Islamabad, Pakistan – On a windswept, overcast morning on August 23, when Ishaq Dar, the foreign minister, flew to Bangladesh, which had previously been divided with Pakistan 54 years ago, a senior Pakistani official made the first appearance in 13 years.
Dar, who also serves as Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, struck an optimistic tone, calling the “historic” tour the start of “a new phase of our reinvigorated partnership”.
He acknowledged the “significant progress” made over the past year in bilateral relations and praised the thaw.
In order to address challenges and realize their shared dreams, Dar urged “we must work together to create an environment where youth from Karachi to Chittagong, Quetta to Rajshahi, Peshawar to Sylhet, and Lahore to Dhaka join hands and face challenges”
His visit symbolised a breakthrough after months of diplomatic and military engagements between Pakistan and Bangladesh. Since Sheikh Hasina, a former Bangladeshi prime minister, was ousted in August 2024 amid widespread perceptions that he was close to India and forced to leave as a result of massive student protests, relations have deteriorated dramatically.
Former Pakistani ambassador to China Masood Khalid, however, warned that the past is still putting strain on trust-building between the two countries.
“The new government of Bangladesh has responded positively to Pakistan’s gestures. He told Al Jazeera, “It is obvious that there were artificial barriers to close relationships that have now been eliminated.”
He claimed that the current requirement was a “framework for deeper engagement, where constructive dialogue can dispel misunderstandings.”
Military and diplomatic engagements intensify
Few analysts anticipated such a quickening of ties, or the regular, high-level exchanges that followed, despite Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meeting Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, the interim government’s leader, twice last year.
General Asim Munir, the head of Pakistan’s army, was met by Lieutenant General S. M. Kamr-ul-Hassan of the Bangladesh Army in Islamabad in January. In February, Bangladesh’s naval chief, Admiral Mohammad Nazmul Hassan, followed, and two months later, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch travelled to Dhaka.
Pakistan’s four-day clash with India in May had delayed Dar’s travel, but Mohsin Naqvi, the minister of interior, came to Dhaka in July.
General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, the head of the Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Lieutenant General Muhammad Faizur Rahman, the quartermaster general of the Bangladesh Army in Pakistan, were also present when Dar and the other day had discussions in Dhaka.
Delwar Hossain, an international relations professor at the University of Dhaka, said that Pakistan’s “hasty efforts” to strengthen ties are strategic.
Even under the Hasina government, Pakistan was attempting to normalize relations. They now see a chance to rekindle the friendship they had in the post-75 era, he told Al Jazeera, referring to the time following Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s death and Hasina’s father’s death.
Relations between Islamabad and Dhaka normalised under Ziaur Rahman, Bangladesh’s military chief-turned-president, who led the country from late 1975 until he, too, was assassinated in 1981.
Bangladesh’s ties to India and Pakistan are historically a binary of friendship and hostility,” according to the government. Pakistan may also want to take advantage of the conflicting bilateral relationships between Bangladesh and India. This is a common diplomatic practice”, Hossain added.
The legacy of Bangladesh’s war of independence
Islamabad and New Delhi have been examining their ties to Bangladesh through the lens of their conflict, a force that was sparked by Bangladesh’s independence in 1971.
When Pakistan and India gained independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan was created as a Muslim-majority state with two geographically separated wings.
Around 34 million people from various ethnicities lived in the western region, and it was perceived as dominant. With more than 42 million Bengali speakers, East Pakistan, the eastern wing, which would eventually become Bangladesh, was more populous. India stood between the two parts of Pakistan.
India backed the Bengali liberation struggle as the east’s tensions grew. An estimated 200 000 women were allegedly raped by Pakistan’s military and allied militias, killing hundreds of thousands of people and injuring thousands more.
With India’s military backing, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League party led Bangladesh to independence. He was the first president of the nation.
Hasina, who led Bangladesh for 16 years before being removed last year, is viewed as being akin to India, where she has lived since last year.
Aizaz Chaudhry, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary, said that the shared grievances over India’s “regional hegemony” have spurred Islamabad and Dhaka to repair ties.
We in Pakistan witnessed Indian hegemony during the May conflict because Bangladeshis have known about it. He told Al Jazeera that both countries now understand the importance of a balance of power in South Asia.
In May, India and Pakistan fought a brief but intense four-day aerial war after gunmen killed 26 people, mostly tourists, in an attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. Islamabad rejects claims that India is to blame Pakistan for the attack.
