Pakistan woos old rival Bangladesh, as India watches on

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Warming ties between Dhaka and Islamabad comes as a bid to reset relations scarred by the bloody 1971 conflict.

PHOTO: AFP

DHAKA - Decades after Pakistani troops killed his friends in Bangladesh’s independence war, veteran freedom fighter Syed Abu Naser Bukhtear Ahmed eyes warming ties between Dhaka and Islamabad with cautious pragmatism.

Bangladesh is hosting the foreign minister and trade envoy this week, its most senior Pakistani visitors in years, in a bid to reset relations scarred by the bloody 1971 conflict and shaped by shifting regional power balances.

“The brutality was unbounded,” said Mr Ahmed, 79, a banker, describing the war in which East Pakistan broke away to form Bangladesh.

Hundreds of thousands were killed – Bangladeshi estimates say millions – and Pakistan’s military was accused of widespread atrocities.

“I would have loved to see the responsible people tried – the ones who killed six of my friends,” Mr Ahmed told AFP.

“I don’t mind normalising relations with those who opposed the war, but were not directly involved in the atrocities committed.”

Contact between the two Muslim-majority nations was long limited to little more than cultural ties: a shared love of cricket, music and Pakistan’s prized cotton used to make the flowing trousers and shirt known as shalwar kameez.

Bangladesh instead leaned heavily on India, which almost encircles the country of 170 million people.

However, a mass uprising in Dhaka in 2024 that toppled longtime India ally Sheikh Hasina has strained ties with New Delhi and opened the door for dialogue with Islamabad.

Pakistan’s Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan arrived