THEY WERE ONCE one country, but, in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina, Pakistan was a taboo subject. Relations had been fraught ever since Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan in 1971, but, in the last 15 years, they reached an all-time low. Trade, the movement of people and official cooperation all ground almost to a complete halt. Pakistani diplomats in Dhaka were given the cold shoulder and two were even expelled. Meanwhile, most Pakistanis found Bangladesh off-limits for travel as an iron curtain seemed to descend.
All that has changed since Hasina fell last August, after four terms of increasingly authoritarian rule. India has become the focus of public and political resentment, while some in Bangladesh have wondered aloud about a closer relationship with Pakistan. As Bangladeshis reckon with their national identity in the aftermath of the “Monsoon Revolution” of 2024, many have started to look on Pakistan with different eyes, while state-to-state relations between the two countries are being conducted with a warmth unseen for decades.
Hasina’s successor, Muhammad Yunus, the chief advisor to Bangladesh’s interim government, has met his counterpart and Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, three times in four months, while he has not met the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, once since taking office. Pakistan’s high commissioner in Dhaka, Syed Ahmed Maroof, has found himself much in demand. Recently, he has taken meetings with businessmen, political leaders and the interim heads of various government ministries.
Since August, Maroof told me in his office at Pakistan House in North Dhaka, he has begun to enjoy his job. We met in mid-December, as he was preparing for a concert by the Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan for an audience of 10,000 in Dhaka’s Army Stadium. The idea had originated with Dhaka University students, who were among the prime movers of the protests that brought Hasina down. The event was a fundraiser for injured protesters and the families of those killed in the unrest, and the singer waived his fee at the Pakistan high commission’s request.
But it was otherwise a sensitive week for Pakistan in Bangladesh. Days earlier, the country had celebrated Victory Day, marking the surrender of Pakistan forces in 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh. Even so, the concert, held on 21 December, became the latest salvo in a highly successful charm offensive.
Maroof said trade and bilateral relations had begun to pick up: “All these areas were in a state of stasis before – there was no movement. … But now we are seeing real progress.” Bilateral trade has increased 28 percent since the end of Hasina’s regime, and the high commissioner hoped it would continue to expand and diversify beyond textiles and raw materials, the mainstays of Pakistan’s exports to Bangladesh.
“The trade balance is highly lopsided,” he said. In 2023–24, bilateral trade amounted to USD 723 million, with USD 666 million worth of exports from Pakistan. Maroof wanted to see Pakistan export essential commodities such as construction materials and food to Bangladesh, and import tea and medicines in return. “Bangladesh produces drugs at a very cheap price, and this is immediately available for our market,” he said. He expected a further boost to trade after a Pakistani trade delegation that is due to visit Dhaka in January. “As the businesspeople meet each other, they will identify more opportunities.”
Iqbal Hossain Khan, Maroof’s counterpart in Islamabad, echoed those priorities. “We have the highest population density in the world – we have to explore mutual economic benefits in our relations,” the Bangladesh high commissioner told me. He said he was focussed on facilitating the import of food to Bangladesh from Pakistan and the export of pharmaceuticals in return.
But, with economic instability in both countries, fresh investment might be hard to find. And another major challenge to bilateral trade is connectivity. Pakistan is separated from Bangladesh by some 1500 kilometres of Indian territory, a distance that might dampen the enthusiasm of businessmen on both sides.
Since 2018, there have been no direct flights between the two countries. For years, Pakistanis could not get visas for Bangladesh except in rare cases, as stringent security clearance requirements from different state agencies made travel practically impossible. In a sign of goodwill, Bangladesh’s interim government has removed those requirements, while Pakistan has reciprocated by removing visa fees and security clearance for Bangladeshi travellers. Maroof had already noticed “a substantial increase in medical tourism to Pakistan” as he continued to focus on restarting direct flights.
