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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30500 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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Why is no one talking about the potential refugee tsunami from Bangladesh?

The government has collapsed and is now in the hands of student protesters - generally these types of arrangements are unstable and it’s quite possible there could be a civil war.

In this circumstance we haven’t yet seen a country this large in modern times collapse into Civil War and Bangladesh has a radical Islamic party waiting in the wings, Herazat-E-Islam. During the Syrian Civil War approximately 30% of the population left…. if that happened to Bangladesh then you could see 50 million people on the move…

Why is there no discussion of this at all? Shouldn’t it be a top priority for our leaders?

EDIT:

Mottizens have allayed my concerns… thank you! 😊

I don't know anything about a refugee tsunami, but I have been following the events there somewhat closely and have observed some unusual events. One in particular sticks in my mind even now. After the PM fled the country, their official residence was looted. That's not that strange. Was was strange was that amongst the items looted were a fair amount of livestock. The PM of Bangladesh was keeping significant populations of live animals on the grounds of the residence. There were goats, ducks, rabbits, fish, and chickens. Is this usual? I can't think of ever hearing about another head of state keeping livestock in their state residence, though I'm sure many probably maintain agricultural land elsewhere in their nations.

https://x.com/_ayeshasays/status/1820451815189856413

Bangladesh will end-up with a nominally democratic govt. controlled by the army.

Sheikh Hasina did not leave because the protests went too far. She left because she wouldn't commit proper genocide (no matter what many many like to believe) and she lost the army's support. Now that the army is 'stabilizing the situation', they are free to wield heavier weapons than Hasina ever could.

Bangladesh will have a Tsunami of Hindu refugees moving into India. India will likely welcome them. But that's about it.

As horrible as the idol-destroying protesters are, I don't think they're going to devolve into ISIS. No Assad-like chemical warfare, no secondary players like Hezbollah or Kurds, and no ISIS.

The government has collapsed and is now in the hands of student protesters - generally these types of arrangements are unstable and it’s quite possible there could be a civil war.

I think this is a bit over-excited, isn't it? The unpopular PM has already left, no one is going to fight on her side. The key policy demand of the protesters (that government jobs be allocated based on merit rather than on identity-based quotas) has been met. There's an interim government headed by a respected elder statesman that is going to hold new elections.

It's certainly been an eventful period in Bangladeshi politics but I think it's highly unlikely that a civil war erupts.

It's the 'new elections' part that may have a cascading effect resulting in civil war in the end, with Islamist groups active in the political field, for example.

How so? Jamaat e-Islami are a small player and the BNP is more of a lip-service-to-Islam party than an actual Islamist party.

Edit: Also I think Jamaat is currently banned?

All this may very well be true for now.

Can’t see the BNP letting the hardline Islamists come to power, and neither Yunus nor the army want that to happen either. It’s not like the Islamic Revolution where the middle class socialist students were highly naive about the Islamists, the entire Bangladeshi establishment (which, let us not forget, a lot of the ‘protest leaders’ were always part of) is against them.

Why is there no discussion of this at all? Shouldn’t it be a top priority for our leaders?

What actions should other countries be taking to stabilize the situation?

And why would your first solution to "there's a refugee problem" be "stabilize that entire country"?

My apologies, I meant to refer to the refugee situation. Does that require fixing Bangladesh?

If there is a wave of refugees from Bangladesh, the only place they can go is India, their other neighbor being in the midst of its own civil war. The wealthy and powerful will make their way to the West if they can, but that has always been the case and the numbers are small by comparison. So I'd say that Indian leaders ought to watch events in Dhaka closely, but that the rest of us shouldn't expect our streets to be overrun with fuchka stands and clothing wholesalers anytime soon.

Bangladesh is already the number 1 source of migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Europe and the 5th overall (most asylum seekers just book a flight iirc). It may be a small number in terms of the total number of Bangladeshi refugees worldwide but it’s still a significant contributor to Europe’s migrant population.

I know Bangladesh is poor but I had to check this because I’ve met plenty of Bangladeshis that don’t fit the description ‘wealthy and powerful’.

Has anyone blamed it on climate change yet? There was a huge push for a while to talk about how climate change would cause a huge, worldwide refugee crisis. Bangladesh was the poster child, with maps claiming that some huge proportion of the country was going to be submersed in water. By those maps and estimates, it was by far the biggest outlier that allowed for some of the splashy-sounding numbers that were trumpeted.

