Dams, guns and refugees: irresponsible development and environmental conflicts displace rural people, especially when the tensions lead to violence.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, Bengalis on the banks and the waters of the Karnaphuli River in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) saw something out of the ordinary. A strange small watercraft was being paddled up the river. It contained three Europeans wearing tropical helmets; one man in the back seat and two boys sharing the front seat.

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These were not colonial Britishers who had "stayed on" after independence. Rather, they were partly Jewish Ostdeutsche who were displaced on the German-Russian front of World War II. I was one of the boys in the front seat. The craft was a German-produced Klepperboot, a collapsible kayak, with a wood frame and rubber skin.

What happened to my family is an instance of the massive population displacements of the 1940s, especially in Europe, but also in South Asia, FTY YEARS AGO, Bengalis on the banks and the waters of the Karnaphuli River in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) saw something out of the ordinary. A strange small watercraft was being pad...

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