ppl will reply to a same msg. dat doenst mean u hav to reply da same
thing to each of dem. ofcourse u can reply each of da msgs if u hav
smthing different to say for each post.
hope u understand.. (u sent same msg twice again!)
On 6/23/08, dina khan <dina30_khan@yahoo.com> wrote:
> it has been got 4 so replied 4.........this is the
> reason...............................another is reasons this matter is human
> life related so for drawing more attention............in replying
> each...................
>
> --- On Sun, 22/6/08, ♪ bLuE BoY ♪ ««« <pramiti.riday@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: ♪ bLuE BoY ♪ ««« <pramiti.riday@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Shadeshi_Bondhu] Special report: Bangladesh is set to
> disappear under the waves by the end of the century
> To: Shadeshi_Bondhu@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Sunday, 22 June, 2008, 11:49 AM
>
>
>
>
>
>
> what could be the reason behind sending the same msg 4 times?? Dina,
> we wud request u to b careful abt sending msg. press the send button
> only once, dat will b enough!
>
> On 6/22/08, dina khan <dina30_khan@ yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Warning for action
>> The result for filling all rivers canals bil jhil & ponds and using deep
>> tubule for raising the deep underground deep water for using in
>> irrigation,
>> the result of corruption & ignorance, the result of cutting all trees, the
>> land of Bangladesh is going down which are the main causes for flood every
>> year in Bangladesh & also the causes for sea water coming in Bangladesh &
>> for this causes in future the land of Bangladesh will be gone under the
>> sea
>> water Bay of Bengal.
>> It may call flood of Noah as God 's punishment.
>> Advising for action
>> 150 millions people of Bangladesh must need to be careful need to be
>> honest
>> & quality educated.
>> Stop all corruption & try to be all quality educated, stop using deep
>> tubule for raising deep under ground water for using & irrigation, dig 30
>> feet all rivers canal jhil bils & ponds for holding flood & sky water &
>> make 30 feet high barrage in front Bay of Bengal to protect coming sea
>> water inside the land of Bangladesh & plan trees every where on the
>> barrage
>> & on river both sides.
>>
>>
>> --- On Sat, 21/6/08, R@kiB <rakib.exe@gmail. com> wrote:
>>
>> From: R@kiB <rakib.exe@gmail. com>
>> Subject: [Shadeshi_Bondhu] Special report: Bangladesh is set to disappear
>> under the waves by the end of the century
>> To: "we_frndz" <we_frndz@yahoogroup s.com>
>> Date: Saturday, 21 June, 2008, 7:54 PM
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Bangladesh - 1971-2071: born in blood, died in water!!!!
>>
>> From The Independent:
>>
>> Special report: Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end
>> of
>> the century
>> Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under
>> the
>> waves by the end of this century – and we will be to blame. Johann Hari
>> took
>> a journey to see for himself how western profligacy and indifference have
>> sealed the fate of 150 million peoplewent to see for himself the spreading
>> misery and destruction as the ocean reclaims the land on which so many
>> millions depend
>> Friday, 20 June 2008
>> Alamy
>>
>>
>>
>> Battling the waves: many Bangladeshis depend on the ocean
>>
>>
>> This spring, I took a month-long road trip across a country that we – you,
>> me and everyone we know – are killing. One day, not long into my journey,
>> I
>> travelled over tiny ridges and groaning bridges on the back of a motorbike
>> to reach the remote village of Munshigonj. The surviving villagers –
>> gaunt,
>> creased people – were sitting by a stagnant pond. They told me, slowly,
>> what
>> we have done to them.
>> Ten years ago, the village began to die. First, many of the trees turned a
>> strange brownish-yellow colour and rotted. Then the rice paddies stopped
>> growing and festered in the water. Then the fish floated to the surface of
>> the rivers, gasping. Then many of the animals began to die. Then many of
>> the
>> children began to die.
>> The waters flowing through Munshigonj – which had once been sweet and
>> clear
>> and teeming with life – had turned salty and dead.
>> Arita Rani, a 25-year-old, sat looking at the salt water, swaddled in a
>> blue
>> sari and her grief. "We couldn't drink the water from the river, because
>> it
>> was suddenly full of salt and made us sick," she said. "So I had to give
>> my
>> children water from this pond. I knew it was a bad idea. People wash in
>> this
>> pond. It's dirty. So we all got dysentery." She keeps staring at its
>> surface. "I have had it for 10 years now. You feel weak all the time, and
>> you have terrible stomach pains. You need to run to the toilet 10 times a
>> day. My boy Shupria was seven and he had this for his whole life. He was
>> so
>> weak, and kept getting coughs and fevers. And then one morning..."
