Border rustling

In May last year, newspapers in Bangladesh reported that a teenager had been killed along the country's northwestern border with India. Sixteen-year-old Hasibul Islam was shot dead at five in the morning as he was walking along the Kalabari border, in Rajshahi District. A soldier from the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) was said to have called to him. News of the boy's death resulted in no uproar from civil society, perhaps because such incidents have become regular occurrences along the 2500-mile Bangladesh-India frontier. According to the Dhaka-based rights watchdog Odhikar, between 2000 and 2007, more than 700 Bangladeshis alone have been killed along the frontier, and many more have been wounded. (No organisation appears to be collecting similar statistics on the Indian side.) Shortly after receiving news of Hasibul's death, this writer travelled to the far northern border village, a bumpy 10-hour bus ride from Dhaka. The intention was to understand how he was killed, and what his short life had been like living alongside what is fast becoming one of the most volatile border areas in the world today.

The bus dropped me off in Burimari, the last town before the fluttering flags of Bangladesh and India demarcate the margins of their respective countries. The border is now 60 years old, established with the creation of Pakistan and India, and from the outset contact between people on either side became complicated. Tension eased somewhat with the founding of Bangladesh in 1971, but not for long. The border with India here is also the gateway to neighbouring Nepal and Bhutan. A few of my fellow passengers walked nervously towards the checkpost, passports and visas in hand. They were possibly honeymooners going to Nepal, or people visiting family members in north Bengal. In the opposite direction, noisy trucks carrying limestone from Bhutan trundled across the raised bamboo barrier into Bangladesh. Shanties of stone-import companies lined both sides of the road; behind, under the burning sun, women and children broke boulders into small pieces using only hammers. The stones are destined for Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh, fulfilling the insatiable appetite for raw material in the country-wide construction boom that is taking place.