Diplomatic ties have also progressed apace. “So many people are reaching out to us with good intentions – things are moving towards normalisation,” Maroof said. He had recently announced the roll-out of 300 scholarships for Bangladeshi students at universities in Pakistan. And he had visited the Urdu department of Dhaka University – a significant gesture in a country that often still sees Urdu as a symbol of past domination by the Pakistan state. Previously “there was a ban on engaging in any academic activity with Pakistan,” Maroof said, “but now that’s been removed.”
And he had met with almost every government ministry – “I’ve lost count,” he laughed. “We’ve felt a very receptive attitude from the government.” He had also met with student leaders who spearheaded the movement against Hasina and now form part of the interim government, and with the Bangladesh National Party (BNP). A bitter rival to Hasina’s Awami League, the BNP is now the country’s largest political party, though not part of the interim government. The periods of BNP rule, from 1991 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2006, saw markedly better relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan, and many in Bangladesh – and in India – looked at the party’s apparent closeness with Pakistan with suspicion. In Maroof’s view, “The BNP was more pragmatic.”
The high commissioner had been careful to refrain from meeting the Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat, Bangladesh’s main Islamist party, remains infamous for its support of Pakistan during the struggle for independence. In September, he also avoided an event commemorating the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, at Dhaka’s Press Club. “I thought it wasn’t the right time,” he said. Jinnah remains associated in Bangladesh with the suppression of the Bengali language, and the fact that he can now be openly celebrated in Dhaka shows how much has changed since Hasina’s fall.
RAFIUZZAMAN SIDDIQUI, Pakistan’s high commissioner to Dhaka from 2016 to 2018, told me that he was frozen out by the Awami League government under Hasina. “I never got a chance to meet the foreign minister, or for that matter any minister – my requests were simply not entertained,” he said. The drivers of guests at the high commission would be harassed, friends were scared to receive his phone calls and officials treated him “like a leper.”
In 2013, the high commission in Dhaka was stormed by protesters after Hasina bolstered her popularity by overseeing the executions of Jamaat leaders on charges of war crimes dating from 1971.
In 2015, two Pakistani diplomats were expelled from Bangladesh amid allegations of “terror financing”. Farina Arshad, the second secretary at the high commission, was accused of passing cash to a Bangladeshi Islamist militant. Maroof maintained that the allegations were without merit. “Farina is a professional diplomat and she was expelled for political reasons,” he said.
But even under Hasina, the high commissioner was at pains to point out, relations with Pakistan were not completely frozen. In recent years, he said, there were around a thousand Pakistanis working in Bangladesh, mainly in the textile sector. In Beximco, one of Bangladesh’s largest conglomerates, “the heads of departments were mostly Pakistanis,” he said. Beximco is owned by the billionaire Salman F Rahman, one of Hasina’s closest advisors. Known for his ties to Pakistan, Rahman is currently in detention in Dhaka on murder charges. He also faces allegations of corruption involving sums in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Bangladesh’s army also retained links with Pakistan, undercutting the Hasina government’s official hostility. The high commissioner confirmed that, over the last 15 years, it imported horses from Pakistan, and the two countries exchanged military training delegations. Since August, Bangladesh has started importing ammunition from Pakistan.
Afrasiab Mehdi Hashmi, Pakistan’s high commissioner in Dhaka from 2011 to 2014, remembered a paradoxical relationship with Bangladesh. He told me “the relationship was cold” on an official level but on the streets and at cricket matches he “always got a good reception for the Pakistani flag.”
Rafiuzzaman remembered warm relations with Bangladeshis he met socially, in contrast to the “dramatic political hostility” of Hasina’s government. “The Awami League carries the political baggage of ’71,” he said, “and they have always been close to India.”
Under Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Awami League was at the forefront of the struggle for Bangladesh. After a brutal crackdown by the Pakistan Army and pro-Pakistan forces, pro-independence fighters won the 1971 war with assistance from India.
The Bangladesh–Pakistan relationship was jeopardised from the outset by a series of disputes arising from the war. Issues over population transfer, the division of assets and accountability for war-time crimes remained unresolved for years. To this day, Pakistan has not fully honoured its promise to receive hundreds of thousands of non-Bengali, Urdu-speaking Muslims from Bangladesh. Known as Biharis, after the war they were herded into camps – like the Geneva Camp in central Dhaka – where many of them still live.
