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"For the past 15 years, the Pakistan-Bangladesh relationship was on a slightly difficult trajectory," says Humayun Kabir, a former senior Bangladeshi diplomat, adding that the relationship seems to now be returning to that of "two normal neighbours".

"Pakistan needs to own the crimes that had taken place during the independence war," said Mr Kabir, the former Bangladeshi diplomat.

MASAOUDIYEH, Lebanon — Hassan Suleiman huffed in the morning sun, sweating despite the ice-cold water running up to his shins under the weight of the child sitting on his shoulders, a backpack and a full-to-bursting plastic bag he carried across the Kabir River.

“We’ve received them because it’s a humanitarian situation, but our situation as a municipality is below zero,” said Ali Ahmad al-Ali, the mayor of Masaoudiyeh, an Alawite-dominated village near a kink in the narrow and shallow Kabir River.

But for the people wading across the Kabir River, their concern is going home and being safe.