In a gap of two days, two senior Ministers from Pakistan are visiting Bangladesh. Pakistan Federal Minister for Commerce, Jam Kamal Khan, is meeting his counterpart in Bangladesh on 21 August. After two days, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar is scheduled to visit Dhaka on 23 August amid a rapid advance and warming in bilateral relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Dar was previously due to visit Bangladesh in April, which was abruptly cancelled due to the India-Pakistan war, which sparked from the deaths of tourists in the Kashmir valley by armed jihadists. Besides meeting his counterpart, Touhid Hossain, he will have an audience with Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, Chief Advisor of the Interim Government. Earlier, the territory was previously referred to as ‘East Bengal’, later renamed ‘East Pakistan’, which is now Bangladesh.

“Incidents of 1971 cannot be forgotten. The pain will remain forever.” – Sheikh Hasina

The South Asian countries were once one country since Pakistan was created in 1947. Separate nations for Muslims in India was a proposal in Lahore in 1940 by a stalwart leader, Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul Haque, who was born in Bangladesh. Rest is history! Bangladesh was a neglected eastern province of Pakistan. The country was dominated by Pakistan-born civil service officers, judges, police, and military. Very few Bangladesh-born individuals are given government jobs.

The policy of Islamabad dramatically changed its step-motherly policy towards the eastern province after the 1965 Indo-Pak war. Bangladesh was left defenseless. India could have captured the territory without shedding much blood in the 1965 war fought in the west. Bangali nationalism sparked from the 1952 language movement, which became the turning point for the creation of an independent nation by the left student group.

In 1967, the students secretly drafted a resolution to demand the independence of Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and leader of the Awami League, was in prison. The party leaders were in the dark regarding the independence conspiracy. Awami League’s participation in the controversial elections in 1970, under military junta General Yahya Khan, legitimized the martial law.

The junta chief woke up from his daydreams when he heard the Awami League had bagged an overwhelming majority in the national assembly. Months after the election, Yahya ordered General Khadim Hussain Raza, who was in command of the military in the east, to crack down on the Awami League, which had a code name “Operation Blitz”.

The crackdown was vehemently opposed by the Governor of East Pakistan, Vice Admiral Syed Mohammad Ahsan and Lieutenant General Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, chief of Eastern Command. They knew that such a stubborn decision of Rawalpindi would push the Bangla-speaking soldiers and officers in the army, the para-military border force and the police to revolt. They will be joined by students and civilians in thousands, which will become a herculean task to neutralize them in a delta, flooded during the monsoon season.

“Let’s settle those issues for us to move forward.” – Prof Muhammad Yunus

Unable to launch the crackdown in December 1970, irritated Yahya Khan again made a firm order to General Raza for plan B. Thus, “Operation Searchlight”, a genocidal crackdown, was launched on 25 March 1971, Khadim Hussain Raza wrote in his book “A Stranger In My Own Country”. Both the highly decorated officers, Admiral Ahsan and Gen Yaqub Khan, were unceremoniously removed. They were replaced by rogue hawks from Rawalpindi HQ, who later surrendered and became POWs. Thus, they buried the eastern wing of Pakistan.

The eastern territory seceded after a bloody war of independence in 1971. Thousands of marauding Pakistani military in a humiliating defeat surrendered to the joint Bangladesh Mukti Bahini (liberation army) and the Indian Army. Nearly 200 top Pakistan military officers in the eastern war theater were accused of committing war crimes and were held prisoners of war (POW). President Sheikh Mujib announced the trial of the war criminals under the International Crimes Tribunal 1973.

The accused POWs were later repatriated safely to Pakistan after the historic Tripartite Agreement of 1974, signed in New Delhi in April by Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan to normalize relations and promote peace in the subcontinent following the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The Tripartite Agreement addressed the issue of Pakistani prisoners of war held in India. The agreement also included a commitment from Pakistan to try the 195 Pakistani soldiers accused of war crimes in Bangladesh under their Military Act. Unfortunately, clause 12 of the agreement was never materialized.

During a meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the sidelines of the D-8 summit of developing nations in Cairo in December, Prof Yunus expressed the desire to resolve outstanding grievances from Dhaka’s 1971 pain, agony, anguish, and sufferings caused by the Pakistan army in Bangladesh. “The issues have kept coming again and again. Let’s settle those issues for us to move forward,” the AFP news agency had quoted Yunus as telling Shehbaz.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Advisor has called on Pakistan to seek a public apology for the atrocities committed during the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971. This demand was made during discussions with Pakistan, where Bangladesh also raised other unsettled issues from that period.

