South Asia
South Asia consists of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.
To understand the current relation Bangladesh has with it’s neighbor India and it’s former governing country, Pakistan, I had to understand what happened leading up to and during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence. It helped for me to read BBC’s Bangladesh Timeline.
In short, because of the geographical distance and political/cultural differences East Pakistan decided to break away from West Pakistan. India supported East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and gave them troops and other resources to help fight for their independence. West Pakistan (now Pakistan) fought against the succession, killing an estimated 300,000 to 3 million civilian Bengalis (BBC, Bangladesh War, 2007). The West Pakistani soldiers raped hundreds of thousands of women, and ruined villages.
Crime and corruption, human rights issues, country development, natural disasters, environmental concerns like pollution, and ethnic or religious related issues dominate the news in South Asia. The Taliban makes an appearance in a lot of news, especially in the Afghanistan and Pakistan area.
I skimmed through headlines on different news websites “South Asia” tab and read about the countries backgrounds and current state of affairs. There are big similarities and differences that characterize their news.
A lot of these nations are considered “developing countries”. Bangladesh and Pakistan are part of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, also known as the Develoing-8 and were named part of the “Next Eleven” by two Goldman Sachs economists (Wilson, Stupnytska, 2007).
A lot of these countries, like India, also face the same issue Bangladesh has of over-population. South Asia’s specific differences in religion, ethnicity, and language are very apparent when there is conflict in the news.
Reporting Bangladesh 