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ABSTRACT
Bangladesh-Pakistan relations reached a low point in December 2013 when the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh convicted nine persons of war crimes pertaining to Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, and imposed a death sentence on senior Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Molla. This paper examines the trials in connection to their impact on Bangladesh-Pakistan relations. The analysis in this paper shows that the traumatic break of East and West Pakistan continues to haunt bilateral relations and now has spill-over effects on South Asian regionalism. It also argues that the Awami League-India nexus is another historically persistent factor precluding better Dhaka-Islamabad relations.
Acknowledgement
The authors are thankful to Dr Stuti Bhatnagar for her insightful comments on the paper. The authors are indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for their productive feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Mukti Bahini is a Bengali term for the military resistance formed by armed military and guerrilla forces in East Pakistan for the creation of an independent country from Pakistan.
2. After assisting East Pakistan in its freedom struggle, India’s support for the Awami League began to be seen as interference in the internal affairs of Bangladesh, causing disenchantment among local military personnel, and leading to the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.
3. The Hamoodur Rehman Commission was set up by the Government of Pakistan in 1972 to assess Pakistan’s political and military involvement in East Pakistan 1947–1971. Chief Justice Hamoodur Rehman headed the Commission.
4. OIC – Organistaion of Islamic Conference.
5. The BNP was created in 1978, during the era of President Ziaur Rahman. Rahman as its founding chairperson started moving closer to the Muslim world, including Pakistan (Mahmood et al., Citation2015, p. 69). Since the early 1990s, the BNP has been close to BJI and this relationship became stronger following the 18 Party Alliance in 2012. During the 1999 and 2001 elections, a small-scale political alliance of four parties, including BNP and BJI, was formed. The BNP has aligned with BJI, and this political support has provided the Jamaat with much-needed opportunities to expand its network in Bangladesh.
6. In his statement, President Erdogan said, ‘I condemn the mentality that sentences to death a mujahid [Arabic word meaning “to strive in the cause of God”], who is over the age of 70 and who we believe has no earthly sin’. Prior to this, Erdogan had also called Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to stop the execution of Molla (‘Turkey recalls’, Citation2016).
7. The return of Biharis from Bangladesh to Pakistan continues to affect the bilateral ties. There are 300,000 Muslim Biharis (Urdu-speakers) scattered across 116 squalid camps in Bangladesh. In 1947, Biharis had migrated from the present-day Indian state of Bihar to East Pakistan. After the 1971 war, over 100,000 moved from Bangladesh to Pakistan; however, the remaining Biharis of Bangladesh still demand repatriation to Pakistan (UNHCR, Citation2014). In 1985 there was some progress made on this issue when President Zia-ul-Haq agreed to accept the remaining Biharis in Pakistan. However, no concrete steps were taken to produce or implement an agreement on this issue. Similarly, in 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf tried to move towards more positive relations with Bangladesh, but could not do much on the issue of the emigration of Biharis (Farzana, Citation2008, p. 15).
8. On 8 June 2016, BNP’s Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia sent her good wishes to Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan in the context of the latter’s heart surgery in London. The Foreign Office of Pakistan published Zia’s message on its website (GOP, Citation2016a).
9. In 2009, the Tribunal sentenced BJI’s Abdul Quader Molla to death for an alleged massacre and for collaboration with the Pakistan Army during the war in 1971. The sentence was challenged in Bangladesh’s highest court but the challenge was rejected. Molla’s hanging triggered violent protests in Bangladesh by Islamists.
10. In May 2016, Pakistan’s National Assembly unanimously passed a bill condemning Nizami’s execution. At the beginning of the session, Jamaat-e-Islami’s Sahibzada Tariqullah led the fatiha (prayers for the deceased) for Nizami and also demanded the government take action on the matter (The Express Tribune, 12 May 2016).
11. According to Hoffman, ‘the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami has been critical in penetrating the mosques and madrasas and mobilizing people for street demonstrations’ (Hoffman, Citation1995, p. 205).
12. In 2013, Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers at a garment factory in the heart of Dhaka (The New York Times, 22 May 2013).
13. Nafees Zakaria, a Foreign Office representative in Islamabad, offered condolences to Nizami’s family and said that ‘the act of supressing the opposition by killing their leaders through flawed trials is completely against the spirit of democracy’ (Dawn, 12 May 2016).
14. Soofi’s think tank, Research Society on International Law, has also published a paper entitled ‘Bangladesh War Crimes Tribunal’. This paper presents a critique of the ICT, suggesting it violates the 1974 Accord [http://rsilpak.org/wp…/Position-Paper-on-the-Bangladesh-International-Crimes-Tribunal.pdf].
15. ‘Pakistan’s role in Bangladesh war crimes will always haunt them’, by Chaudhury was originally published in The Economic Times of India on 27 May 2016.
16. Pakistan’s largest export partners are the USA, China, Afghanistan, the UK, Germany, the UAE, and Spain.
17. ‘For example, India’s then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Pakistan's then-President General Zia-ul-Haq had a meeting during the first Saarc summit, and Zia made a historic visit to New Delhi soon after. Just before the 2002 summit, tensions escalated between India and Pakistan due to the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, but the leaders of both countries still agreed to meet on the sidelines of Saarc’ (Ahmed, Citation2014).
18. BIMSTEC has the following members: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.