There is much excitement in Pakistan these days about improving relations with Bangladesh. The sentiment is understandable, given that bilateral ties had practically died during Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year rule. After many years, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, is set to visit Bangladesh in the third week of April. Other dignitaries, such as the Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence, have already visited Dhaka, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus met in Cairo to discuss prospects for strengthening ties. Moreover, since the change in government in Bangladesh, both countries have engaged in direct maritime services, trade, and military cooperation.
The critical question, however, is what direction this newfound bonhomie will take and what its potential is—especially considering the two major impediments in a stronger Pakistan-Bangladesh relations: geographical distance and a bitter history.
What seems to have brought these two South Asian nations—once part of the same country—together in their pursuit of rebuilding ties is their shared anxiety about neighbouring India. While Pakistan’s relations with India couldn’t have been more dead and cold, the ruling team in Dhaka is extremely unhappy with Delhi for giving shelter to Sheikh Hasina, whom they view as corrupt and responsible for the deaths and torture of hundreds of Bengalis in 2024.
The Indian government may look at Dhaka’s bitterness as a temporary phase, assuming that historical dependence on India and shared border issues will eventually smooth things over—especially if the Awami League returns to power. But such calculations overlook the socio-political changes that have gradually taken root in Bangladesh.
The ruling group in Dhaka may appear confused and angry, but its bitterness toward Delhi—now linking it to Pakistan—has been growing over time, also guided by the growing resentment of the ordinary folk on treatment from India with whom the emotional and ideological distancing has grown over the years. I am reminded of my visit to Bangladesh in 2006 for research when, during my twenty-day stay, I realised that apart from the Awami League’s supporters, there was widespread anxiety about India due to border incidents and other sticky issues.
In recent years, changes to India’s citizenship laws have also not gone down too well among the average Bangladeshi, who sees them as discriminatory and exclusionary on religious grounds. Not to forget that, over the decades, Bangladeshi society has undergone a transformation, with the religious right growing in strength—much like in India—putting the two nations on a natural confrontational path. Thus, the unease may not go away easily.
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Pakistan’s strategic calculations
The evolving socio-political environment in Bangladesh provides an opportunity for Pakistan to build a relationship it considers crucial in challenging India, both geo-politically and militarily. This is part of Islamabad’s broader strategy to find partners in South Asia to check what it considers as Delhi’s hegemonic designs. India may be important globally, but that image turns lacklustre if it faces regional pushback.
Pakistan’s military-strategic fascination with the territory it lost in 1971 is very long. Between 1971 and 1975, Bangladesh was not only physically lost to Islamabad but also went in a dark hole of strategic imagination until Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination in 1975. Under the military regimes of Generals Ziaur Rehman and Hussain Muhammad Ershad, and later under the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Khaleda Zia, bilateral ties were gradually rebuilt. Trade, military training programmes, and state-to-state communication picked up. Until 2009, Bangladeshi military officers regularly attended training courses in Pakistan, and these programmes have now resumed. Besides connecting with the Bangladeshi military, the bulk of whose officer cadre consisted of men repatriated from Pakistan, the Pakistani state built relations with the Bangladeshi religious right. More investment in the religious right and its ideological values took place as Pakistan became a hub of Islamic jihadism after 1979.
However, rebuilding ties with Dhaka after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster carries another important dimension for Pakistan. The manner in which she was ousted, the public desecration of Sheikh Mujib’s statues, and a government that seems willing to tear the pages from its own history pertaining to the country’s birth bring a sense of vindication to Pakistan’s military establishment. The Pakistani Army has never acknowledged the 1971 conflict as a civil war but rather as an Indian conspiracy.
The resumption of Islamabad-Dhaka ties and growing tensions between Dhaka and Delhi almost tantamount to history completing a full circle—where a Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which once parted ways from Pakistan despite shared religious identity, now finds itself uneasy with a Hindu-majority India. Bangladesh will not return to Pakistan’s fold, though some ultra-hawks have suggested “unconditional forgiveness” for Bengalis should they agree to reunite as East Pakistan, accompanied by promises of a “tight embrace.”
However, relations could develop to a point where Pakistan could use Bangladesh as its strategic eyes and ears to keep a watch over India. Again, I am reminded of a seminar in 1994, attended by Pakistan’s then-Air Chief, where a proposal was floated to station Pakistan Air Force aircraft in Bangladesh for potential use in conflicts with India.
This may sound like a good military strategy, but it lacks a crucial socio-political dimension. Despite shared grievances against India, closer ties with Pakistan would require Islamabad to act magnanimously, accept its blunders in 1971, and tender a formal apology for the brutal treatment of Bengalis during the conflict. A few Bangladeshis I spoke with argued that such a gesture will benefit Pakistan strategically. However, any mention of the Pakistan Army’s atrocities is countered by arguments that the Mukti Bahini was equally brutal—leading to the belief that both sides were at fault, and it is best to “forgive and forget” rather than seek an apology.
Pakistani generals will never agree to issuing a public apology. Islamabad would rather push the issue of apology under the carpet while the two nations continue to develop links. Pakistan’s military establishment would find it easier to ignore 1971, as it has been in the past. A senior retired army officer recalled an incident in 1996 when Pakistani officers reacted sharply to mentions of war crimes during a Bangladeshi military officers’ country presentation at the Staff College. The Pakistani officers were later instructed by their seniors to remain silent and calm. If the issue can be pushed aside, the two governments could explore other areas of cooperation, such as trade.
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Limits of reconciliation in Pakistan-Bangladesh relations
There are other limitations to building close ties—chief among them, the absence of strong people-to-people connections. Cultural and linguistic differences between the two wings during the United Pakistan days were stark and remain so today. While Bangladesh may find itself sandwiched between India’s communal-religious biases and Pakistan’s racial prejudices, the latter remains a deep-seated issue.
This is most evident in the treatment of the hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in Karachi who did not leave for Bangladesh after 1971. Decades later, they remain unrecognised and denied formal national identity documents. While many educated and middle-class Pakistanis have awakened to Bangladesh’s economic success, their perception of Bengalis remains rooted in outdated stereotypes—as cooks or drivers rather than equals. In fact, the underlying sentiment behind Pakistan’s envy of Bangladesh’s economic progress is that those we, the Pakistanis, once considered even below us have managed to prosper. Such biases are real and make it difficult to bridge the socio-cultural divide.
Some, like journalist Mariana Baabar, argue that relations will improve as more Bangladeshi students come to Pakistan. But then, it’s not as if Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have not interacted before. Barring the fifteen years of Awami League rule, Bangladeshi students have regularly come to Pakistan to study in medical and engineering colleges. Yet, given their small numbers—usually no more than a few hundred—they were never truly noticed. The Generation Z that communicates through internet may have a dialogue but the Bangladeshi youth has not tasted or tested Pakistani racial bias that is unkind even to other nationalities living in Pakistan.
A larger number of Bangladeshi students have also attended madrassas in Pakistan. In fact, the only space where racial bias against Bengalis seems absent is within religious seminaries and among the religious right. But the links between the right wings of both countries have remained strong and created an unhealthy social transformation in both societies. The lack of broader cultural affinity remains a huge barrier in materialising any military-strategic dreams.
Obviously, state-to-state relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan will grow but in a very cautious and guarded environment where trade or some form of cooperation is built slowly but gradually. What goes without saying is that Bangladesh’s position—where it is getting pushed and pulled by two regional powers—is unenviable. Such geopolitical manoeuvring becomes unhealthy and dangerous, especially when South Asian states are all shifting toward ideological right.
Ayesha Siddiqa is a senior fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)