What the Heck Is a Bangladesh? Plus, a word about Tim Walz
What the Heck Is a Bangladesh? Plus, a word about Tim Walz
A poor delta country on the Indian subcontinent is the template for the climate crisis
You may have never heard of the eighth most populous country in the world: Bangladesh. If you have, it’s probably because you read or watched a news item about something terrible happening there at one time or another.
Maybe it was flooding (gift link), like the time during the pandemic in 2020 when one-quarter of the country flooded.
Or in 2022, when similar flooding hammered the country:
When people die during Bangladesh flooding events, it’s not like what happens when a major disaster hits the U.S. or Europe. Millions get displaced during these events, and those who don’t die lose the few possessions that can provide sustenance.
Or perhaps you once read about a garment factory collapse in 2013, when 1,134 people died because a negligent textile firm packed 5,000 people and heavy machinery into a building that couldn’t handle it (video public domain from Voice of America):
Bangladeshis have long had to deal with natural disasters, subsistence living standards, and corruption. Lately, though, they’ve also been coping with an increasingly authoritarian prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has been around forever and wanted to stick around even longer.
76-year-old Hasina has served two terms as Bangladesh’s prime minister: June 1996 to July 2001 and January 2009 to August 2024. Hasina’s tenure, especially her second term, has been marked by corruption, authoritarianism, and accusations of a flirtation with India that some have said has turned Bangladesh into something close to an Indian proxy state.
There have been, according to her critics, systematic extra-judicial killings. Several journalists who have been critical of her have been locked up.
This kind of stuff isn’t unusual for Bangladesh, which has had a reputation as one of the poorest countries in the world since its inception in 1972.
What is different this time is that the people of Bangladesh finally have had enough, mostly thanks to a growing middle class and rebellious university students. Under the leadership of the restive students, Bangladeshis rebelled and forced Hasina out of the country. She left this weekend, and probably won’t be back.
The Bangladeshi military, which has been involved in numerous coups, stepped aside and let Hansi disappear instead of backing her up, but only after at least 600 people died during the uprising, including nearly 100 last Sunday.
Surprisingly, the military also accepted as Bangladesh’s interim prime minister the man the student-led resistance wanted, a Nobel laureate named Muhammad Yunus, who became famous for creating micro-loan programs to help many Bangladeshis emerge from subsistence.
The briefest history of Bangladesh you’ll ever see
The Bengal people have resided in the wet, monsoon-ridden delta of the Indian subcontinent for at least a thousand years. However, Bangladesh as a formal entity was created in 1972.
Its creation wasn’t a peaceful one. It was born out of Pakistan, which was born from British colonialism during the Partition of India. If you look at the globe of Earth below, you can immediately see how goofy the British were when they drew Pakistan’s map. It’s as if Monty Python drew the boundaries (Pakistan is in green below):
I can almost imagine John Cleese proposing boundaries of the new nation by confidently declaring how brilliant it would be to split it in half by India.
Unsurprisingly, this led to problems. On the left (west) was the main administrative region of Pakistan. On the right (east) was its much smaller but very populous delta region, which was prone to flooding even before climate change exacerbated its problems, mostly through the mighty Brahmaputra and Padma river systems.
I could describe the myriad problems that cropped up from this strange decision by the British, but that would require a lot more text and a lot of footnotes that nobody seems to have time to parse these days.
So I’ll sum up by saying that the people in East Pakistan, after years of neglect and outright abuse, declared independence in 1972. This fired up a war of independence that resulted in what is now generally referred to as the Bangladesh Genocide.
Quoting Wikipedia (which generally gets things right):
Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.
This is a level of violence most Westerners cannot begin to imagine.
Well, George Harrison did:
Despite numerical and military superiority, Pakistan’s army was no match for John Cleese geography, so Pakistan threw up its hands and let Bangladesh establish its independence.
Bangladesh has struggled ever since.
One of its biggest problems, besides wicked monsoons that regularly flood its agricultural delta regions, has been governance. It has endured coups, corruption, and authoritarian regimes like Hansi’s for most of its existence.
One of the lone (loan!) bright spots in Bangladesh has been the new guy that the students demanded, Muhammad Yunus, who won a Nobel Prize for developing microloan programs for poor people in Bangladesh and elsewhere. But he’s 84 years old, so his installment as interim prime minister is a short-term solution.
The rains of Bangladesh will continue and worsen over time as climate change continues its inexorable march. Climate refugees will become a growing problem on the Indian subcontinent.
But guess what? That’s going to be a problem in the United States and Europe as well. I’ll be talking about this in an upcoming post.
In the meantime, be happy for this historic victory for the people of Bangladesh. They overthrew an entrenched authoritarian. There are lessons there for everyone.
The Tim Walz Waltz
Magaworld has admitted that it tried to smear Pennsylvania governor and Kamala V.P. hopeful Josh Shapiro by linking him with the Gaza issue:
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Enough has been written about Walz over the last 24 hours that I don’t have much to add other than this: MAGA should be careful about what they wish for. Walz is going to pull rural voters into the Kamala whirlwind. Don’t listen to pundits who say otherwise.
Random Notes
When it comes to climate change, here is what we are up against. I quote here from The Austin American Statesman regarding a problem pool owners are facing called “concrete cancer” that causes their swimming pools to crack:
Concrete cancer, formally known as alkali-silica reaction, or ASR, causes concrete to swell internally and to crack when it comes in contact with water…
…The way to prevent ASR is to add fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal, to the mix before the concrete is poured, officials said.
There has been a shortage of fly ash in recent years, people involved in the pool industry said. John Ford, who owns his own pool company, Front2back Custom, and other builders blamed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations for reducing the number of coal-burning plants.
Let’s burn more coal so that Texas homeowners can swim crack-free? Wait, that has a double meaning.
I’m not gonna lie. I owned a home with a pool in Texas when I lived there. But this kind of thinking is why Texas is Texas.
Part of the battle anyone concerned about climate change is up against is the potential Texasification of the rest of the U.S. I’m here to say no to that.
Thanks for reading!