Pakistan has never officially apologised for its actions in 1971, let alone acknowledged legal responsibility or paid reparations. The closest it came to an apology was in 2002, when Pervez Musharraf, the president and military dictator of Pakistan at the time, expressed “regret” during an official visit to Dhaka. With Pakistan still dominated by its military, an official apology remains unlikely.
“It’s a very sensitive issue for Pakistan,” Rafiuzzaman said. “It will open up a Pandora’s box.” When he was in Dhaka, “so many people would tell me to my face what they had suffered in ’71 and I was very sympathetic towards them. They would say, ‘We can forgive, but we can’t forget.’” Personally, he said, “I think even killing one person was wrong.”
According to Maroof, Hasina’s government made an apology a pre-condition for any thaw in bilateral relations. “Their attitude was if you apologise, then we can move forward,” he said. He welcomed the new government’s more pragmatic attitude. “Of course we’ve been talking about it, but in private,” he said. “The good thing is that there is so much progress going on in parallel.” He had not yet met a victim of the 1971 war, he added, but if he did he “would definitely sympathise with them – it shouldn’t have happened to them.”
Yunus’s recent meeting with Shehbaz Sharif in Cairo offered a good example of this parallel progress. According to an official readout, Yunus raised the issue of the 1971 war and asked Pakistan to “settle those issues for us to move forward.” Sharif replied that the war had been settled since the 1970s, “but if there are other outstanding issues” he would be happy to look at them. The two men agreed “to strengthen relations between the two countries through increased trade, commerce, and exchange of sports and cultural delegations,” indicating that the war may no longer be a sticking point in the bilateral relationship.
“The war happened in the past,” Hossain, Bangladesh’s high commissioner in Islamabad, told me. “Look at Vietnam and the USA.” But he refused to say whether he had raised the issue with the Pakistan government, referring me to Dhaka instead. I contacted numerous officials, including the interim government’s adviser on foreign affairs, but they declined to comment.
Pakistan’s refusal to acknowledge responsibility for 1971 helps to keep the trauma alive in a country deeply marked by the war. The academic Meghna Guhathakurta, whose father was killed by the Pakistan Army at Dhaka University in 1971, told me that “failing to confront the past with all its pain, suffering and mistakes can only lead to … an unsustainable peace.”
Even if the ghosts of 1971 remain, there are also underlying strands of sympathy that coexist with the historical trauma. As Rafiuzzaman remarked, “some sections of Bangladeshi society have a soft corner for Pakistan.”
The two countries share a majority religion and some aspects of culture. Some Bangladeshi artists, like the iconic painter Zainul Abedin, are highly prized in Pakistan. Many members of the Bangladeshi elite spent their formative years in boarding schools, colleges, or cantonments in Lahore, Rawalpindi or Karachi. After 1971, Bangladesh was run by ex-Pakistani civil servants and the Bangladesh Army was led for decades by Pakistan-trained Bengali officers – including Zia ur Rahman and Hossain Mohammad Ershad, who also ruled the country as dictators. Even today, a former Pakistani officer, Brigadier Sakhawat Hossain, serves in Bangladesh’s interim government.
These links occasionally filter into bilateral ties. In 2023, at the height of his power as Sheikh Hasina’s advisor, Salman F Rahman met Pakistan’s president, Arif Alvi, while performing Hajj in Mecca. They recalled their friendship as schoolboys in Karachi – although Rahman later tweeted that he had asked Alvi to apologise for 1971. Muhammad Yunus, while representing Bangladesh at the UN General Assembly in September 2024, had a lengthy meeting with Tariq Fatemi, Shehbaz Sharif’s foreign policy advisor. An influential voice in the Pakistani establishment, Fatemi was born in and studied in Dhaka before moving to Pakistan after 1971. The two men reportedly spoke in fluent Bangla before an uncomprehending audience of Pakistani diplomats.
