The lucrative textiles export sector that employs more than 2.2 million workers, most of them women, is reporting losses of more than $70 million for every day that the blockade persists. The industry, which earns $8 billion a year, could see factory closures this year as a result of the blockades, according to leaders of the Garments Manufacturers Association. They are threatening to march on the presidential palace with their workers if the impasse does not end soon. In short, Bangladesh's economy faces an unprecedented crisis.

"This unending political violence is resulting in Bangladesh being tagged internationally as a country of continuous unrest, and buyers are beginning to run scared, fearing we won't be able to deliver on orders," says Fazlul Haque, the president of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

Bangladesh may also fall short of its economic growth projections of 6.2 percent for this year, economists say.

"Every day's growth leads to total [economic] growth and there is no doubt that the economic losses of every day affect the long term outlook," says Mustafizur Rahman, a director at the Dhaka-based economic think-tank, The Centre for Policy Dialogue.

The latest series of clashes has much to do with personal hatred and mistrust between the two leaders of rival political parties.

Sheikh Hasina, who heads the Awami League, inherited her party position from her father, Bangladesh's founder and president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was killed along with most members of his family in a military coup in 1975.

Zia, on the other hand, is the widow of Major General Ziaur Rahman, whose four-year presidency ended with his assassination in a military coup in 1981.

While both women have served terms as prime minister or as the leader of the opposition in Parliament over the past 15 years, they never speak to each other, and often hurl the most acrimonious of insults at each other in the media.

Ms. Hasina believes that General Rahman was among those who plotted and killed her father on Aug. 15, 1975, and frequently says as much in public. Zia has taken to celebrating her birthday on Aug. 15, balking its observance as a day of national mourning when the Awami League is in power, and canceling state mourning altogether when she was prime minister.

"Before 1990 we had never heard that Khaleda Zia's birthday is on Aug. 15, and these birthday celebrations are an undisguised attempt to be spiteful, since the birthday recorded in her school certificates are different," says one political analyst.

Hasina has publicly accused Zia and her sons of stealing millions of dollars in corrupt deals during BNP's recent stint in power. Earlier this week, Zia's son Tarique Rahman filed a defamation suit against Hasina and two of her aides for "tarnishing" his family's image with allegations of corruption.

During her stint in power from 1996-2001, Hasina changed school textbooks to depict her father as the hero of the country's war of independence against Pakistan in 1971, and the one who made the proclamation of independence. She also required every government office to hang portraits of her father, proclaiming him as the father of the nation and had bank notes issued with his picture on them.

When Zia came to power in 2001, she had the textbooks rewritten to depict her late husband as a war hero and credited him with the proclamation of independence. She also had Rahman's portraits removed from government offices and reissued the state bank notes.

"Bangladesh has become victim of a crude power struggle between its two major parties, intensified by the animosity between the two ladies," says Nurul Kabir, editor of the daily New Age, published from Dhaka, and a political analyst. "The parties have no distinct difference in their politics, and hence take opposing views on nearly everything," he says.

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