>> Her mother interrupted the trailing silence. "He died," she said. Now
>> Arita's surviving three-year-old, Ashik, is sick, too. He is sprawled on
>> his
>> back on the floor. He keeps collapsing; his eyes are watery and distant.
>> His
>> distended stomach feels like a balloon pumped full of water. "Why did this
>> happen?" Arita asked.
>> It is happening because of us. Every flight, every hamburger, every coal
>> power plant, ends here, with this. Bangladesh is a flat, low-lying land
>> made
>> of silt, squeezed in between the melting mountains of the Himalayas and
>> the
>> rising seas of the Bay of Bengal. As the world warms, the sea is swelling
>> –
>> and wiping Bangladesh off the map.
>> Deep below the ground of Munshigonj and thousands of villages like it,
>> salt
>> water is swelling up. It is this process – called "saline inundation" –
>> that
>> killed their trees and their fields and contaminated their drinking water.
>> Some farmers have shifted from growing rice to farming shrimp – but that
>> employs less than a quarter of the people, and it makes them dependent on
>> a
>> fickle export market. The scientific evidence shows that unless we change
>> now, this salt water will keep rising and rising, until everything here is
>> ocean.
>> I decided to embark on this trip when, sitting in my air-conditioned flat
>> in
>> London, I noticed a strange and seemingly impossible detail in a
>> scientific
>> report. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – whose
>> predictions
>> have consistently turned out to be underestimates – said that Bangladesh
>> is
>> on course to lose 17 per cent of its land and 30 per cent of its food
>> production by 2050. For America, this would be equivalent to California
>> and
>> New York State drowning, and the entire mid-West turning salty and barren.
>> Surely this couldn't be right? How could more than 20 million Bangladeshis
>> be turned into refugees so suddenly and so silently? I dug deeper, hoping
>> it
>> would be disproved – and found that many climatologists think the IPCC is
>> way too optimistic about Bangladesh. I turned to Professor James Hansen,
>> the
>> director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose climate
>> calculations have proved to be more accurate than anybody else's. He
>> believes the melting of the Greenland ice cap being picked up by his
>> satellites today, now, suggests we are facing a 25-metre rise in sea
>> levels
>> this century – which would drown Bangladesh entirely. When I heard this, I
>> knew I had to go, and see.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Even the capital, Dhaka would not survive a massive sea-level rise
>>
>>
>> 1. The edge of a cliff
>> The first thing that happens when you arrive in Dhaka is that you stop.
>> And
>> wait. And wait. And all you see around you are cars, and all you hear is
>> screaming. Bangladesh's capital is in permanent shrieking gridlock, with
>> miles of rickshaws and mobile heaps of rust. The traffic advances by
>> inches
>> and by howling. Each driver screams himself hoarse announc-ing – that was
>> my
>> lane! Stay there! Stop moving! Go back! Go forward! It is a good-natured
>> shrieking: everybody knows that this is what you do in Dhaka. If you are
>> lucky, you enter a slipstream of traffic that moves for a minute – until
>> the
>> jams back up and the screaming begins once more.
>> Around you, this megalopolis of 20 million people seems to be screaming
>> itself conscious. People burn rubbish by the roadside, or loll in the
>> rivers. Children with skin deformities that look like infected burns try
>> to
>> thrust maps or sweets into your hand. Rickshaw drivers with thighs of
>> steel
>> pedal furious-ly as whole families cling on and offer their own
>> high-volume
>> traffic commentary to the groaning driver, and the groaning city.
>> I wanted to wade through all this chaos to find Bangladesh's climate
>> scientists, who are toiling in the crannies of the city to figure out what
>> –
>> if anything – can be saved.
>> Dr Atiq Rahman's office in downtown Dhaka is a nest of scientific reports
>> and books that, at every question, he dives into to reel off figures. He
>> is
>> a tidy, grey-moustached man who speaks English very fast, as if he is
>> running out of time.
>> "It is clear from all the data we are gathering here in Bangladesh that
>> the
>> IPCC predictions were much too conservative, " he said. He should know: he
>> is
>> one of the IPCC's leading members, and the UN has given him an award for
>> his
>> unusually prescient predictions. His work is used as one of the standard
>> textbooks across the world, including at Oxford and Harvard. "We are
>> facing
>> a catastrophe in this country. We are talking about an absolutely massive
>> displacement of human beings."