BANGLADESH ALSO HAS a powerful religious right, which seeks to foreground the country’s Muslim identity. For them, Pakistan is a natural ally. According to Hashmi, “they look up to Pakistan and consider it an elder brother.” The Jamaat, for instance, first emerged as a branch of the Pakistani group with the same name.
The Awami League has tended to prioritise the memory of Pakistani brutality and Indian assistance to Bangladesh in 1971. For Hasina’s party, Pakistan represents the antithesis of what it is to be Bangladeshi. But in Bangladesh today, there is a powerful backlash against Hasina and everything she stood for. Repressed for years, opposition parties like the Jamaat and the BNP are resurgent. Although the opposition parties are politically and ideologically far apart on numerous fronts, many of their supporters take the view that India represents a common threat. And, in light of Hasina’s close relationship with India, anti-Indian sentiment among Bangladeshis has reached an all-time high.
For 15 years, India backed Hasina to the hilt, sometimes at the expense of the Bangladeshi people. New Delhi recouped its investment in the form of lucrative trade deals, security cooperation and foreign-policy concessions.
“India’s unwavering backing of a widely unpopular regime has significantly fuelled anti-India sentiment among the Bangladeshi public,” Faisal Mahmud, recently appointed the press minister at the Bangladesh high commission in New Delhi, told me. “Successive Indian governments have consistently supported the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina, ensuring that their relationship remained intact even at the expense of Bangladesh’s gradual democratic decline.”
Tariq Karim saw the relationship at close quarters as Bangladesh’s high commissioner in New Delhi from 2009 to 2014. “A lot of the bad relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan is due to India,” he said. “They didn’t actually ask us to cut ties, they just said, ‘Be wary’.”
India supported Hasina as she tightened her grip on power. Her government forcibly disappeared at least 708 people, and the interim government has raised serious allegations of Indian involvement in some of these enforced disappearances. In 2009, India even reportedly threatened military intervention to support Hasina. During last year’s protests, Salman F Rahman reportedly watched her flee to India, where she remains, on the television news.
India’s approach to Bangladesh has always been motivated in good part by a fear of Pakistan; New Delhi has believed that Bangladesh, with influence from Pakistan, may become a safe haven for insurgent groups active in India’s Northeast or for Islamist groups looking to destabilise India. These fears were particularly heightened during a BNP-Jamaat alliance government in Bangladesh in the early 2000s, when a grenade attack almost killed Hasina and a huge shipment of illicit arms was discovered in the port of Chittagong. Linked to an insurgency in India’s Northeast, the arms came from a ship owned by a BNP politician known for his ties with Pakistan.
Pakistan, for its part, has always denied any covert interference in Bangladesh. The Awami League, when it came to power in 2009, pointedly promised closer cooperation with India on security issues.
Karim recalled that, when he was Bangladesh’s high commissioner in New Delhi, “I conveyed the message: you deal with us on water[-sharing] and trade, and we will deal with your security concerns.” But, he said, in the end, “India was reneging on the commitments it had made to Bangladesh.”
Hossain, the Bangladesh high commissioner in Islamabad, told me his country wants “balanced relations with all friendly countries.” But with tensions between India and Pakistan running high, Bangladesh might find it difficult to strike a balance in its approach to the two neighbours.
The powers that be in Pakistan, meanwhile, have watched events in Bangladesh with undisguised pleasure. Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Asim Munir, gloated that Hasina’s fall validated the “two-nation theory” that there was an eternal, immutable division between Muslim and Hindu Southasia. But supporters of Imran Khan, the jailed former prime minister of Pakistan, took a different view; for them, the uprising in Bangladesh provided an enviable model for the youth of Pakistan, so oppressed by the Pakistan Army.
Ultimately, Bangladesh’s relationship with Pakistan cannot be separated from its relationship with India. “You can’t change your geography,” Karim said. “Connectivity is our greatest trump card, and all connectivity has to go through India.” Bangladesh cannot afford to ignore this.
Hashmi, the Pakistani diplomat, agreed. “We are a country that is a thousand miles from Bangladesh,” he said. “They have to live with India.”
source : himalmag