On the morning of August 15, 1975, within hours of the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto lost little time in according recognition to what he believed was now the ‘Islamic Republic of Bangladesh’. He also decided to dispatch aid to Dhaka in the form of rice and cloth.
In August 2024, soon after the fall of the Awami League government headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gloated over the assaults being made in Dhaka on statues of Bangabandhu. He noted, in his sheer lack of any understanding of history, that the individual who had ‘broken’ Pakistan was now getting his comeuppance in Bangladesh.
When some years ago Sheikh Hasina’s government proceeded with the trials of the local Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan army during Bangladesh’s War of Liberation, the Pakistan national assembly (the Islamabad government was headed by Nawaz Sharif at the time) adopted a resolution condemning Bangladesh for the trial and execution of what it called Pakistanis who had demonstrated their loyalty to Pakistan in 1971.
Given such realities, it is not hard to understand why Bangladesh’s people remain wary of any approach by Islamabad to Dhaka on an improvement of ties between the two countries.
In the week that has gone by, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch visited Dhaka, where she engaged in discussions with Jashim Uddin, her Bangladesh counterpart, on the need for the two countries to come closer through inaugurating what Pakistan would call a new phase in interaction between the two nations.
It goes to the credit of the Yunus interim regime that at the talks, the Bangladesh side raised three issues which no Pakistani government has seriously handled since the surrender of the Pakistan army to the India-Bangladesh Joint Command in December 1971.
Over these five-plus decades, obfuscation and a denial of the horrors let loose by the Pakistan army on Bangladesh’s people in March 1971, a pogrom which led to the death of three million Bengalis and the rape of anywhere between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women over a period of nine months, have characterised Pakistan’s attitude to Bangladesh.
The issues raised at the Foreign Secretaries’ meeting, dubbed Foreign Office Consultations (FOC), focused on the need for Pakistan to tender an official apology to Bangladesh for the genocide Pakistan’s soldiers committed in 1971, for Pakistan to settle the matter of a sharing of assets and liabilities relating to the twenty-three years between 1947 and 1971 in which Bangladesh was Pakistan’s eastern province and for Pakistan to accept Biharis or Urdu-speaking people who have since 1971 made it obvious that they are Pakistanis and would like to settle in Pakistan.
These demands were certainly embarrassing for the Pakistani team, which clearly did not expect that with the departure of the Awami League government, these issues would be raised at this time.
Strangely, though, while the Bangladesh authorities publicly made known the position they adopted at the FOC, no mention was made of it once the Pakistani delegation returned to Islamabad. All that came up in Pakistan’s statement on the Dhaka talks was a mere account of the need to increase trade and inaugurate direct air flights between the two countries.
The Pakistani team reportedly noted in Dhaka that the issues raised by Bangladesh would need detailed consideration by Islamabad. That is again a negation of what has not been done by Islamabad in the last fifty-four years.
Diplomatic observers in Dhaka are not surprised for the good reason that such an attitude on Pakistan’s part is merely a repetition of what successive governments in Islamabad have parroted over the decades. Many of them expect more procrastination from Pakistan on Bangladesh’s demands.
There is little denying that Pakistan’s authorities have, of late, felt encouraged over the rise of anti-Indian sentiments among a section of Bangladeshi citizens, a position which Islamabad has all too often in the past tried to capitalise on.
In the years before the creation of Bangladesh, while Kashmir was an obsession with the West Pakistani ruling class, it registered little interest in East Pakistan, where the concern related to overcoming the discrimination against Bengalis, especially the development of the western part of the country and neglect of the eastern part despite the east earning for the country foreign exchange on the basis of tea and jute grown in its territory.
On his visit to Rawalpindi in February 1969, soon after his release from the so-called Agartala Conspiracy Case to attend a round table conference called by a faltering Ayub Khan regime, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman quipped that he could smell his province’s tea and jute on the pavements and roads of West Pakistan.
In the larger interest of peace and stability in South Asia, it is imperative for Pakistan to resolve all outstanding issues dating back to 1971 and earlier with Bangladesh.
The tripartite agreement signed by Sardar Swaran Singh for India, Dr Kamal Hossain for Bangladesh, and Aziz Ahmed for Pakistan in Delhi in April 1974 was specific about the region opting for a reconciliation in the aftermath of the 1971 war.
As part of the agreement, Bangladesh, in an act of clemency, permitted 195 Pakistani military officers charged with committing genocide in Bangladesh to go free, albeit on the Bhutto government’s verbal pledge that the officers would be tried by Pakistan itself.
The promise was not kept. Indeed, all the war criminals settled back into normal life, with a good number of them even engaging in politics and becoming ministers.
Bangladesh’s demand that Pakistan officially apologise for the atrocities perpetrated by its army in 1971 has had many Pakistanis proffer the weak argument that when Bhutto uttered ‘tauba’ on his Dhaka visit in 1974 and Pervez Musharraf expressed his regrets over the happenings during the Bengali struggle for freedom, the matter was as good as settled.
It was not, for Pakistan’s governments have never officially, in line with ethics and international law, expressed any contrition for what their soldiers did fifty-four years ago.
Neither has Pakistan responded to the assets and liabilities question nor the Bihari resettlement issue. These issues must be forcefully raised by a future elected government in Bangladesh.
The sad truth is that in the years since the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, they have not been vigorously pursued by those who have held political power in Dhaka. It must be made clear to Islamabad that for Bangladesh, it is not ‘brotherly relations’ with Pakistan that are important.
Of critical importance is for Pakistan to own up to the truth of the discrimination it practised in pre-1971 Bangladesh and the genocide its military resorted to in the nine months of Bangladesh’s War of Liberation.
And, yes, besides providing Bangladesh and the world with satisfactory responses to the questions Dhaka raised with Islamabad at the FOC, there needs to be a new point that Pakistan should be made acquainted with.
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Islamabad should be informed without ambiguity that it ought to come forth with reparations for the damage caused to Bangladesh’s social life, to its villages and towns and to the infrastructure by the Yahya Khan junta in 1971.
Firmness on Bangladesh’s part is called for.
