Pakistan’s second-highest ranking Army officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, will land in Dhaka tonight, a week after a three-member team of Indian Military Intelligence officers left the Bangladesh capital after touring a few border areas.
Relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh’s defence forces have gained new heights since the Mohammad Yunus-led interim regime took charge in August 2024. There have been a series of visits by key Pakistani generals to Dhaka over the last ten months or so, after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in August last year. Since then, India has admittedly lost security ground as Bangladesh’s armed forces began military ties with key weapons-producing countries.
Gen Mirza’s visit is being assessed as very important by the Bangladesh Army, which has not shied away from seeking new defence cooperation partners, including Turkey and Pakistan.
On its part, the US would prefer that the interim authority sign the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which will ensure the sharing of classified military information and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), which allows for mutual logistics support, such as food, fuel, and ammunition, between the two countries’ armed forces.
Gen Mirza will lead a six-member Pakistan Army team of officers who took an Emirates Airlines flight (EK-584) that landed at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shah Jalal International Airport shortly after 11:30 pm tonight. The Pakistani visitors’ meetings with their Bangladeshi counterparts are being kept a closely guarded secret, but this will certainly rile the Indian security establishment, especially when Gen Mirza’s arrival in Dhaka is in the backdrop of the visit of the MI team led by a major general.
New Delhi has more to worry. Pakistan’s Federal Economic Affairs Minister Ahad Khan Cheema will lead a nine-member delegation comprising officials to Dhaka. This Pakistani delegation will arrive in Dhaka on October 26. The next day, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi sides will meet to prepare the grounds for establishing a joint Economic Commission between the two countries, with the Cheema-led delegation scheduled to meet Chief Adviser Mohammad Yunus and Foreign and Commerce Ministry advisers, Touhid Hussein and Sheikh Bashir Uddin, respectively, during their Bangladesh sojourn.
Gen Mirza’s visit to Dhaka was preceded by the arrival in the Bangladesh capital of a Lieutenant General Tabassum Habib, Director General of the Joint Staff Headquarters and Major General, General Officer Commanding, at the Sialkot-based 15th Infantry Division.
Earlier, in May this year, three brigadiers, said to be from the Pakistan Army’s Medical Corps, had visited Bangladesh and even toured the headquarters of the key 10th Infantry Division located at Ramu near Cox’s Bazar.
Arguably the second most important Army officer after Field Marshal Asim Munir, Gen Mirza recently raked up the Kashmir issue, saying that Pakistan believed that a “third party is essential to any possible mechanism of dispute resolution between India and Pakistan. We shall always welcome such initiatives by any state, international body or multilateral organisation”.
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Speaking at a symposium in Islamabad on October 16, Gen Mirza sought to describe – ironically – the Indian defence structure as “politicised military and militarised polity”, calling it a “dangerous combination”. Gen Mirza, who was appointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on November 27, 2022, has commanded several Pakistan Army units besides being a former Director General of Military Operations.
