business”. Moving services online and eliminating physical contact with officials, he said, would reduce opportunities for corruption.

Meanwhile, Jamaat’s principal welfare pitch is a “smart social security card”, a unified system the party says would connect the National ID card, health access, taxation, and social safety services.

Mokarram Hossain, a Swansea University professor who helped coordinate Jamaat’s plan, said the party’s focus rests on “good governance, zero tolerance to corruption, zero tolerance to extortion, and efficiency gains”.

Hossain said Jamaat’s plan is not to “hand out token cash”, but to build a single system through which people can access services, something he argued would also reduce “leakage” in how benefits are delivered.

Khan of the CPD said that “if revenue collection improves, these long-term plans [of both coalitions] can be implemented… and they should be”.

But for the moment, he said, both the BNP and Jamaat have questions to answer.

“They need to clearly explain how the financing will be arranged, how long implementation will take, through what process it will be done, and how institutional capacity will be strengthened [to enable the execution of these policies],” Khan said.

Still, there is a reason why these promises, irrespective of how realistic they are, resonate with many voters, said Asif Shahan, a Dhaka University professor and senior research fellow at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, a social science research and academic institute in Dhaka.

“People don’t like complicated messages,” he said. “You have to give people a very simplified message.” This is why the idea of a “family card” and a “social security card” works better than detailed policy blueprints, he said.

But it is not that the everyday voter is not discerning, he said. Voters are watching to see whether a party will deliver benefits fairly to everyone, or “only give them to party loyalists”, he said.

Jobs, education and youth

Card-based welfare promises are only one side of the campaign pitch.

Both blocs are courting young voters, roughly one-third of Bangladesh’s 127 million electorate, with sweeping job pledges.

Government data shows unemployment among college-educated people is at 13.5 percent as of 2024, leaving about 885,000 graduates without work, while overall unemployment stands at 4.63 percent, with roughly 2.7 million people.

The BNP has pledged to create 10 million jobs within 18 months and provide financial support to the “educated unemployed” until they find work, as well as ensure “merit-based government recruitment”.

It has also pitched the “digital economy as a major employer”, promising 800,000 information technology jobs and the introduction of international payment gateways, such as PayPal, to ease cross-border earnings for freelancers.

Chowdhury, the senior BNP leader, said Bangladesh’s homegrown payment systems are “very poor”, and that multiple gateways would “create competition and support online workers, as well as make cross-border business easier”.

Jamaat’s jobs pitch, meanwhile, leans heavily on training and placement. It has pledged to train 10 million youth within five years, saying it would establish a “youth tech lab” in every sub-district and set up district-level “job banks” to connect people to 5 million jobs within the same period.

It also promises to create 500,000 entrepreneurs, develop 1.5 million freelancers, and design “separate skills programmes for young people with lower formal education”.

But Jamaat has also offered unemployed graduates interest-free monthly loans of up to 10,000 taka (about $80) for up to two years.

Hossain, the Swansea University professor, stressed that the support would need to be repaid. “We are not ‘giving’ the money,” he said. “We are giving a loan, but interest-free.”

But economists say delivering the job creation both sides are promising would require sustained GDP growth of 8 to 10 percent and a considerable surge in domestic and foreign investment.

The PPRC’s Rahman said he was sceptical about interest-free loans as a fix. “Interest-free loans tend to be populist measures without much proven impact,” he said, arguing that “the solutions for unemployed graduates are their skilling and actual employment opportunities”.

Education has also become central to campaign promises.

BNP’s education proposals include a “one teacher, one tab” initiative, under which the party says it would provide tablet computers to primary and secondary teachers to support teaching and training. It also plans to expand multimedia classrooms, introduce compulsory vocational education at the secondary level, and strengthen technical and skills-based training alongside general education.

The party has further pledged to expand midday meals for students. Bangladesh currently runs a school feeding programme in parts of the primary and elementary school system, but coverage remains limited and uneven, and there is no nationwide scheme at the secondary level.

The BNP has also said it would expand sport, arts and cultural education, as well as introduce third-language learning – including Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and German, alongside Bengali and English – from the secondary stage, which party leaders argue would improve employability at home and abroad.

