[wvns] India Rings Bangladesh with Barbed Wire
India quietly ringing Bangladesh with 2,050 miles of barbed-wire,
cutting off former neighbours
By-Tim Sullivan
Associated Press
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070625-1052-bangladesh-fencedin.=
html
SUJATPUR, Bangladesh - Everyone knew it was out there somewhere, an
invisible line that cut through a cow pasture and, at least in theory,
divided one nation from another. But no one saw it as a border. It was
just a lumpy field of grass, uneven from the hooves of generations of
cattle, and villagers crossed back and forth without even thinking
about it. Error! Bookmark not defined. Today, no one can ignore the
line. In a construction project that will eventually reach across
2,050 miles, hundreds of rivers and long stretches of forests and
fields, India has been quietly sealing itself off from Bangladesh, its
much poorer neighbor. Sections totaling about 1,550 miles have been
built the past seven years.
In Sujatpur, a poor farming village, the frontier is now defined by
two rows of 10-foot-high barbed wire barriers, the posts studded with
ugly spikes the size of a toddler's fingers. A smaller fence, and
miles of barbed wire coils, fill the space in between. The expanse of
steel, set into concrete, spills off toward the horizon in both
directions. "Before, it was like we were one country," said Mohammed
Iqbal, a Bangladeshi farmer walking near the border on a windy
afternoon. "I used to go over there just to pass the time."
As he spoke, a cow wandered past, brass bells jangling around its
neck. "But now that's over," he said. In the United States, the
decision to fence 700 miles of the Mexican border triggered months of
political debate ranging across issues from immigration reform to the
environmental impact. When Israel announced it would build a 425-mile
barrier around the West Bank, an international outcry erupted. But
there has been barely a ripple over India's far larger project,
launched in earnest in 2000 amid growing fears in New Delhi about
illegal immigration and cross-border terrorism. The Bangladesh
government made a few complaints the fence felt like an insult, as
if their country was a plague that needed to be quarantined but soon
gave up. India has become enamored with fences in recent years.
First it started closing off much of its border with Pakistan, trying
to stop incursions by Muslim extremists. Then it turned to its other
Muslim neighbor, Bangladesh, and has been building the fence
intermittently ever since. There's no clear completion date for the
$1.2 billion project, which when finished will nearly encircle
Bangladesh =96 leaving open only its seacoast and its border of about
200 miles with Myanmar. India believes some Indian militant groups are
based in Bangladesh, a charge the Bangladeshi government denies.
But the larger fear in New Delhi is that illegal immigrants will flood
out of Bangladesh, one of the world's most crowded countries. Its 150
million people, about half the U.S. population, jam an area the size
of Wisconsin, and the low-lying land is prone to devastating floods
and typhoons. Scientists also warn that rising sea levels from global
warming could force millions of Bangladeshis from their homes. India
already has millions of its own citizens living in desperate poverty,
despite an economy growing at more than 8 percent annually. Its
population is approaching 1.2 billion and what little is left of its
once-vast wilderness is being chewed up rapidly.
It is nearly impossible to judge how many residents of India are
actually Bangladeshi. Particularly among the poor, many people have no
identification showing their nationality, and residents of the
frontier region tend to be similar in language and ethnicity. But some
experts estimate as many as 20 million Bangladeshis are in India
illegally, most crammed into large cities or in shantytowns just over
the border.
"You've got an increasing population (in Bangladesh) with a shrinking
land mass," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for
Conflict Management who worries the Indian government is not building
the fence quickly enough. "India has enough nightmares of its own
without adding to them." In villages like Sujatpur, India's fears have
changed everything.
It began about a year ago, when Indian soldiers and construction
workers arrived on their side of the border without warning and
announced the frontier was closed. Until then, people from this
village of thatch-roofed huts, barely 200 yards from India, crossed
the border daily to graze cattle, see friends or since this part of
India is one of the few that remains heavily forested cut firewood
and bamboo. Indians came to shop in Bangladeshi markets. For
Bangladeshis, particularly, the open border was a lifeline. India's
$730 per capita income looks pitifully low by Western standards, but
it's a decent income to many in Bangladesh, where some 60 million
people live on less than $1 a day.
In a place like Sujatpur, where most families live hand to mouth, the
cheap Indian grazing land and extra income from harvesting bamboo were
economic godsends. "Look at this place, we are poor," said Iqbal,
gesturing around him. "Selling that wood earned us money that we
needed." The fence is being built on Indian soil, though, and there's
nothing that can be done about it on this side.
"They're big and we're small and so they can do this to us," said
Sulaiman, a Bangladeshi border guard with only one name. "It's
insulting." But it's also easy to see why India is nervous. Sujatpur
may reflect a picturesque side of poverty, with its Technicolor-green
fields and gentle-spoken farmers, but a glance at the border makes a
stark statement. On the Bangladesh side are huts and roads, rice
paddies and cattle. There are families whose sons have fled to the
cities, or to India, because there is no land left to farm. It's a
rural area, but people are everywhere. On the Indian side, sealed off
behind the barbed wire, there is nothing but silent forest.
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