Illustration by Dave Stevenson

Bangladesh’s political history is every bit as tortured as its topography. Under British rule the territory formed part of the Indian region of Bengal, but with partition in 1947 it became East Pakistan, the junior partner in a forced marriage between two predominantly Muslim areas more than a thousand miles apart. In 1971 Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan through a war of liberation that left three million dead and created ten million refugees. Since then it has been a nominal democracy, though elections were suspended and emergency law put into effect in early 2007. Today, the country’s last two prime ministers are both in jail on charges of corruption and extortion.