Despite India being a significant neighbor, Dhaka’s relationship with New Delhi was described as “lukewarm,” according to Shahab Enam Khan, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Indo-Pacific Affairs.
“Anti-India sentiment is often exaggerated”, he said. Bangladesh has a history of avoiding bilateral relations with Pakistan through a narrow military or economic perspective.
China’s growing role
Regional dynamics are further complicated by China’s growing influence in South Asia. Although the two Asian giants are otherwise rivals, Beijing, a close ally of Islamabad, and Hasina were close friends.
Hossain of Dhaka University claimed that even after Hasina’s ouster, China managed to maintain a significant presence in Bangladesh. In March, Yunus visited Beijing, followed by Bangladesh Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman’s weeklong China trip in August.
He continued, referring to Chinese-made aircraft that Pakistan also had and that Islamabad used during the May conflict and that Bangladesh is considering purchasing 12 J-10C fighter jets to boost its air power. China is Pakistan’s most important strategic partner, providing both investment and economic loans as well as military equipment.
“These developments are bringing Dhaka and Islamabad closer, transforming ties into a strong partnership”, Hossain said.   ,
Trade, politics as countries seek partnership
Meetings between Dar and Touhid Hossain, the adviser for foreign affairs, and Yunus, were a highlight of Dar’s two-day visit to Bangladesh.
He also met with members of the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which led the revolts that toppled Hasina.
Those meetings were particularly significant as Bangladesh is preparing for elections in early 2026, said Abdul Basit, a former Pakistani high commissioner to India. Pakistan and Bangladesh will forge ahead, he declared to Al Jazeera, “No matter what happens between India and Bangladesh.” We have issues from the past, but they can be skillfully addressed and shouldn’t serve as barriers.
Both could benefit from closer economic relations, too, suggested Pakistan’s former China ambassador Khalid and Dhaka University’s Hossain.
Bangladesh is one of South Asia’s economies with a growth rate of 6% since 2021. Pakistan’s economy is in decline, growing by 2.5 percent last year. At the moment, bilateral trade is modest, tilted towards Pakistan, whose exports to Bangladesh totalled $661m in 2024, compared with $57m in imports.
However, Hossain claimed that if the two nations attempted to revitalize trade relations, they could each gain from the other, both as a potential market and as a source of raw materials.
According to the academic, Pakistan could gain from the importation of cotton, textiles, rice, cement, fruits, and processed foods. On the other hand, Pakistan can import jute and jute products, hydrogen peroxide, chemicals and tobacco products from Bangladesh.
He noted that “Bangladesh and Pakistan have a combined population of 430 million people, which is more than twice the size of West Europe.”
There are still historical qualms.
The deepest fault line in Pakistan-Bangladesh relations is the legacy of the 1971 war.
Dhaka is still pressing for an official apology for the crimes.
Additionally, Bangladesh’s more than 200 000 Urdu-speaking Muslims are at odds with one another. After the partition in 1947, the community had mostly moved to East Pakistan from Bihar in present-day India. Geographically, East Pakistan and Bangladesh were geographically closer to Bihar than West Pakistan. However, Islamabad is reluctant to accept that Bangladesh, which was founded on Bengali nationalism in 1971, has only granted limited rights to Urdu-speaking Muslims.
Bangladesh also seeks a division of the pre-1971 assets of the state of Pakistan, and the transfer of aid that was promised by West Pakistan to East Pakistan in 1970 after a devastating cyclone, in which an estimated 300, 000 people died. Many historians attribute the West Pakistan-based government’s slow and generally inadequate response to the liberation war that led to the formation of Bangladesh.
However, former Pakistani foreign secretary Chaudhry claimed that both nations’ public attitudes favor reconciliation.
“People of Pakistan are also as sad about the events of 1971 as the people of Bangladesh. People in both countries now want to move on, according to Chaudhry, and I believe this pain is common.
Hossain of Dhaka University asserted that despite the strong support from the current political parties for strengthening Bangladesh-Pakistan relations, issues relating to the conflict of 1971 continue to impede further ties.
“It is important to remember that the ouster of Hasina from power has not fundamentally changed the mindsets of the people of Bangladesh about the liberation war and an expectation from Pakistan for healing the past”, Hossain said.
He continued, adding that Dhaka did not want to remain trapped in the past.
The process of diplomacy is dynamic. Both the countries can move forward for cooperation in economic, diplomatic and cultural sectors, while they will continue to maintain the healing process”, he said.