Bangladesh did not seek reparation for the 1971 war, but had demanded a share of the ships, aircraft and other physical compensation. Which remains on paper, but Pakistan has never responded to it.

The militaries of Pakistan and Bangladesh stressed the need for an “enduring partnership” to “remain resilient against external influences.”

Fresh discussion between Bangladesh and Pakistan includes other areas of cooperation, such as trade and agriculture. However, the issue of 1971 remains a bone of contention and a barrier to full normalization of relations.

In the years since Bangladesh was born, the leaders have hardly made efforts to develop relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh. The relations went into cold storage, especially during the regime of Sheikh Hasina. She was a visible all-weather friend of India and preferred to keep close ties with New Delhi and keep Islamabad at arm’s length. Her tacit allegiance to Delhi has deliberately made the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) a dysfunctional regional platform.

Once, Hasina called back his High Commissioner and senior diplomats in Islamabad and decided to snap the diplomatic ties between the two countries. Dhaka refused to grant diplomatic clearance to the Pakistan High Commissioner to Bangladesh. The pending diplomatic clearance kept the Pakistan mission in Dhaka absent from top diplomats for more than two years.

Finally, one day in early December 2020, Hasina met with Pakistan High Commissioner Imran Ahmed Siddiqui. While Pakistan’s statement was marked by its focus on improving bilateral ties, the Bangladeshi statement was more guarded in its tone, referring prominently to the country’s war of independence against Pakistan in 1971.

“Incidents of 1971 cannot be forgotten. The pain will remain forever,” Hasina has been quoted by state news agency BSS as telling the Pakistani envoy. After a popular Monsoon uprising that saw Hasina’s regime toppled in August of last year, the deposed prime minister fled to her time-tested ally India.

Since then, the sweet relations with India have turned sour. The moratorium on the issuance of visas to Bangladeshi nationals for a year is a glaring example of relations at a low point. The deportation of Bangla-speaking Muslims to Bangladesh without verification has irked Dhaka. The crackdown on “illegal immigrants” was launched after the recent deaths of tourists in Kashmir.

Another pressing issue with Delhi is killings by trigger-happy Indian Border Security Forces (BSF) of Bangladesh nationals at the border, which political parties are annoyed by, and Dhaka has regularly protested the deaths of mostly innocent farmers and cattle herders. Meanwhile, there has been a thaw in ties between the two capitals, Islamabad and Dhaka, with trade and bilateral relations witnessing significant improvement.

The deal in principle, marking a breakthrough in bilateral relations between the two states, was reached during a meeting between Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and Bangladesh’s Home Minister Jahangir Alam Chowdhury. Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch had visited Dhaka in April for Foreign Office Consultations after a 15-year break in diplomatic engagement with Bangladesh.

In February, the two countries started direct government-to-government (G2G) trade after decades of troubled relations, with imports of 50,000 tonnes of rice. In January, the militaries of Pakistan and Bangladesh had stressed the need for the “enduring partnership” between the two countries to “remain resilient against external influences”.

Such visitations have irked Delhi of the military cooperation, resumption of trade and commerce and warming of other agreements. The think-tanks and Indian media have been propagating a conspiracy theory that now India has two Pakistans – one in the west and another in the east, meaning Bangladesh.

Delhi did not make any official statement on the bilateral relations, but the spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs did not hesitate to rebuke Bangladesh on attacks on Hindus. But advised Dhaka to ensure the safety and security of the Hindus in Bangladesh and punish the perpetrators.

The Indian media has propagated a conspiracy theory that “India now has two Pakistans – one in the west and another in the east.”

However, the relationship between the two neighboring countries is in a rocking boat loaded with suspicion and distrust. Never before has such a situation developed between Dhaka and Delhi, even when the military junta thrice took power, which was not kind to India.

Delhi never showed its dark face towards Dhaka; instead, it kept business, trade and bilateral relations rolling without any hiccups. Ambassador Humayun Kabir said, unfortunately, after the fall of Hasina, India has stopped accepting Bangladesh as a friendly neighbor.

The Indian media’s anti-Bangladesh rhetoric, coupled with intermittent statements of the ruling Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, gives a clear message that they despise the Interim Government of Prof Yunus, which Kabir says is a worrisome sign.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.