>> He handed me shafts of scientific studies as he explained: "This is the
>> ground zero of global warming." He listed the effects. The seas are
>> rising,
>> so land is being claimed from the outside. (The largest island in the
>> country, Bhola, has lost half its land in the past decade.) The rivers are
>> super-charged, becoming wider and wider, so land is being claimed from
>> within. (Erosion is up by 40 per cent). Cyclones are becoming more intense
>> and more violent (2007 was the worst year on record for intense hurricanes
>> here). And salt water is rendering the land barren. (The rate of saline
>> inundation has trebled in the past 20 years.) "There is no question," Dr
>> Rahman said, "that this is being caused primarily by human action. This is
>> way outside natural variation. If you really want people in the West to
>> understand the effect they are having here, it's simple. From now on, we
>> need to have a system where for every 10,000 tons of carbon you emit, you
>> have to take a
>> Bangladeshi family to live with you. It is your responsibility. " In the
>> past, he has called it "climatic genocide".
>> The worst-case scenario, Dr Rahman said, is if one of the world's
>> land-based
>> ice-sheets breaks up. "Then we lose 70 to 80 per cent of our land,
>> including
>> Dhaka. It's a different world, and we're not on it. The evidence from Jim
>> Hansen shows this is becoming more likely – and it can happen quickly and
>> irreversibly. My best understanding of the evidence is that this will
>> probably happen towards the end of the lifetime of babies born today."
>> I walked out in the ceaseless churning noise of Dhaka. Everywhere I
>> looked,
>> people were building and making and living: my eyes skimmed up higher and
>> higher and find more and more activity. A team of workers were building a
>> house; behind and above them, children were sewing mattresses on a roof;
>> behind and above them, more men were building taller buildings. This is
>> the
>> most cramped country on earth: 150 million people living in an area the
>> size
>> of Iowa. Could all this life really be continuing on the crumbling edge of
>> a
>> cliff?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Disease from 2007's floods presages worse to come
>>
>>
>> 2. 'It is like the Bay is angry'
>> I was hurtling through the darkness at 120mph with my new driver,
>> Shambrat.
>> He was red-eyed from chewing pan, a leaf-stimulant that makes you buzz,
>> and
>> I could see nothing except the tiny pools of light cast by the car. They
>> showed we were on narrow roads, darting between rice paddies and emptied
>> shack-towns, in the midnight silence. I kept trying to put on my seatbelt,
>> but every time Shambrat would cry, "You no need seatbelt! I good driver!"
>> and burst into hysterical giggles.
>> To see if the seas were really rising, I had circled a random low-lying
>> island on the map called Moheshkhali and asked Shambrat to get me there.
>> It
>> turned out the only route was to go to Coxs Bazar – Bangladesh's Blackpool
>> –
>> and then take a small wooden rowing boat that has a huge chugging engine
>> attached to the front. I clambered in alongside three old men, a small
>> herd
>> of goats, and some chickens. The boat was operated by a 10-year-old child,
>> whose job is to point the boat in the right direction, start the engine,
>> and
>> then begin using a small jug to frantically scoop out the water that
>> starts
>> to leak in. After an hour of the deafening ack-ack of the engine, we
>> arrived
>> at the muddy coast of Moheshkhali.
>> There was a makeshift wooden pier, where men were waiting with large sacks
>> of salt. As we climbed up on to the fragile boards, people helped the old
>> men lift up the animals. There were men mooching around the pier, waiting
>> for a delivery. They looked bemused by my arrival. I asked them if the sea
>> levels were rising here. Rezaul Karim Chowdry, a 34-year-old who looked
>> like
>> he is in his fifties, said plainly: "Of course. In the past 30 years,
>> two-thirds of this island has gone under the water. I had to abandon my
>> house. The land has gone into the sea." Immediately all the other men
>> start
>> to recount their stories. They have lost their houses, their land, and
>> family members to the advance.
>> They agreed to show me their vanishing island. We clambered into a tuc-tuc
>> –
>> a motorbike with a carriage on the back – and set off across the island,
>> riding along narrow ridges between cordoned-off areas of sand and salt.
>> The
>> men explained that this is salt-farming: the salt left behind by the tide
>> is
>> gathered and sold. "It is one of the last forms of farming that we can
>> still
>> do here," Rezaul said. As we passed through the forest, he told me to be
>> careful: "Since we started to lose all our land, gangs are fighting for
>> the
>> territory that is left. They are very violent. A woman was shot in the
>> crossfire yesterday. They will not like an outsider appearing from
>> nowhere."
>> We pulled up outside a vast concrete structure on stilts. This, the men
>> explained, is the cyclone shelter built by the Japanese years ago. We
>> climbed to the top, and looked out towards the ocean. "Do you see the top
>> of
>> a tree, sticking out there?" Rezaul said, pointing into the far distance.
>> I
>> couldn't see anything, but then, eventually, I spotted a tiny jutting
>> brown-green tip. "That is where my house was." When did you leave it? "In
>> 2002. The ocean is coming very fast now. We think all this" – he waved his
>> hand back over the island – "will be gone in 15 years."
