On Jan. 5 they held an election in Bangladesh, and nobody came. Well, practically nobody: Turnout was down from 70 percent in the last election to only 20 percent. Some of the absentees stayed away on principle, but others were just frightened away by the violence: more than a hundred polling stations set on fire, and 200 dead in political violence in the last two months.
The past is back with a vengeance in Bangladesh.
It wasn't actually former U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger who predicted that an independent Bangladesh would be "an international basket case." It was American diplomat Ural Alexis Johnson, at a meeting in December, 1971, only days before Pakistani forces surrendered and Bangladesh won its independence.