The 5th BIMSTEC National Security Chiefs’ Meeting in New Delhi on 16 July was more than another regional security gathering. For Bangladesh, now chairing BIMSTEC since April 2025, its real significance lies in whether Dhaka can convert the meeting’s modest outcomes into lasting strategic leverage.
Chaired by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, the meeting brought together security chiefs from all seven BIMSTEC states. Bangladesh was represented by Defence Adviser Dr AKM Shamsul Islam and High Commissioner M Riaz Hamidullah. BIMSTEC Secretary General Indra Mani Pandey briefed members on security sector progress, while Doval also held bilateral discussions with the Bangladeshi, Thai, Sri Lankan and Myanmar delegations on intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation.
The meeting produced maritime HADR guidelines and guiding principles for maritime law enforcement agencies during at sea interactions. Against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, conflict and technology driven, multi domain threats and with BIMSTEC approaching its 30th anniversary in 2027, these are modest but meaningful beginnings.
For Bangladesh, however, the real question is what happens next.
BIMSTEC is usually viewed through trade and connectivity. Yet its security mechanisms including the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime framework, the Expert Group on Maritime Security and the National Security Chiefs’ process offer Dhaka an unusual opportunity to shape regional priorities without becoming dependent on any single partner.
Bangladesh’s geography makes this especially important. Sitting between South and Southeast Asia, with a 4,096 kilometre border with India and a volatile frontier with Myanmar, the country is both a transit and destination point for narcotics, arms and human trafficking, while remaining among the world’s most disaster.prone coastal states. Its chairmanship provides procedural leverage that its relative economic and military weight would not otherwise guarantee, while the 2027 anniversary creates pressure for concrete deliverables.
Dhaka should use that window intelligently.
On border security, BIMSTEC can complement the BGB–BSF channel, which remains vulnerable to political fluctuations and incidents such as cross border shootings and alleged push-ins. Bangladesh should push for common verification procedures, surveillance and biometric cooperation, and documented reciprocal commitments against the use of one member’s territory against another. A multilateral platform would allow Dhaka to raise bilateral asymmetries without every issue becoming a bilateral grievance.
The maritime agenda offers an even greater opportunity. The newly adopted HADR and maritime law enforcement principles should be converted into operational white shipping information sharing and eventually a regional maritime fusion centre. With offshore gas, shipping and the blue economy central to Bangladesh’s future, anti-piracy and anti-IUU fishing cooperation are economic necessities. Dhaka must also ensure BIMSTEC’s maritime agenda does not become merely an extension of Indian Ocean naval priorities.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Bangladesh–India–Myanmar tri-border zone demand similar regional coordination. Golden Triangle linked narcotics routes, small arms flows and the movement of armed actors remain concerns regardless of the pace of the CHT Peace Accord. Multilateral intelligence and law enforcement cooperation would allow Bangladesh to address these threats without appearing to outsource internal security to a single neighbour.
Myanmar is more delicate. BIMSTEC cannot resolve its internal conflict, but it remains one of the few forums where Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Thailand meet. Dhaka should keep technical channels open on refugee flows, anti trafficking including through the existing BIMSTEC Sub Group on Human Trafficking and humanitarian logistics, without weakening its position on safe, dignified and sustainable Rohingya repatriation.
Cybersecurity must also move from discussion to structure. Bangladesh should push for a dedicated cyber sub group under CTTC, regional incident response protocols and pre-emptive threat intelligence sharing as financial systems, ports and critical infrastructure become increasingly networked.
Yet strategic activism must be balanced by strategic autonomy.
BIMSTEC’s security agenda risks appearing India centric given New Delhi’s influence, hosting role and agenda, setting weight. Bangladesh must insist on reciprocity in intelligence and technology cooperation, ensure that security collaboration is not interpreted as alignment against China or Myanmar’s military authorities, and keep Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan invested. A perceived India Bangladesh security vehicle would undermine BIMSTEC’s legitimacy.
Above all, Dhaka must demand deliverables rather than declarations: working groups, information,sharing protocols and joint exercises.
The New Delhi meeting produced modest outcomes, but it also created a template. Bangladesh now has the chairmanship, a regional security platform and a deadline before the 2027 anniversary. Its success will depend on whether it turns maritime guidelines into mechanisms, cyber concerns into institutions and border cooperation into reciprocal protocols.
The summit lasted a day. The strategic opportunity it offers Bangladesh could last far longer, but only if Dhaka chooses to use its chairmanship as leverage rather than ceremony.