>> Outside the rusty house next door, an ancient-looking man with a long grey
>> beard was sitting cross-legged. I approached him, and he rose slowly. His
>> name was Abdul Zabar; he didn't know his age, but guessed he is 80. "I was
>> born here," he said. "There" – and he points out to the sea. "The island
>> began to be swallowed in the 1960s, and it started going really quickly in
>> 1991. I have lost my land, so I can't grow anything... I only live because
>> one of my sons got a job in Saudi Arabia and sends money back to us. I am
>> very frightened, but what can I do? I can only trust in God." The sea
>> stops
>> just in front of his home. What will you do, I asked, if it comes closer?
>> "We will have nowhere to go to."
>> I was taken to the island's dam. It is a long stretch of hardened clay and
>> concrete and mud. "This used to be enough," a man called Abul Kashin said,
>> "but then the sea got so high that it came over the dam." They have tried
>> to
>> pile lumps of concrete on top, but they are simply washed away. "My family
>> have left the island," he continued, "They were so sad to go. This is my
>> homeland. If we had to leave here to go to some other place, it would be
>> the
>> worst day of my life."
>> Twenty years ago, there were 30,000 people on this island. There are
>> 18,000
>> now – and most think they will be the last inhabitants.
>> On the beach, there were large wooden fishing boats lying unused. Abu
>> Bashir, a lined, thin 28-year-old, pointed to his boat and said, "Fishing
>> is
>> almost impossible now. The waves are much bigger than they used to be. It
>> used to be fine to go out in a normal [hand-rowed] boat. That is how my
>> father and my grandfather and my ancestors lived.
>> "Now that is impossible. You need a [motor-driven] boat, and even that is
>> thrown about by the waves so much. It's like the bay is angry."
>> The other fishermen burst in. "When there is a cyclone warning, we cannot
>> go
>> out fishing for 10 days. That is a lot of business lost. There used to be
>> two or three warnings a year. Last year, there were 12. The sea is so
>> violent. We are going hungry."
>> Yet the islanders insisted on offering me a feast of rice and fish and
>> eggs.
>> I was ushered into the council leader's house – a rusty shack near the sea
>> –
>> and the men sat around, urging me to tell the world what is happening. "If
>> people know what is happening to us, they will help," they said. The women
>> remained in the back room; when I glimpsed them and tried to thank them
>> for
>> the food, they giggled and vanished. I asked if the men had heard of
>> global
>> warming, and they looked puzzled. "No," they said. We stared out at the
>> ocean and ate, as the sun slowly set on the island.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> AP
>> Nasa's James Hansen thinks there may be a 25-metre sea-level rise. This
>> would drown Bangladesh entirely
>>
>>
>> 3. No hiding place
>> Through the morning mist, I peered out of the car window at the cratered
>> landscape. Trees jutted out at surreal angles from the ground. One lay
>> upside down with its roots sticking upwards towards the sky, looking like
>> a
>> sketch for a Dali painting. Shambrat had spat out his pan and was driving
>> slowly now. "There are holes in the ground," he said, squinting with
>> concentration. "From the cyclone. You fall in..." He made a splattering
>> sound.
>> It was here, in the south of Bangladesh, that on 15 November last year,
>> Cyclone Sidr arrived. It formed in the warmed Bay of Bengal and ripped
>> across the land, taking more than 3,000 people with it. Like Americans
>> talking about 9/11, everybody in Bangladesh knows where they were when
>> Sidr
>> struck. For miles, the upturned and smashed-out houses are intermixed with
>> tents made from blue plastic sheeting. These stretches of plastic were
>> handed out by the charities in the weeks after Sidr, and many families are
>> still living in them now.
>> There have always been cyclones in Bangladesh, and there always will be –
>> but global warming is making them much more violent. Back in Dhaka, the
>> climatologist Ahsan Uddin Ahmed explained that cyclones use heat as a
>> fuel:
>> "The sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have been rising
>> steadily
>> for the past 40 years – and so, exactly as you would expect, the intensity
>> of cyclones has risen too. They're up by 39 per cent on average." Again I
>> circled a cyclone-struck island at random and headed for the dot.
>> The hour-long journey on a wooden rowing boat from the mainland to
>> Charkashem Island passed in a dense mist that made it feel like crossing
>> the
>> River Styx. The spectral outline of other boats could sometimes be
>> glimpsed,
>> before they disappeared suddenly. One moment an old woman and a goat
>> appeared and stared at me, then they were gone.
>> The island was a tiny dot of mud and lush, upturned greenery. It had no
>> pier, so when the rowing boat bumped up against the sand I had to wade
>> through the water.
