Separated by war, Bangladeshi man reunites with Pakistani family after more than 50 years
CHAKWAL: After a heartbreaking separation of over five decades, a Bangladeshi citizen reunited with his family earlier this year in a village in Pakistan's Chakwal district, marking a moment of joy and healing.
The emotional reunion was celebrated with drumbeats from villagers as Iftikhar Hussain, 60, embraced his long-lost relatives in Choa Gunj Ali Shah, the ancestral village of his father, Abdul Rauf, who had served in the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan before the 1971 secession.
'The way they welcomed me made me very emotional,' Hussain told Arab News this week, visibly moved by the warmth he received.
'I hope that my family in Pakistan can visit Bangladesh, and my family there can come here so that we can continue this bond.'
At its inception in 1947, Pakistan was split into two wings — West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) — separated by more than 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. Though united by religion, the two regions were culturally, linguistically and politically distinct. Over time, tensions grew as East Pakistanis felt marginalized by the central government in the west.
Complaints of economic neglect, political underrepresentation and cultural suppression deepened the divide, eventually escalating into a full-blown crisis. By 1971, amid mounting unrest and a military crackdown, the conflict spiraled into a war, leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
Hussain's father had married a Bengali woman, Munawara Begum, during his deployment in the eastern wing. The couple had five children, who once visited Chakwal in 1969. However, the 1971 war not only divided the country but also shattered their lives.
Hussain said his father lost his life, and his body was never recovered. Devastated and fearing the tensions that followed the conflict, his mother chose to remain in Bangladesh with her children.
At first, both sides of the family stayed in touch by writing letters. However, the exchanges were fraught with danger, as letters from Dhaka were written in Bengali and those from Chakwal in Urdu, often requiring translation.
When translators were unavailable, communication would come to a standstill.
Aftab Hussain, Hussain's cousin in Chakwal, said each time his uncle's name was mentioned by someone, everyone in the family would start crying.
'When we finally got in touch with them, their letters would come in Bengali [language], and we had to get them translated in Chakwal,' he said.
'We would read those letters so many times that the ink would fade because of our tears.'
Things worsened when Chakwal was designated as a separate district in 1985, and their village name was changed from Choa Gunj Al Bair to Choa Gunj Ali Shah. The administrative change, unknown to Hussain's family, complicated efforts to stay connected.
By the early 1990s, all correspondence had ceased, and the families lost touch completely.
Decades later, social media rekindled hope of a reunion.
Hussain's younger brother, Abdul Khaliq, posted pictures of their father on Facebook, seeking assistance to reconnect with their relatives in Chakwal.
The posts caught the attention of a local social media activist, Arshad Mehmood, in Chakwal who took it upon himself to reunite the separated family.
'I am truly happy that two families have reunited,' Mehmood said, as he shared how he traced Hussain's relatives in Pakistan.
Hussain said he had recently retired from a bank in Bangladesh before embarking on his journey to Pakistan.
'Most of my elder relatives have passed away. Now, I have one cousin brother and a sister left [in Bangladesh],' he said, before briefly pausing and continuing again with his eyes shining with emotion.
'Everyone here is so happy to see me. I wish my family here [in Pakistan] can visit there [Bangladesh], and my family there may come here.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Saudi Gazette
16 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
World's highest railway bridge opens in conflict-hit Kashmir
SRINAGAR — The world's highest railway bridge, an ambitious piece of engineering across a mountain valley in Kashmir, was opened Friday by Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi, just weeks after a deadly tourist massacre in the Himalayan region sparked a brief conflict with neighboring Pakistan. Modi's visit to India-administered Kashmir was his first since a brief but deadly conflict between India and Pakistan in April. The nuclear-armed neighbors traded missiles, drones, and artillery shelling for four days after New Delhi blamed the massacre on its neighbor, which Pakistan denies. Decades in the making, the arched Chenab Bridge sits 359 meters (about 1,180 feet) above the river of the same name – that's 29 meters (over 95 feet) higher than the top of the Eiffel Tower. Costing more than $160 million with a length of 1,315 meters (4,314 feet), the bridge is part of the first railway link between Kashmir and the rest of India. Modi's Hindu-nationalist government has moved to integrate the Muslim-majority region with the rest of the country, including revoking a constitutional provision that allowed it to set its own laws in 2019. The Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed by India, Pakistan and China. All three administer a part of the region, one of the most militarized zones in the world. In addition to the Chenab Bridge, Modi also inaugurated the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link project, which connects key cities in India-administered Kashmir to the rest of India. For Modi, who swept to power more than a decade ago on a ticket of nationalism and a promise of future greatness, investments in infrastructure like the Chenab Bridge and the broader rail link project can be seen as a powerful tool for social integration and political influence. Since he was first elected in 2014, the prime minister has rapidly expanded the region's road and rail connectivity, building networks that connect