I have no idea what's going on there, but I'm guessing that the country isn't submersed in water, is it?

I don't know what the current coastline situation is, but: more volatile weather > lower crop/fishing yields > higher food prices > more civil unrest. So climate change might not be off.

Any actual evidence for any of those intermediaries? Or even just actual "people" (as in "prominent, narrative-shaping type folks in the chattering class") actually trying to argue for such a casual pathway in this case (whether or not they bring any actual evidence for the proposed intermediaries)?

Like sure, I can just imagine a billion possible causal pathways that are at least as plausible a priori, but bare a priori plausibility for something to be the case is about the most thin gruel out there.

Loads of people blamed the Arab Spring (and Syria especially) on climate change. There was a multi-year drought and water shortage in Syria immediately beforehand, food prices rose a lot... Just search up Arab Spring Climate Change and it will come up.

Oh, I'm totally aware that people tried to do that. Some were more hedged than others. Some minor academic spats happened. People mostly tried various ways to be like, "Well, we're not gonna, like, say that climate change caused caused anything (because we can't accomplish that), so we'll, like, call it a 'threat multiplier' or 'intermediate variable'."

But I guess none of that really matters, since one can so clearly see both the impact of climate change and the obvious moment of sparking the Syrian Civil War in this chart.

If you really want to rehash what is/isn't supportable for Syria/Arab Spring, we can. But in this thread, I was asking about Bangladesh. Do you have some data on Bangladesh that indicates a causal and/or primary role for climate change?

I don't know anything about Bangladesh, for some reason I thought you were talking about the general case, I missed the 'this case'.

Which step seems dubious? I guess that attacking "climate changes causes more volatile weather" is possible but remaining are quite blatantly obvious to me.

Obvious? As in, like, you have data sticking out in your face about the crop/fishing yields and food prices in Bangladesh leading up to the recent civil unrest? Where did you see this data? Can you point me to it?

I don't have a Twitter account, so I may not be getting a proper snapshot of his recent activity; I think they only give us a weird smattering of posts from different years. Anything specific to Bangladesh?

Is creating instability abroad and then inviting everyone in not an intentional goal of our leaders?

No.

At best, it’s a handy side effect.

In this circumstance we haven’t yet seen a country this large in modern times collapse into Civil War and Bangladesh has a radical Islamic party waiting in the wings, Herazat-E-Islam.

Bangladesh collapsed into civil war in 1971 and millions of refugees did flee, but virtually all of them went to India. That's likely what will happen again.

There has been a lot of change in migrant flows since 1971…

Yes, but the vast majority of migrants still go to the countries closest to them. Most Venezuelan migrants went to Colombia, Brazil and other Latin American countries, for instance.

Because it’s India’s problem.

This. We've already dealt with waves of Bangladeshi immigration and refugees during times of turmoil (looks at my own dad).

However, I don't think it'll be that bad. Last time this happened was in the context of an ongoing genocide, while there's been reports of violence against Hindus, there aren't that many left in the country. Our current government will certainly do all it can to stop too many people hopping the border, but so far I haven't heard reports of it becoming a serious problem.

Because they have no easy way to the west.

Perhaps they could come via a plane on a tourist visa. Do we have any data on how much that happens?

Doesn't the average Bangladeshi make like $2/day? I think they're pretty much stuck walking places, or maybe using an established bus/train route.

With all the money their sweatshop wages pay? DHS expected about 1500 overstays in the most recent report(2022).

You might need to update your Bangladesh model. GDP/capita has roughly quadrupled in the last 15 years. It's now over $10,000 per person per year. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=BD

A plane ticket is not exactly out of reach for the average Bangladeshi with enough planning. Even much poorer countries manage to send lots of migrants. How do you think all those Somalians got to the U.S. anyway?

Isn't that saying $2500 per capita? A lot higher than it used to be, but still very much a 3rd world country.

$10,000 per capita. Sure, third world, but their economy has grown by leaps and bounds the last 20 years.

This is no longer Haiti-level poverty.

$2500. not $10,000. I don't know where you're getting $10,000 from.

D'oh! Was looking at PPP. Which isn't particularly relevant here since international plane tickets aren't going to have a PPP adjustment. My mistake.

While Bangladeshi GDP has still grown by amazing amounts (the most in the world?), the number of people who could afford a $2000 plane ticket is fewer than I assumed.

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