Tandoori Chicken, Obeid and South Asian politics

I distinctly remember an image where a fleet of four wheel drives whizzed by a dirt road, adjacent to a duck filled pond where our crew were filming some shipbreakers bathing.

Our fixer informed us that the motorcade was transporting the Mayor of the port city, Chittagong, who was accompanied by a general and a local plutocrat. Joint owners of the lucrative shipyard, they were engaged in crisis control after a worker was critically injured. The nexus of the military, politics and business was an illustration of the workings of power.

This shady but ubiquitous overlap is best recounted by former navy administrator Dr Ayeesha Siddiqui's 2007 book, Military Inc, which tackles the secretive ten billion dollar empire of Pakistan's military leaders, ranging from cement to cornflakes.

This has particular significance given Pakistan and its secret service, ISI, is widely regarded to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world through its funding of religious extremists.

While no such account exists for Bangladesh, there are likely to be great similarities, given the defence forces of both countries have similar characteristics.

Pakistanand Bangladesh are closely intertwined by a shared religion, history and an identity partially built in opposition towards their mighty neighbour India. While one's organising principle is religion and the other language, both represent an important front in the struggle for secular humanism amid religious extremism. Representing 350 million people and the second and third most populous Muslim countries respectively, Australia's interest in both has been lukewarm at best, overshadowed by its wooing of rising economic behemoth India.

Australiais amongst the region's highest aid donors, spending just under 100 million in both countries, representing the second highest donor as a representative of GDP. With the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh representing the fastest growing region supplying migrants to our country, as measured by the last Census, the historical neglect may require review.