August 26, 2025
DHAKA – Bangladesh-Pakistan relations began to thaw after the 2024 uprising. Over the past year, three ministerial visits to Dhaka, a foreign secretary-level meeting, and two meetings between top leaders Prof Muhammad Yunus and Shehbaz Sharif have marked a significant shift from the last 15 years.
That was not all. Bilateral trade increased to $865 million in 2025 from $628 million the previous year. The two countries have initiated direct shipping, while visa regulations have eased and direct flights are set to start. Cooperation in education, culture, media and academia is expected to grow as several deals have been signed.
Bangladesh is willing to build a relationship, as expressed by Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain, moving away from adversarial attitude of the last 15 years.
However, the unresolved issues of 1971 still call for reckoning.
Following his meeting with Bangladesh’s foreign adviser on Sunday, the Pakistani foreign minister told the media that these issues had been resolved twice — once in 1974 and again during former president Pervez Musharraf’s visit. He did not elaborate.
Historians indicate the minister was likely referring to the 1974 tripartite agreement among Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, and Pervez Musharraf’s 2002 visit.
Bangladesh wants a formal apology from Pakistan for the 1971 atrocities committed by its military against Bengalis, settlement of financial accounts and repatriation of stranded Pakistanis.
The financial claims include $4.52 billion covering Bangladesh’s share of undivided Pakistan’s pre-1971 assets and foreign aid, unpaid provident funds, and savings instruments as well as $200 million from international donors in 1970 for cyclone victims that was never transferred, the then Bangladesh foreign secretary Md Jashim Uddin said at a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart in April this year.
There are 324,147 stranded Pakistanis in 79 camps across 14 Bangladeshi districts who wish to return. Until now, only 26,941 have been repatriated.
“None of these issues were resolved,” South Asian history researcher and commentator Altaf Parvez told The Daily Star yesterday.
He said the tripartite treaty that Dar referred to does not even mention reparations.
“This is our just demand. Undivided Pakistan had foreign reserve, while there was foreign aid on account of the cyclone of 1970, but that was not distributed to the people in East Pakistan because of the war,” Altaf Parvez said.
The treaty, however, does touch upon repatriation of stranded Pakistanis and prisoners of war. As per the agreement, Bangladesh, on humanitarian grounds, handed over the 195 accused officers to Pakistan, on condition that they would be tried in their own country. Pakistan also pledged to prosecute those 195 officers, but in reality, there has been no trial till this day.
In the 1974 tripartite agreement, the then Pakistani state minister for defence, Aziz Ahmed, states that Pakistan “condemned and deeply regretted” any crimes that may have been committed.
It was noted in the treaty that following recognition, the prime minister of Pakistan had declared that he would visit Bangladesh in response to the invitation of the prime minister of Bangladesh and appealed to the people of Bangladesh to “forgive and forget the mistakes of the past” in order to promote reconciliation.
But there was no mention of the word genocide, which significantly diminishes the gravity of the crimes.
Similarly, during his 2002 visit to Bangladesh, Pervez Musharraf regretted the “excesses” committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. However, he urged both nations to “bury the past in the spirit of friendship.”
Musharraf avoided using the term Liberation War, instead referring to it as the “unfortunate period,” which further diluted the historical and moral significance of the events.
In diplomatic language, regret generally expresses sorrow or sadness that something happened, often without accepting responsibility. In contrast, an apology includes both an expression of remorse and an acknowledgment of wrongdoing.
When made officially, an apology carries greater moral and political weight, and is more likely to be accepted by victims and the international community.
On Sunday, speaking to the media, Ishaq Dar advised Bangladeshis to “clean the heart” as is told by Islam.
“What Islamic teaching, what the Holy Quran, what our sunnah of Muhammad tells us is that you should have a clean heart and move together … we are a family and we should work together,” he said.
Sk Tawfique M Haque, director at the South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG), North South University, says Dhaka and Islamabad have re-established high-level communications and economic ties in less than a year, but history cannot be set aside so easily.
“For Bangladesh, the legacy of the 1971 Liberation War remains etched into its collective consciousness,” he said, adding that this unresolved discord is both a visible obstacle and the defining backdrop to any future rapprochement.
Prof Haque says reimagining the future of Bangladesh-Pakistan relations requires a change in mindset on both sides. For Pakistan, it requires recognising that symbolic and meaningful gestures can build trust and goodwill.
“For Bangladesh, this means acknowledging that while the past cannot be erased, the future can be shaped by pragmatic interests and mutual respect,” he told The Daily Star.
Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain clearly said Bangladesh wants to advance the relations with Pakistan and work together on regional and global fronts, and that the unresolved issues should be settled and agreed upon accordingly.
However, Ishaq Dar’s remarks are notably not aligned with such sentiments.
Altaf Parvez pointed out that during the Awami League regime, India engaged with the quarters it was comfortable with. He said it was similar to the Pakistani delegation who engaged with parties they favoured but not the civil society, and not even the stranded Pakistanis.
There are a string of examples of such apologies for past mistakes. In 2022, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologised for the Netherlands’ colonial violence in Indonesia. Japan, in 2016, apologised to South Korea and pledged approximately $8.3 million as compensation for its use of Korean “comfort women” who were forced to work in Japanese brothels during World War II. President Jacques Chirac, in 1995, acknowledged that the French state was an accomplice in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews during World War II. The US Congress passed a law in 1988 apologising for the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Germany’s Chancellor Willy Brandt fell to his knees at a memorial for Holocaust victims in 1970 in a powerful symbol of remorse.
Bangladesh and Pakistan should not be so stuck in the past as to prevent the potential of future relations, but at the same time both parties must be able to reconcile with history if only for closure.