[1][2][3] Sultan Balkhi, a crown prince of Balkh, was an early missionary who settled in northern Bengal and contributed to the spread of Islam in the region.

[4] With the ultimate establishment of Bengal as a Dar al-Islam, there was a migratory influx of Afghans to the country, which continued up until the British colonial period.

[6] In 1626, Afghan voyager Mahmud Balkhi mentioned in his diaries of how he came across numerous Bengali families in Rajmahal whose ancestry lay in areas in present-day Afghanistan like Balkh.

[10] Bengali troops also played a primary role in the First Anglo-Afghan War, with defeat at the hands of the Afghans altering British India's fate by indirectly contributing to the conditions that sparked the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

[11] During the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Kingdom of Afghanistan provided a critical safe passage to Bengali civilians based in West Pakistan.

[14] Two days later, a press conference by the US embassy in Dhaka restated the request saying, "The United States has intensified its discussion on Bangladesh's engagement in Afghanistan for global peace and stability,".

[15] However, there was a general consensus among the politicians of different parties as well as civil society members that Bangladesh should not send its troops to Afghanistan without a UN mandate.

Bangladesh is also interested in providing technical and vocational training in the fields of banking, disaster management, primary and mass education, health care, agricultural etc.