disparate towns with major cities. In 2019, New Delhi revoked a constitutional provision giving India-administered Kashmir the autonomy to set its own laws. The southern and eastern portions of the region known previously as the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir became two separate union territories, bringing them under direct control of New Delhi – a move Modi claimed would promote stability, reduce corruption and boost the economy. The Chenab Bridge is being hailed as a major win for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party government. His administration has poured billions into upgrading India's old and outdated transport network, part of its vision to transform the country into a developed nation by 2047. Among these ambitious projects is the construction of several tunnels and highways in the mountainous Himalayan region which has been criticized by some environmentalists who say the heavy construction could damage fragile topography already feeling the effects from the climate crisis. Modi's Char Dham Highway project, a multimillion-dollar infrastructure plan to improve connectivity in the state of Uttarakhand, came under fire in November 2023 when an under-construction mountain tunnel collapsed, trapping dozens of workers inside for several days with little water and oxygen. In August that year, more than a dozen workers were killed after a bridge under construction collapsed in the northeastern state of Mizoram. In June, a four-lane concrete bridge that was being built across the River Ganges in the eastern state of Bihar collapsed for the second time in just over a year, raising questions about the quality of its construction. — CNN
Saudi Gazette
2 days ago
- Saudi Gazette
'I was pushed across the border into Bangladesh at gunpoint'
GUWAHATI, India — Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few days. The 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India's north-eastern state of Assam, says that she was called to the local police station on 25 May and later taken to a point at the border with neighboring Bangladesh. From there, she says, she and around 13 other people were forced to cross over to Bangladesh. She says she was not told why. But it was a scenario she had been dreading — Ms Banu says she has lived in Assam all her life but for the past few years, she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an "illegal immigrant" from Bangladesh. "They pushed me over at gunpoint. I spent two days without food or water in the middle of a field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches," Ms Banu said, wiping away tears. After those two days in no man's land — between India and Bangladesh — she says she was taken to what appeared to be an old prison on the Bangladeshi side. After two days there, she and a few others — she is not sure if all of them were from the same group sent with her — were escorted by Bangladeshi officials across the border, where Indian officials allegedly met them and sent them home. It's not clear why Ms Banu was abruptly sent to Bangladesh and then brought back. But her case is among a spate of recent instances where officials in Assam have rounded up people declared foreigners by tribunals in the past — on suspicion of being "illegal Bangladeshis" — and sent them across the border. The BBC found at least six cases where people said their family members had been picked up, taken to border towns and just "pushed across".Officials from India's Border Security Force, the Assam police and the state government did not respond to questions from the on alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are not new in India — the countries are divided by a 4,096km (2,545 miles) long porous border which can make it relatively easy to cross over, even though many of the sensitive areas are heavily it's still rare, lawyers working on these cases say, for people to be picked up from their homes abruptly and forced into another country without due process. These efforts seem to have intensified over the past few Indian government has not officially said how many people were sent across in the latest exercise. But top sources in the Bangladesh administration claim that India "illegally pushed in" more than 1,200 people into the country in May alone, not just from Assam but also other states. Out of this, they said on condition of anonymity, Bangladesh identified 100 people as Indian citizens and sent them a statement, the Border Guard Bangladesh said it had increased patrolling along the border to curb these has not commented on these media reports indicate that the recent crackdown includes Rohingya Muslims living in other states too, the situation is particularly tense and complex in Assam, where issues of citizenship and ethnic identity have long dominated state, which shares a nearly 300km-long border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, has seen waves of migration from the neighbouring country as people moved in search of opportunities or fled religious has sparked the anxieties of Assamese people, many of whom fear this is bringing in demographic change and taking away resources from Bharatiya Janata Party — in power in Assam and nationally — has repeatedly promised to end the problem of illegal immigration, making the state's National Register of Citizens (NRC) a priority in recent register is a list of people who can prove they came to Assam by 24 March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The list went through several iterations, with people whose names were missing given chances to prove their Indian citizenship by showing official documents to quasi-judicial forums called Foreigners a chaotic process, the final draft published in 2019 excluded nearly two million residents of Assam — many of them were put in detention camps while others have appealed in higher courts against their Banu said her case is pending in the Supreme Court but that authorities still forced her to BBC heard similar stories from at least six others in Assam — all Muslims — who say their family members