>> I looked out over the silent island, and saw some familiar blue sheeting
>> in
>> the distance. As I trudged towards it, I saw some gaunt teenagers
>> half-heartedly kicking a deflated football. From the sheeting, a man and
>> woman stared, astonished.
>> "I was in my fields over there," Hanif Mridha said. "I saw the wind start,
>> it was about eight at night, and I saw everything being blown around. I
>> went
>> and hid under an iron sheet, but that was blown away by the wind. The
>> water
>> came swelling up all of a sudden and was crashing all around me. I grabbed
>> one of my children and ran to the forest" – he pointed to the cluster of
>> trees at the heart of the island – "and climbed the tallest one I could
>> reach. I went as high as I could but still the water kept rising and I
>> thought – this is it, I'm going to drown. I'm dying, my children are
>> dying,
>> my wife is dying. I could see everything was under water and people were
>> screaming everywhere. I held there for four hours with my son."
>> When the water washed away and he came down, everything was gone: his
>> house,
>> his crops, his animals, his possessions. A few days later, an aid agency
>> arrived with some rice and some plastic sheeting to sleep under. Nobody
>> has
>> come since.
>> His wife, Begum Mridha, took over the story. Their children are terrified
>> of
>> the sea now, and have nightmares every night. They eat once a day, if
>> they're lucky. "We are so hungry," she said. The new home they have built
>> is
>> made from twigs and the plastic sheet. Underneath it, they sleep with
>> their
>> eight children and Begum Mridha's mother. The children lay lethargically
>> there, staring blankly into space over their distended bellies.
>> Begum Mridha cooks on a lantern. They eat once a day – if that. "It's so
>> cold at night we can't sleep," she said. "The children all have diarrhoea
>> and they are losing weight. It will take us more than two years to save up
>> and get back what we had."
>> If cyclones hit this area more often, what would happen to you? Hanif
>> looked
>> down. He opened his mouth, but no words came.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> AFP/Getty Images
>> Life on the edge: a woman and child in their riverside hut in Dhaka as the
>> country braced for floods last September
>>
>>
>> 4. Bangladesh's Noah
>> In the middle of Bangladesh, in the middle of my road trip, I tracked down
>> Abul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan. He was sitting under a parasol by the banks
>> of
>> a river, scribbling frenetically into his notebook.
>> "The catastrophe in Bangladesh has begun," he said. "The warnings [by the
>> IPCC] are unfolding much faster than anyone anticipated. " Until a few
>> years
>> ago, Rezwan was an architect, designing buildings for rich people – "but I
>> thought, is this what I want to do while my country drowns? Create
>> buildings
>> that will be under water soon anyway?"
>> He considered dedicating his life to building schools and hospitals, "but
>> then I realised they would be under water soon as well. I was hopeless.
>> But
>> then I thought of boats!"
>> He has turned himself into Bangladesh's Noah, urging his people to move on
>> to boats as the Great Flood comes. Rezwan built a charity – Shidhulai
>> Swanirvar Sangstha, which means self-reliance – that is building the only
>> schools and hospitals and homes that can last now: ones that float.
>> We clambered on to his first school-boat, which is moored in Singra. In
>> this
>> area there is no electricity, no sewage system, and no state. The
>> residents
>> live the short lives of pre-modern people. But now, suddenly, they have a
>> fleet of these boats, stocked with medicines and lined with books on
>> everything from Shakespeare to accountancy to climatology. Nestling
>> between
>> them, there are six internet terminals with broadband access.
>> The boat began to float down the Curnai River, gathering scores of beaming
>> kids as it went. Fatima Jahan, an unveiled 18-year-old girl dressed in
>> bright red, arrived to go online. She was desperate to know the cricket
>> scores. At every muddy village-stop, the boat inhaled more children, and I
>> talked to the mothers who were beating their washing dry by the river. "I
>> never went to school, and I never saw a doctor in my life. Now my children
>> can do both!" a thin woman with a shimmering heart-shaped nose stud called
>> Nurjahan Rupbhan told me. But when I asked about the changes in the
>> climate,
>> her forehead crumpled into long frown-lines.
>> I thought back to what the scientists told me in Dhaka. Bangladesh is a
>> country with 230 rivers running through it like veins. They irrigate the
>> land and give it its incredible fertility – but now the rivers are
>> becoming
>> supercharged. More water is coming down from the melting Himalayan
>> glaciers,
>> and more salt water is pushing up from the rising oceans. These two forces
>> meet here in the heart of Bangladesh and make the rivers churn up –
>> eroding
>> the river banks with amazing speed. The water is getting wider, leaving
>> the
>> people to survive on ever-more narrow strips of land.
