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Bangladesh: Musharraf comes
calling
By Farooq Sobhan
In
one sense, President General Pervez Musharraf's two-day
visit to Bangladesh at the end of July will be
considered by some Bangladeshis as a landmark visit. For
the first time ever, a Pakistani head of state expressed
regret for army actions in 1971 in which millions were
killed by rampaging Pakistani soldiers. He also
apologized for what transpired at that time in
Bangladesh. Such an apology went well beyond most
people's expectations.
In the visitor's book at
the National Monument at Savar, Musharraf wrote "your
brothers and sisters in Pakistan share the pain of the
events of 1971." The following day, at a banquet hosted
in his honor hosted by Bangladeshi Prime Minister
Khaleda Zia, he said, "We feel sorry for the tragedy
which left deep scars on both our nations. But wounds do
heal with time." In her reply, Zia thanked Musharraf for
his "candid expression on the events of 1971," adding
that "this will, no doubt, help to mitigate the old
wounds".
Meanwhile, Abdus Samad Azad, leader of
the opposition Awami League (AL), referred to
Musharraf's apology as "non-serious" and demanded an
"unqualified" apology. The Foreign Minister of
Bangladesh, Morshed Khan, was quick to remind the Awami
League that in 1974 it was none other than Bangubandhu
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who, in a spirit of magnanimity,
had opted to forgive and forget the atrocities committed
by the Pakistan army in 1971, and had agreed to the
repatriation of the 195 war criminals who were in Indian
custody; and that the demand for an apology was raised
by neither Sheikh Hasina nor her father when they were
at the helm of affairs.
On the issue of the
last-minute refusal of the Awami League leadership to
meet with Musharraf because he was a military dictator,
Morshed Khan referred to Hasina’s 75-minute meeting with
Musharraf during the D-8 summit in Cairo in 2001, when
she was prime minister. He also mentioned the fact that
the then foreign secretary, Shafi Sami, had traveled to
Pakistan at Sheikh Hasina’s behest to deliver an
invitation to the Pakistani president to visit
Bangladesh.
Thus, diplomatic observers feel that
the Awami League's attempts to embarrass the government
backfired miserably, and that their last-minute decision
not to meet Musharraf was, in the words of former state
minister of foreign affairs Abul Hassan Chowdhury, who
had been instructed by Sheikh Hasina to set up the
meeting, an act of "great immaturity" on the part of the
AL leadership. Why did the Awami League do this?
It could be that the organization felt that it
had the government's back to the wall because of recent
traumatic events at Dhaka University, in which police
are alleged to have committed brutalities against women
students. There has been country-wide criticism of the
police actions, and the Awami League may have felt that
it could exploit this situation to its advantage by
linking the strike called by the students on July 30 to
serve simultaneously as a protest against the Musharraf
visit. There were, however, few takers for this posture.
It has also been suggested that a possible
reason for the cancellation of AL meeting was because
India had asked for it. This seems farfetched. In
reality, both the ruling Bangladesh National Party (BNP)
and the AL have woken up to the fact that, in this day
and age, no government in Bangladesh can sustain
unfriendly relations with India or ignore its other
neighbors in the region.
Musharraf had evidently
done some homework before coming to Bangladesh. He knew
exactly which buttons to press in order to win over the
otherwise suspicious, some might even say hostile,
public. Having expressed his apologies for 1971, he
announced that Pakistan would allow duty-free access to
10,000 tons of tea from Bangladesh and waive all tariffs
on raw jute, and also agreed to examine the request to
extend duty-free access for some other items. The
possibility of a free-trade agreement was also
discussed. The business community has made it a point to
contrast this gesture with the prevarication and
foot-dragging by four successive Indian governments on
the promised duty-free access for 25 Bangladeshi product
lines.
Musharraf also earned kudos for his
comments on "reinventing" the South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), including his
suggestion that it was high time SAARC was asked to play
a role in the settlement of disputes between member
states. Implicit in what Musharraf said was a criticism
of India's preference to deal with its neighbors
bilaterally, and this was underlined by the statement
that SAARC was held hostage by Indo-Pakistani relations.
Commenting on the Kashmir issue, Musharraf
reiterated the position that Pakistan would "accept
whatever the Kashmiris want. But elections under
coercion cannot be a substitute for plebiscite." He was
of the view that the Kashmir problem had been
internationalized and that the United Nations would not
recognize the outcome of the elections in Kashmir
without international monitoring. Bangladesh, however,
was careful to avoid taking sides on the issue.
The Musharraf visit was very much the general's
initiative, and was possibly an attempt to make the
point that Pakistan was far from being isolated in the
region, and that it was, on the contrary, sensitive to
the concerns of its neighbors. His "two gestures"
combined with his comments on SAARC and the fact that he
refrained from making any statement that would in any
way embarrass his hosts, have encouraged the Bangladesh
government to view the visit as a very successful one.
An added bonus has been the very successful initiative
taken by the Awami League to shoot itself in the foot by
fixing an appointment with Musharraf and canceling it at
the last minute.
In fact, the visit on the
whole, rather like Musharraf’s apology, was only a
qualified success. No headway was made in respect of two
important longstanding between Pakistan and Bangladesh:
the division of assets and liabilities that remain from
the events of 1971, and the repatriation of the
"stranded Pakistanis" or Biharis who opted to go to
Pakistan in 1972. Musharraf's position that the
repatriation of these persons must await the return of 3
million Afghan refugees was certainly not well received
in any quarter. It also remains to be seen whether the
efforts to strengthen economic and commercial relations
will actually produce anything concrete.
Can the
Musharraf visit change the political or economic
dynamics in the region? The answer must be an emphatic
no. For Bangladesh today, perhaps more so than ever
before, there is a compelling need to put its relations
with India on a solid and stable footing. Both countries
need to reach out to each other in a pragmatic way in
order to strengthen trade and economic relations and
move forward on a whole range of issues.
Building bridges between India's northeastern
states and Bangladesh, breathing life into sub-regional
cooperation through the development of roads, railways
and ports, harnessing water resources, cooperating on
energy projects and a host of other subjects - all these
need to be addressed when Yashwant Sinha, India’s
Minister for External Affairs, visits Dhaka later this
month. Notwithstanding all the hoopla surrounding
Musharraf's visit to Bangladesh, there can be little
doubt that the Indian minister’s visit is of much
greater significance.
Farooq Sobhan is
a former foreign secretary, Bangladesh
Published with permission from the South Asia
Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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