were sent to Bangladesh around the same time as Ms Banu, despite having the necessary documents and living in India for generations. At least four of them have now come back home, with no answers still about why they were picked up.A third of Assam's 32 million residents are Muslims and many of them are descendants of immigrants who settled there during British Khatun, a 67-year-old from Assam's Barpeta who is still in Bangladesh, says she has temporarily been given shelter by a local family."I have no-one here," she laments. Her family has managed to speak to her but don't know if and when she can return. She lost her case in the foreigners' tribunal and in the state's high court and hadn't appealed in the Supreme after the recent round of action began, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma cited a February Supreme Court direction which ordered the government to start deportation proceedings for people who had been "declared foreigners" but were still held in detention centres."The people who are declared foreigners but haven't even appealed in court, we are pushing them back," Sarma said. He also claimed that people with pending court appeals were not being "troubled".But Abdur Razzaque Bhuyan, a lawyer working on many citizenship cases in Assam, alleged that in many of the recent instances, due process — which would, among other things, require India and Bangladesh to cooperate on the action — was not followed."What is happening is a wilful and deliberate misinterpretation of the court order," he recently filed a petition on behalf of a student organization seeking the Supreme Court's intervention in stopping what they said was a "forceful and illegal pushback policy" but was asked to first approach the Assam high Morigaon, around 167km from Barpeta, Rita Khatun sat near a table which had a pile of papers on husband Khairul Islam, a 51-year-old school teacher, was in the same group as Ms Banu that was allegedly picked up by authorities.A tribunal had declared him a foreigner in 2016, after which he spent two years in a detention center before being released. Like Ms Banu, his case is also being heard in the Supreme Court."Every document is proof that my husband is Indian," Ms Khatun said, leafing through what she said was Mr Islam's high school graduation certificate and some land records. "But that wasn't enough to prove his nationality to authorities."She says her husband, his father and grandfather were all born in on 23 May, she says that policemen arrived at their home and took Mr Islam away without any was only a few days later — when a viral video surfaced of a Bangladeshi journalist interviewing Mr Islam in no man's land — that the family learnt where he Ms Banu, Mr Islam has now been sent back to his family confirmed his return, the police told the BBC they had "no information" about his Begum says she is sure her father was declared a foreigner due to a case of mistaken identity — he was also taken on the same night as Mr Islam."My father's name is Abdul Latif, my grandfather was Abdul Subhan. The notice that came [years ago, from the foreigners' tribunal] said Abdul Latif, son of Shukur Ali. That's not my grandfather, I don't even know him," Ms Begum said, adding that she had all the necessary documents to prove her father's family has now heard that Mr Latif is back in Assam, but he hasn't reached home some of these people are back home now, they fear they might be picked up again abruptly."We are not playthings," Ms Begum said."These are human beings, you can't toss them around as per your whims." — BBC
Arab News
3 days ago
- Arab News
PM Sharif pledges to preserve peace in Pakistan's restive northwestern province ‘at all costs'
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday vowed to preserve peace in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province 'at all costs,' praising the sacrifices of its people and calling for unity against what he described as Indian-backed militant threats. Sharif made the remarks during a visit to Peshawar, where he addressed a Grand Jirga of tribal elders alongside the country's army chief and top federal ministers. The visit took place amid a resurgence in militant attacks in the region bordering Afghanistan and growing concern over cross-border threats. 'The sacrifices rendered by the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are indelibly inscribed in the annals of our national history,' the prime minister said during his address. 'The entire nation salutes your courage, resolve and unwavering commitment.' He urged tribal elders to stand firm against what he called the 'Indian-sponsored Fitna-ul-Khawarij,' a term used by Pakistani authorities for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants who they believe are ideologically extremist and backed by foreign actors. 'Peace in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shall be preserved at all costs,' he said. 'The Pakistan Army, in unison with all security institutions and the valiant people of the province, stands firmly united against the Fitna-ul-Khawarij and its foreign abettors.' Sharif also called for improved bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan and said Afghan soil must not be used by Indian proxies to carry out terrorist activities in Pakistan. During the jirga, Sharif also addressed financial concerns raised by provincial authorities regarding development funding. He confirmed that a committee had already been formed to review the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, a constitutional mechanism for the distribution of financial resources between the federal government and provinces. 'The chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had raised the matter of revisiting the NFC around six weeks ago in Islamabad,' Sharif said. 'We immediately formed a committee and provincial nominees have been finalized. The first meeting will be held in August.' Sharif also praised the youth of the province, calling them a vital national asset and encouraging them to contribute to peace and national cohesion.
