Anatol Lieven, an author and a former journalist who has worked in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and is now working at the New America Foundation, has also categorized both Bangladesh and Pakistan as fragile states.

According to Levin, if the majority of scientific opinion on global warming proves to be correct, the next decades will see drastic climate changes in many parts of the world, including some of the poorest and most heavily populated countries, resulting in flooding and desertification thereby triggering state collapse.

Lieven argues that in such a situation an uncontrollable number of refugees will overwhelm states like India, and possibly even the West. Given the fact that both Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim majority countries, whose people are, at the moment, unwelcome globally due to the war on terror waged by the West, and the war of attrition waged by a section of the Muslims wanting to take the Islamic world back from modernity to the " pristine" Arabian culture of the 6th century, Lieven suggests adoption of "developmental realism" as a strategy by a radical shift of spending from US military to US development and humanitarian aid.

The problem to be faced by the donors, however, is to prevent weak states from failing by receiving aid and assistance through institutions which themselves are failing. Besides, these fragile and failing institutions being corrupt, the prevention strategy through economic assistance would have to insist on good governance in the recipient countries. But then, since ideal governance in the Western sense may not be available in the weak and fragile democracies, it has been argued that the donors may wish to accord with the British Department of International Development's acceptance of "good enough" governance, instead of its radical improvement, as a condition for aid.

Such an attitude may be acceptable to the neo-cons in the West, but is likely to be resisted by the liberals there, as well as the people in the developing world. But critics, like South African governance expert Alex de Waal, view consideration of governance in the abstract as an "intellectual absurdity" because governance involves politics and "to govern is to choose."

But then, by suggesting "development realism," Anatol Lieven would argue that a return to democracy without military control would probably mean the return to power of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party or Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, "both of which were responsible for dreadful levels of corruption and misgovernment in the 1990s."

Lieven fears that aid given to Pakistan, with its landowning class who continue to have eternal collusion with the military, the industrialists, and other elites holding power, may not reach the people and could result, sooner or later, in state failure, or a part falling under the control of Islamic extremists hostile to the West. Such a scenario would not be totally absurd given the death of Nawab Bugti at the hands of the federal forces, and the simmering discontent in Baluchistan due to the province's exploitation by the Punjabi rulers, who have apparently learnt little from the experience of 1971.

But then, accepting the argument that the developing countries should not practice democracy, lest they fail as a country, gives credence to historian Bernard Lewis's thesis that democracy is a "peculiarly Western concept" used to administer public affairs which may or may not be suitable for others. This would be insulting, and would be accepting Francis Fukuyama's conditions for transition to democracy, which include culture and the desire of the people to practice democracy, and suggesting that countries like Bangladesh lack both, which is patently untrue.

In the case of Pakistan, the donors face a dilemma. To prevent state failure, failing governments have to be aided, but at the same time it has to be ensured that aid reaches the target group. Insurance of such a policy could mean use of intrusive methods that would not be liked by the governments of the recipient countries. In intrusive cases, the sanction of the UN Security Council would lend legitimacy to such ventures. Perhaps President Bush (and Tony Blair) would have done better to listen to Kofi Annan's advice, before they embarked on their Iraq misadventure, that the UN always lent a legitimacy to international interventions if done through the UNSC, rather than without its sanction.

Iraq, today, is assaulted daily from within, and even the US finds it difficult to explain it away as the evil work of Saddamists or Zarqawi's followers, and is a prime candidate for state failure despite the external ornaments of government, legislature, bureaucracy, etc. Going over the heads of Kurds and secular Sunnis, the final version of the Iraqi constitution has made Islam as the official religion of the state, prompted, perhaps, by Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's observation that:

"The religious constants and the Iraqi people's moral principles and noble social values should be the main pillars of the coming Iraqi constitution." The last British ambassador had reportedly advised his government that Iraq, despite Tony Blair's best efforts, could finally be fractured into three parts, leaving the Sunnis in central Iraq without oil resources.

To the uninitiated it may appear that a clash of ideologies is going on in Bangladesh. In a way such an impression would not be totally wrong if one considers that the opposition combine is trying to remove from power a group of plutocrats who in the last five years have presented the country with violent Islamic militancy, unbridled corruption, unaffordable price hike of essential commodities, unrest among workers in the ready-made garments sector, energy crisis with no light at the end of the tunnel (or anywhere else), deteriorating law and order situation, gross human rights abuses, and a failed foreign policy which has seen deteriorating relations with neighboring countries and a global image of Bangladesh as an incendiary Muslim country.

Though the economy registered a decent growth rate in FY06,due to the good performance of the agriculture, manufacturing, and exports sectors, and remittance by Bangladeshis abroad, the poor economic governance and low net inflow of foreign aid and foreign investment may cause non-realization of expected growth in the next fiscal year. Though per capita GDP and GNI have increased slightly, the gap widened with other South Asian countries.

In the light of the above scenario of conflict and deprivation in the least developed parts of the world, it is difficult for a Bangladeshi to understand the stubborn attitude of the government regarding the opposition parties' reform proposals. The government's shifting tactics could have been depicted as Machiavellian had they been crafted intelligently, but now they merely appear childish as the motive behind the tactics is crystal clear.

The international community, and most importantly the people of the country, are waiting anxiously for the government to join the opposition combine in serious talks, paving the way for holding a free and fair election under a truly neutral referee following transparent electoral rules. One hopes that the authorities that bear the ultimate responsibility would not disappointment the people of the country.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.