No formal invitation received yet, panel says, as analysts weigh opportunity against risk
NEW YORK — Bangladesh should not rush into the newly formed Mecca Joint Defense Pact and, if and when an invitation comes, should join only on carefully negotiated terms, security analysts said at a webinar organized by the Bangladesh Institute of Development and Security Studies (BIIDS). Panelists agreed that the pact — signed last month by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan — offers Bangladesh a genuine strategic and economic opening, but also carries real diplomatic risk with neighboring India and Myanmar, and that no formal invitation to join has in fact been extended to Dhaka.
The webinar was moderated by researcher Mahbub Bhuiyan and drew participants from Dhaka, Washington, New York and Istanbul. Dr. Muhammad Imran Hossain Ansari, Executive Director of BIIDS, delivered welcome remarks. The panel featured retired Major General Fazle Elahi Akbar, defense-industry expert Sabina Ahmed, and Dr. Harun Or Rashid, a professor at Kent State University.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Ansari framed the Mecca Pact — under which an attack on any one of the three signatory states would be treated as an attack on all three — as part of a broader shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. He noted that Bangladesh’s foreign minister and state minister have both spoken positively about potential engagement, with the foreign minister telling parliament that Bangladesh has ended what he called its “subservient” foreign policy. Ansari said the issue matters for three reasons: it represents an economic and defense opportunity for a country facing rising extremism on both its western and eastern flanks; it carries risk, given India’s already cautious official response; and the nature of any Bangladeshi engagement — full membership, defense-industrial partnership, intelligence sharing, or simple diplomatic solidarity — remains undefined.
Dr. Harun Or Rashid argued that opportunity and risk are evenly balanced and that Bangladesh must first map out the regional actors and their interests before deciding how to proceed. He noted that the pact originated as a response to a Middle Eastern problem, not a South Asian one, and that Bangladesh’s involvement would import that complexity. He pointed to India and the United States as the two actors whose calculations would shift most, with India needing to divert attention from its China and Pakistan borders, and Washington weighing its own Bay of Bengal interests alongside the China-Pakistan relationship. Using an analogy to Bangladesh’s ousted former prime minister, he suggested Dhaka could follow Egypt’s example — neither accepting nor rejecting the offer outright, but leaving it pending while circumstances develop.
Sabina Ahmed offered a key clarification: Bangladesh has received no formal invitation to join the Mecca Defense Pact. She noted that Foreign Minister Dr. Khalilur Rahman told parliament directly that no such invitation had been extended, despite a Reuters report citing an unnamed Bangladeshi foreign ministry official suggesting otherwise. The only invitation Dhaka has received from Saudi Arabia, she said, was for a bilateral visit by Tarique Rahman — issued in June, before the pact was even signed in August. Ahmed said the pact’s full text has not been published; only the August 7 joint statement is public, leaving the mechanism, geographic scope and obligations undefined. Drawing a comparison to NATO, she noted that founding NATO members also attached conditions at accession that were later withdrawn as circumstances changed — Turkey’s 1971 rejection of foreign bases, for instance, or France’s temporary withdrawal from NATO’s integrated command in 1966 — suggesting Bangladesh could similarly negotiate terms now and revisit them later. She added that the benefits most often cited — joint defense manufacturing, intelligence sharing, and training — could largely be secured through bilateral agreements with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan even without formal pact membership, and urged prioritizing those bilateral tracks first.
Major General (Retd.) Fazle Elahi Akbar said Bangladeshi public enthusiasm for the pact stems chiefly from a sense that India has constrained the country’s sovereign autonomy. He described Bangladesh as the only Muslim-majority nation with no Muslim-majority neighbor, a geopolitical fact he said should inform its long-term security planning. He argued that the recent Iran-Israel-U.S. conflict shook Gulf states’ confidence in American security guarantees, driving the push for a self-reliant collective defense framework. Potential benefits of membership, he said, include joint defense manufacturing, stronger intelligence sharing, and joint training that would improve interoperability of equipment and supply chains. At the same time, he cautioned that similar pan-Islamic defense initiatives have failed before due to sectarian divisions, making it premature to assume the pact’s durability.
Audience Q&A
Asked whether joining would damage relations with China, both Dr. Rashid and Ahmed said the risk was limited, given China’s existing ties with Pakistan, though Ahmed noted Beijing might be uneasy if Bangladesh’s arms procurement shifted toward Turkey. General Akbar suggested China would likely welcome the move as consistent with its own Global South-oriented initiatives.
On the pact’s relationship to U.S. strategy in the region, General Akbar said President Trump’s welcome of the agreement was driven largely by tactical interests — Strait of Hormuz stability and oil supply chains ahead of the U.S. midterm elections — and predicted the pact could eventually create friction with Washington’s Indo-Pacific Strategy if its membership expands.
Responding to a question comparing a potential Indian military response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, General Akbar dismissed the scenario as unfounded, arguing that Bangladesh already faces persistent low-level pressure from India regardless of pact membership, and that the country’s real vulnerability is internal disunity rather than any external pact.
On Myanmar, General Akbar said Bangladesh’s military edge has eroded over three decades, particularly in air power, and criticized both India’s absence and China’s unmet promises on the Rohingya crisis, suggesting that Belt and Road access to the Bay of Bengal could ultimately become linked to Rohingya repatriation.
Asked whether Saudi Arabia and other pact members could truly be trusted given their ties to India, Ahmed pointed to the Pakistan-Saudi relationship as precedent — a decades-long partnership that has not stopped Riyadh from maintaining friendly ties with New Delhi — but stressed that Bangladesh should secure its own bilateral agreements with Saudi Arabia before pursuing pact membership.
Asked to clarify an earlier remark about a security threat to India’s northeast, General Akbar said he had meant an economic rather than a military threat: rapid, well-governed economic growth in Bangladesh could draw India’s northeastern states toward Dhaka rather than Delhi — which he called India’s real underlying concern.
Panelists closed by agreeing that whatever Bangladesh ultimately decides, the choice should be anchored in national interest, long-term capability building, and strategic autonomy — arrived at through careful risk assessment rather than haste.
BIDSS is a U.S.-based research institute.