>> Nurjahan took me up to a crumbling river edge, where tree roots jutted out
>> naked. "My house was here," she said. "It fell into the water. So now my
>> house is here –" she motioned to a small clay hut behind us – "but now we
>> realise this is going to fall in too. The river gets wider day by day."
>> But even this, Nurjahan said, is not the worst problem. The annual floods
>> have become far more extreme, too. "Until about 10 years ago, the floods
>> came every year and the water would stay for 15 days, and it helped to wet
>> the land. Now the water stays for four months. Four months! It is too
>> long.
>> That doesn't wet the fields, it destroys them. We cannot plan for
>> anything."
>> When the floods came last year, Nurjahan had no choice but to stay here.
>> She
>> lived with her children waist-deep in the cold brown water – for four
>> months. "It was really hard to cook, or go to the toilet. We all got
>> dysentery. It was miserable." Then she seemed to chastise herself. "But we
>> survived! We are tough, don't you think?"
>> We sat by the river-bank, our feet dangling down towards the river. I
>> asked
>> if she agrees with Rezwan that her only option soon will be to move on to
>> a
>> boat. He is launching the first models this summer: floating homes with
>> trays of earth where families can grow food. "Yes," she said, "We will be
>> boat-people. "
>> I clambered back on to one of the 42 school-boats in this area. Young
>> children were in the front chanting the alphabet, and teenagers at the
>> back
>> were browsing through the books. I asked a 16-year-old boy called Mohammed
>> Palosh Ali what he was reading about, and he said, "Global warming." I
>> felt
>> a small jolt. He was the first person to spontaneously raise global
>> warming
>> with me. Can you tell me what that is? "The climate is being changed by
>> carbon dioxide," he said. "This is a gas that traps heat. So if there is
>> more of it, then the ice in the north of the world melts and our seas rise
>> here."
>> I asked if he had seen this warming in his own life. "Of course! The
>> floods
>> in 1998 and 2002 were worse than anything in my grandfather' s life. We
>> couldn't get any drinking water, so the dirty water I drank made me very
>> sick. The shit from the toilet pits had risen up and was floating in the
>> water, but we still had to drink it. We put tablets in it but it was still
>> disgusting. What else could we do?"
>> Mohammed, do you know who is responsible for this global warming? He
>> shakes
>> his head. That answer lies a few pages further into the book. Soon he, and
>> everybody else on this boat, will know it is me – and you.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Getty Images
>> Locals work a new pump in Sirajganj, installed after flooding hit water
>> supplies
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 5. The warming jihad
>> What happens to a country's mind as it drowns? Professor Philip Jenkins of
>> Pennsylvania State University believes he can glimpse the answer: "The
>> connection between climate change and religious violence is not tenuous,"
>> he
>> says. "In fact, there's a historical indicator of how it could unfold: the
>> Little Ice Age."
>> Between the ninth and 13th centuries, the northern hemisphere went through
>> a
>> natural phase of global warming. The harvests lasted longer – so there
>> were
>> more crops, and more leisure. Universities and the arts began to flower.
>> But
>> then in the late 13th century, the Little Ice Age struck. Crop production
>> fell, and pack ice formed in the oceans, wrecking trade routes. People
>> began
>> to starve.
>> "In this climate of death and horror, people cast about for scapegoats,
>> even
>> before the Black Death struck," he says. Tolerance withered with the
>> climate
>> shocks: the Church declared witchcraft a heresy; the Jews began to be
>> expelled from Britain. There was, he says, "a very close correlation
>> between
>> the cooling and a region-wide heightening of violent intolerance. "
>> This time, there will be no need for imaginary scapegoats. The people
>> responsible are on every TV screen, revving up their engines. Will
>> jihadism
>> swell with the rising seas? Bangladesh's religion seems to be low-key and
>> local. In the countryside, Muslims – who make up 95 per cent of the nation
>> –
>> still worship Hindu saints and mix in a few Buddhist ideas, too. In the
>> Arab
>> world, people bring up God in almost every sentence. In Bangladesh, nobody
>> does.
>> But then, as we returned to Dhaka, I was having a casual conversation with
>> Shambrat. He had been driving all night – at his insistence – and by this
>> point he was wired after chewing fistfuls of pan, and singing along at the
>> top of his voice to the Eighties power ballads. I mentioned Osama bin
>> Laden
>> in passing, and he said, "Bin Laden – great man! He fight for Islam!"
>> Then,
>> without looking at me, he went back to singing: "It must have been love,
>> but
>> it's over now...."