BNP leader Chowdhury said Bangladesh’s education system pushes too many students towards advanced degrees, which “creates more jobless people”, and that the BNP wants vocational schools “all around the country”, so more students move into skills tracks after high school. He pointed to China, where he said that “60 percent go to vocational education”, which helps young people find work “at home… [and] abroad”.

Jamaat’s education platform includes interest-free education loans of up to 10,000 taka (about $80) per month for 100,000 students selected on merit and need, annual support for 100 students a year to study at top global universities, and upgrading large colleges into full universities.

Hossain said Jamaat’s overseas-study pledge is limited. Students admitted to “fixed top universities… MIT, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge” would “get all the money”, while others would receive support for “the first two semesters” and repay the rest as an interest-free loan.

Rahman urged caution over student loan-style pledges. “The idea of student loans also needs to be thought through with care,” he said. “The burden of student loans hangs like a baleful cloud over the large swath of youth in the developed world.”

He argued that expanded scholarship schemes with strict targeting and compliance conditions could be a safer approach.

Tax cuts and the revenue squeeze

While the BNP has not specified tax rates and has instead promised more generic “business-friendly reforms and deregulation”, Jamaat has been explicit on taxes, proposing cuts that would bring “corporate tax down to 19 percent and VAT [value-added tax] to 10 percent”.

At present, economists say, some companies face tax rates exceeding 50 percent, while taxes on discouraged and luxury goods can reach 700 to 800 percent.

Hossain of Swansea University said Jamaat’s finance policy team estimates that just by tightening tax collection, “plugging loopholes and curbing corruption in tax administration”, it could recover 1.05 to 2 trillion taka (roughly $8.5bn to $16.4bn), which would help fund the “party’s promises without expanding the budget”.

He said that the same team has put the estimated cost of implementing Jamaat’s proposals at 2.37 trillion taka (about $19bn), while it projects “potential revenue sources” of 2.21 trillion to 3.16 trillion taka (roughly $18bn to $25.7bn), driven largely by “tighter taxation” alongside “efficiency gains” and “debt restructuring”.

But the CPD’s Khan said Bangladesh needed a broader overhaul of the revenue system, which would also help boost investment. “A service-oriented tax system, automated return filing and assessment, and efficient tax refunds are essential,” he said. “This would reduce tax evasion and administrative delays, and increase revenue.”

Industry costs, farmers and health

Jamaat has pledged to freeze industrial utility – gas, electricity and water – tariffs for three years to help businesses. It has also proposed reopening closed factories through public-private partnerships, with 10 percent ownership allocated to workers.

Rahman, the economist, said that “among the promises made by Jamaat, the one which has most merit is to freeze utility tariffs for the industrial sector for three years”.

The BNP’s pitch to business is less about a single pledge and more about a structural reset.

Chowdhury framed it as moving away from an “oligarchic economy” tied to businesses with political power and towards what he called a “democratisation of the economy”, with a level playing field for all firms.

In agriculture, the BNP has proposed a “farmer card” offering “subsidised fertiliser, seeds and pesticides, access to machinery, easier loans, crop insurance, fair-price sales and mobile access to market and weather information”.

Jamaat has promised interest-free loans for small and medium farmers.

But agriculture policy is already tied to a heavy subsidy bill. In the current fiscal year, the government allocated about 400 billion taka (roughly $3.2bn) for agriculture, fisheries, livestock and food security.

Economists caution that expanding support further will be difficult amid high inflation and revenue constraints. Rahman said both parties’ agriculture focus is welcome, but warned that “the same issues of leakage and mistargeting will be critical here, too”.

Health has also featured prominently.

The BNP has pledged to recruit 100,000 healthcare workers, 80 percent of them women, to deliver door-to-door primary care. The party is also promising free primary-care medicines and low-cost treatment for critical diseases through public-private partnerships.

Jamaat’s policies include free healthcare for citizens over 60 and children under five, building 64 specialised hospitals, one in each Bangladeshi district, and expanding maternal and child health support through a “first thousand days” programme, covering the period from the start of pregnancy through a child’s first two years.

For Rahman, the contest moving on is not only about big promises, but whether a new government can deliver without straining the economy.

He said this means breaking with the interim government’s “governing style”, one he argues has failed to “meaningfully engage with the business community” and curb the “institutionalised corruption” entrenched under Hasina’s government.

Rafi, the job seeker, put it more simply: Promises come easily, he said.