Five days after meeting Indian National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval in New Delhi, Bangladesh’s NSA Khalilur Rahman on Tuesday (November 25) left for an “official” visit to Doha, Qatar, where he has visited on three previous occasions.
Official documents accessed by Northeast News show that Khalilur Rahman will be in Doha for three days (November 25 to 28). While there is nothing on record to show who he will meet in Doha, Bangladeshi security sources said that he will likely meet US officials. The official order sanctioning the visit was issued on November 24.
The Bangladesh NSA’s Doha visit is being considered important, especially in the light of his meeting with Doval on November 19 in the Indian capital, where they discussed, among other things, critical issues related to regional security, including the growing threat of Islamist terror groups operating from camps in parts of northern Bangladesh.
In this context, sources said that the Indian side provided evidence related to the presence of at least 12 camps across two to three Bangladeshi districts on the India-Bangladesh border.
There is no clear sign of efforts by Bangladeshi security forces to dismantle the camps, which are said to be located in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Rangpur Division. However, a Bangladesh Army unit sought to neutralise one such camp in Comilla district adjoining Tripura, on November 24, indicating that the Indian NSA’s words of caution may have had a salutary effect on Khalilur Rahman.
What is, however, more intriguing is Khalilur Rahman’s visit to Doha, which is a key location for US security officials who have been closely following the geopolitical implications of the regime change in Bangladesh last August.
Since being appointed as Bangladesh’s NSA in April 2025, Khalilur Rahman has made three visits to Doha with little clarity from Dhaka on the outcomes of these trips and the US officials he met there.
The Bangladeshi NSA first visited Doha on May 26 on a Qatar Airways flight (QR-639). Billed as an “official visit”, Khalilur Rahman reportedly met US military and security officials in the Qatar capital and took briefings from them on sensitive issues related.
A few days before his May visit to Doha, the US Chargé d’Affaires in Dhaka, Tracey Ann Jacobson, was also in the Qatar capital before proceeding to Washington, DC.
Khalilur Rahman was next in Doha on July 26 when he again met US officials before flying to the US. He was in the Qatari capital on an official visit and then flew to the US till August 3 before returning to Dhaka on August 5.
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His third visit to Doha took place on August 28. He returned to Dhaka the following day. He was in Doha ostensibly to take part in a “meeting with the high officials to prepare strategies for Rohingya-Rakhine mediation”. Soon after returning from Doha, Khalilur Rahman left for a two-day visit to Beijing, beginning on September 3.