>> I wondered how many Bangladeshis felt this way. The Chandni Chowk Bazaar –
>> one of the city's main markets – was overcast the afternoon I decided to
>> canvass opinions on Bin Laden. I approached a 24-year-old flower-seller
>> called Mohammed Ashid, and as I inhaled the rich sweet scent of roses, he
>> said: "I like him because he is a Muslim and I am a Muslim." Would you
>> like
>> Bin Laden to be in charge of Bangladesh? "Yes, of course," he said. And
>> what
>> would President Bin Laden do? "I have no idea," he shrugged. What would
>> you
>> want him to do? He furrowed his brow. "If Osama came to power he would
>> make
>> women cover up. Women are too free here." But what if women don't want to
>> cover up? "They are Muslims. It's not up to them."
>> A very smartly dressed man called Shadul Ahmed was strolling down the
>> street
>> to his office, where he is in charge of advertising. "I like him," he
>> said.
>> "Bin Laden works for the Muslims." He conceded 9/11 "was bad because many
>> innocents died," but added: "Osama didn't do it. The Americans did it.
>> They
>> are guilty."
>> As dozens of people paused from their shopping to talk, a pattern emerged:
>> the men tend to like him, and the women don't. "I hate Bin Laden," one
>> smartly dressed woman said, declining to give her name. "He is a fanatic.
>> Bangladeshis do not like this." As the praise for Bin Laden was offered, I
>> saw a boy go past on a rickshaw, stroking a girl's uncovered hair gently,
>> sensuously. This is not the Arab world.
>> The only unpleasant moment came when I approached three women selling
>> cigarettes by the side of the road. They were in their early thirties,
>> wearing white hijabs and puffing away. Akli Mouna said, "I like him. He is
>> a
>> faithful Muslim." She said "it would be very nice" if he was president of
>> Bangladesh. Really? Would you be happy if you were forced to wear a burqa,
>> and only rarely allowed out of your house? She jabbed a finger at my
>> chest.
>> "Yes! It would be fine if Osama was president and told us to wear the
>> burqa." But Akli – you aren't wearing a burqa now. "It's good to wear the
>> burqa!" she yelled. Her teeth, I saw, were brown and rotting. "We are only
>> here because we are poor! We should be kept in the house!"
>> I wanted to track down some Bangladeshi jihadis for myself, so I called
>> the
>> journalist Abu Sufian. He is a news reporter for BanglaVision, one of the
>> main news channels, who made his name penetrating the thickets of the
>> Islamist underground. He told me to meet him at the top of the
>> BanglaVision
>> skyscraper. As the city shrieked below us, he explained: "In the late
>> 1980s,
>> a group of mujahideen [holy warriors] who had been fighting the Soviets in
>> Afghanistan came back to launch an Islamic revolution here in Bangladesh.
>> They tried to mount an armed revolt in the north and kill the former Prime
>> Minister. But it didn't come to much."
>> Islamic fundamentalism is hobbled in Bangladesh, because it is still
>> associated for most people with Paki-stan – the country Bangladesh fought
>> a
>> bloody war of independence to escape from.
>> But Sufian says a new generation of Islamists is emerging with no memory
>> of
>> that war. "For example, I met a 21-year-old who had fought in Kashmir,
>> whose
>> father was a rickshaw driver. He said it was his holy duty to establish an
>> Islamic state here through violence. Most were teenagers. All the jihadis
>> I
>> met hated democracy. They said it was the rule of man. According to them,
>> only the rule of God is acceptable."
>> He said it would be almost impossible to track them down – they are in
>> prison or hiding – but my best bet was to head for the Al-Amin Jami mosque
>> in the north-west of Dhaka. "They are fundamentalist Wahhabis, and very
>> dangerous," he said. Yet when I arrived, just before 6pm prayers, it was a
>> bright building in one of the nicer parts of town. Men in white caps and
>> white robes were streaming in. An ice-cream stall sat outside. I
>> approached
>> a fiftysomething man in flowing robes and designer shoes. He glared at me.
>> I
>> explained I was a journalist, and ask if it would it be possible to look
>> inside the mosque? "No. Under no circumstances. At all."
>> OK. I asked a few polite questions about Islam, and then asked what he
>> thought of Osama bin Laden. "Osama bin Laden?" he said. Yes. He scowled.
>> "I
>> have never heard of him." Never? "Never." I turned to the man standing,
>> expectantly, next to him. "He has not heard of Osama bin Laden, either,"
>> he
>> said. What about September 11 – you know, when the towers in New York
>> fell?
>> "I have never heard of this event, either." Some teenage boys were about
>> to
>> go in, so I approached them. Behind my back, I can sense the Gucci-man
>> making gestures. "Uh... sorry... I don't think anything about Bin Laden,"
>> one of them said, awkwardly.
