Following a thaw in bilateral relations in recent months, Bangladesh has reiterated its demand that Pakistan pay $4.52 billion in reparations and extend a formal apology for the alleged atrocities committed in the war of 1971.

Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh were one country from 1947 to 1971 when India midwifed the latter’s birth at the end of a full-fledged war that killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people. The Bangladeshi government puts the figure at three million.

Bangladesh made the demand, along with a ‘request’ for repatriating hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis stranded in refugee camps in Bangladesh for over five decades, as foreign secretaries of the two countries met in Dhaka last week in the first high-level diplomatic engagement in 15 years.

Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Jashim Uddin said the demand for $4.5 billion is for long-pending foreign aid, unpaid provident funds, savings instruments, and $200 million given by international donors for the 1970 cyclone.

Islamabad has long avoided addressing the issues of reparations and a formal apology for the alleged crimes dating back to 1971. 

This time, however, Pakistan has at least “symbolically” agreed to discuss these issues, says Dr Moonis Ahmar, professor of international relations at the University of Karachi, who previously served as Asia Fellow at the University of Dhaka. 

“But it doesn't mean that Pakistan will accept those demands,” he tells TRT World.

Apology, of sorts

Dhaka has been asking Pakistan for a proper apology for the events of 1971 for more than five decades. Islamabad extended coded apologies on at least two different occasions over the same period.

The first ‘apology’ came as part of an agreement in April 1974 where Islamabad said it “condemned and deeply regretted any crimes that may have been committed”.

The 1974 pact, signed by the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, led to the release of 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war held in Bangladesh. The agreement included then Pakistan premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s appeal to the people of Bangladesh to “forgive and forget the mistakes of the past”.

At the time, The New York Times reported that Pakistan's apology was “not so straightforward as Bangladesh had demanded”, even though the consensus among Bangladeshi officials was that Pakistan had “plainly acknowledged” the past excesses.

The second instance where the Pakistan government came close to apologising came in 2002 when then president General Pervez Musharraf “implicitly apologised” for the acts of violence committed in the run-up to the creation of Bangladesh.

Musharraf’s expression of “regret” during an official visit was far from a categorical apology, even though the Bangladeshi government welcomed it at the time.

While visiting a war memorial near Dhaka, Musharraf left a handwritten note in the visitors' book, saying: “Your brothers and sisters in Pakistan share the pain of the events in 1971… The excesses committed during the unfortunate period are regretted.”

The case for reparations

Reparations are compensation measures that countries take to address historical injustices, like war crimes, through money, land, or symbolic acts such as formal apologies. For example, the post-apartheid government of South Africa paid $85 million to 16,397 people to atone for its apartheid crimes.

International law does not mandate reparations for historical wrongs unless explicitly agreed upon through treaties or other binding agreements. 

Even if Pakistan was to show flexibility on the issue, the Bangladeshi demand for reparations to the tune of $4.5 billion seems unrealistic to many. The amount is more than one-quarter of the total foreign exchange reserves of Pakistan. 

According to Zahed Ur Rahman, a Dhaka-based academic and political commentator, the value of reparations would be “much higher” if it was adjusted for inflation.

“The discussion about reparations is unlikely to be successful,” he tells TRT World.

The Pakistan government should first admit that it owes money to Bangladesh, he says, and then it can make some payment – even a token amount – based on a mutual agreement.

“Undoubtedly, the government is interested in burying the hatchet with Pakistan. But before that, it believes Pakistan should address the unresolved issues from the liberation war of 1971,” says Rahman.

Md Abul Hasan, an international affairs analyst from Bangladesh currently working at Russia’s National Research University, tells TRT World that demanding reparations is “not a prudent decision” on the part of the Bangladeshi government.

“There exists minimal merit in revisiting this subject if Dhaka is genuinely interested in reducing Indian hegemony over the country,” he says, while referring to Muhammad Yunus-led interim government, which has made a number of friendly overtures to Pakistan since coming to power in August 2024.

Some analysts accuse New Delhi of propping up the previous government of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League – which ruled Bangladesh for 15 years with a clear tilt against Pakistan – amid widespread allegations of rigged elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024.

Hasan says Pakistan should “rhetorically acknowledge” its mistakes so that both countries can move on.

“Most Bangladeshis contend that the government ought to pursue the normalisation of its bilateral relations with Pakistan,” he says.

At the press briefing after meeting his Pakistani counterpart last week, Foreign Secretary Jashim Uddin hinted at Dhaka’s flexibility in bilateral negotiations. 

“In a meeting after 15 years, we do not expect immediate resolution… The willingness to engage in future discussions is a positive sign.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Office also acknowledged that “outstanding issues” were discussed in the overdue diplomatic engagement, but refrained from commenting on Bangladesh’s specific demands.

‘Most tenuous post-war problem’

The last of the three major demands that Dhaka made last week was about the repatriation of Pakistanis stranded in Bangladesh for over five decades.

Termed the most tenuous post-war problem, most of these stranded people belong to the Urdu-speaking Bihari community. Generations have grown up in dilapidated settlements without access to work or education. They are Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar who migrated in 1947 to what was then the eastern wing of the newly independent Pakistan and received Pakistani citizenship . 

Their pro-Pakistan stance during the 1971 war led to persecution by Bangladesh’s pro-Awami League groups. They are now effectively stateless as neither Bangladesh nor Pakistan fully accepts them as citizens.

The updated number of people who wanted to return to Pakistan is 324,147. They live in 79 camps in 14 districts of Bangladesh, according to the Bangladeshi foreign secretary.

The repatriation effort has so far faced stern opposition from some Pakistani political parties, which say the influx of Biharis would change the demographic balance.

“This is an issue that the Pakistani government should have resolved a long time ago. It’s been 54 years. A third generation has grown up in the camps. It’s a tragedy,” says Ahmar of the University of Karachi.