>> I lingered as prayers took place inside, until a flow of men poured out so
>> thick and fast that they couldn't be instructed not to speak. "Yes, we
>> would
>> like Osama to run Bangladesh, he is a good man," the first person told me.
>> There were nods. "He fights for Islam!" shouted another.
>> The crowd says this mosque – like most fundamentalist mosques on earth –
>> is
>> funded by Saudi Arabia, with the money you and I pay at the petrol pump.
>> As
>> I looked up at its green minaret jutting into the sky, it occurs to me
>> that
>> our oil purchases are simultaneously drowning Bangladesh, and paying for
>> the
>> victims to be fundamentalised.
>> After half-an-hour of watching this conversation and fuming, the initially
>> recalcitrant man strode forward. "Why do you want to know about Bin Laden?
>> We are Muslims. You are Christian. We all believe in the same God!" he
>> announced.
>> Actually, I said, I am not a Christian. There was a hushed pause. "You
>> are... a Jew?" he said. The crowd looked horrified; but then the man
>> forced
>> a rictus smile and announced: "We all believe in one God! We are all
>> children of Abraham! We are cousins!" No, I said. I am an atheist.
>> Everyone
>> looked genuinely puzzled; they do not have a bromide for this occasion.
>> "Well... then..." he paused, scrambling for a statement... "You must
>> convert
>> to Islam! Read the Koran! It is beautiful!" Ah – so can I come into the
>> mosque after all? "No. Never."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> AFP/Getty Images
>> Children step on board a school boat run by the Bangladeshi charity
>> Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha
>>
>>
>> 6. The obituarist?
>> In a small café in Dhaka, a cool breeze was blowing in through the window
>> along with the endless traffic-screams. The 32-year-old novelist Tahmima
>> Anam was inhaling the aroma of coffee and close to despair.
>> She made her name by writing a tender novel – A Golden Age – about the
>> birth
>> of her country, Bangladesh. When the British finally withdrew from this
>> subcontinent in 1948, the land they left behind was partitioned. Two
>> chunks
>> were carved out of India and declared to be a Muslim republic – East
>> Pakistan and West Pakistan. But apart from their religion, they had very
>> little in common. The gentle people of East Pakistan chafed under the
>> dictatorial fundamentalism imposed from distant Islamabad. When they were
>> ordered to start speaking Urdu, it was enough. Her novel tells how in
>> 1971,
>> they decided to declare independence and become Bangladesh. The Pakistanis
>> fought back with staggering violence, but in the end Bangladesh was freed.
>> Now Anam is realising that unless we change, fast, this fight will have
>> been
>> for the freedom of a drowning land – and her next novel may have to be its
>> obituary.
>> Anam came to Bangladesh late. Her Dhaka-born parents travelled the world,
>> so
>> she grew up in a slew of international schools, but she always dreamed of
>> coming home. Her passion for this land, this place, this delta, aches
>> through her work. About one of her characters, she wrote: "He had a love
>> for
>> all things Bengali: the swimming mud of the delta; the translucent, bony
>> river fish; the shocking green palette of the paddy and the open, aching
>> blue of the sky over flat land."
>> "You can see what has started to happen," she says. The vision of the
>> country drowning is becoming more real every day. Where could all these
>> 150
>> million people go? India is already building a border fence to keep them
>> out; I can't imagine the country's other neighbour – Burma – will offer
>> much
>> refuge. "We are the first to be affected, not the last," Anam says.
>> "Everyone should take a good look at Bangladesh. This story will become
>> your
>> story. We are your future."
>> It is, she says, our responsibility to stop this slow-mo drowning – and
>> there is still time to save most of the country. "What could any
>> Bangladeshi
>> government do? We have virtually no carbon emissions to cut." They
>> currently
>> stand at 0.3 per cent of the world's – less than the island of Manhattan.
>> "It's up to you."
>> Anam is defiantly optimistic that this change can happen if enough of us
>> work for it – but, like every scientist I spoke to, she knows that dealing
>> with it simply by adaptation by Bangladeshis is impossible. The country
>> has
>> a military-approved dictatorship incapable of taking long-term decisions,
>> and Dutch-style dams won't work anyway. "Any large-scale construction is
>> very hard in this country, because it's all made of shifting silt. There's
>> nothing to build on."
>> So if we carry on as we are, Bangladesh will enter its endgame. "All the
>> people who strain at this country's seams will drown with it," Anam says,
>> "or be blown away to distant shores – casualties and refugees by the
>> millions." The headstone would read, Bangladesh, 1971-2071: born in blood,
>> died in water.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Getty Images
>> Hell on wheels: Dhaka in flood last summer
>>
>>
>> --
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