Say It With Numbers: #3-2008

From ‘The Ends of the Earth’: A journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy (From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia) by Richard Kaplan

Sub-Saharan Africa

Only 14 of 46 sub-Saharan African states rate higher in human development than India and Pakistan. And of these 14 states, 5 are islands office the African coast, in 4 cases with small populations. According to the UN, of the 15 countries with the worlds lowest literacy rates, 12 are in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 12 countries with the lowest per capita GDP all 12 are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest urban growth rate of any region on the planet: 5.9% from 1980-1990

According to the UN Human Development Report of 1994 which rated 173 countries on the basis of literacy, schooling, population growth, per capita GDP and life expectancy, 22 of the bottom 24 countries are in sub-Saharan Africa

Of the 15 million people worldwide whose blood is HIV-positive, 10 million are in Africa

Liberia

About 1% of Liberia’s population of 2.5 million has been brutally murdered – not by armies, but mainly by illiterate thugs with uniforms, guns and machetes

Liberia is one of the last West African countries with significant rain forests………they cover an estimated 44% of the total land area

In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, as the Dutch, the British and others became involved in the slave trade, it mushroomed. According to scholarly sources some 10 to 12 million African slaves arrived in the Americas

Nile: the worlds longest river, 4266 miles long

95% of Egypt’s people live on less than 5% of its land along a river corridor over 600 miles long but never more than 10 miles wide

Turkey

In 1980, 43.9% of Turks lived in cities. In 1990n it was 59%. By the turn of the century the figure would be 67% and climbing. Istanbul, the largest city in Europe, with a population of 10 million in 1993 was growing at the astonishing rate of 4.5% a year

At least 1 out of 6 people in the Turkish Republic is a Kurd

Christians, including Armenians number 2/10ths of 1% of the Turkish population……….The Turks with assistance from Kurdish merceneries annihilated almost all the Armenians during World War I before Ataturk’s takeover, leaving only small communities in a few cities

The Kurds have inhabited the Zagros and Taurus ranges since the 2^nd millennium BCE, 2000 years before the Arabs entered northern Mesopotamia and 3000 years before the Turks entered Anatolia

They are essentially a mountain people, deriving their collective personality from life on the 10000 foot massifs of Kurdistan

Kurdish is an Indo-European tongue rather than a Turkic one

Iran

At the time of the Islamic revolution, 45% of all Iranians lived in cities, by 1994, 57% of the population was urban. When the Shah was toppled, 5 million people lived in Tehran. A decade and half later there were 10 million. Since the revolution, Iran’s population increased from 35 million to 60 million

Whereas in 1977 on the eve of the revolution, the Iranian upper class accounted for 57% of total wealth in the country, in 1992 it still accounted for 45%

Uzbekistan

Has almost 45% of the entire population of former Soviet-Central Asia.

Its population is 23 million compared with under 4 million in Turkmenistan, under 6 million in Tajikstan, under 5 million in Kyrgyzstan and about 16.5 million in Kazakhstan

There are 6 million ethnic Uzbeks who live outside the borders of Uzbekistan. Uzbeks form 24% of the population in Tajikstan, 13% in Turkmenistan and 12.9% of Kyrgyzstan

Uzbeks account for 70% of the population of Uzbekistan itself

The Aral Sea

Is probably the worlds greatest single environmental disaster

once the earths 4^th largest inland lake in the last 30 years has shrunk to half its original size and a third of its former volume, in order to provide water for the Soviet Unions cotton monoculture.

In 1989 the sea was 3 times more saline than in 1961: few fish survive anymore in its waters

In the Aral Sea region…1 out of 10 children born does not live to its 1^st birthday

37% of Kazakhstan’s population is composed of ethnic Russians who live mainly in the North adjacent to Russia

Though Turkic and other minorities account for roughly 6% of China’s population they occupy over half of China’s land area

Only 13% of all Indians have access to public sewage systems and garbage collection

Thailand

Has been an identifiable nation since the 13^th century after the Siamese completed their migration from southern China into Northern Thailand where they established a kingdom. They henceforth referred to themselves as ‘Thais’ or free people

Has never been colonized unlike the rest of IndoChina or sub-Saharan Africa. Nor do Thais have a minority problem to the degree that the Turks have with the Kurds

Thais write in a script that is 700 years old

Over 90% of Thais practice Theravada (also called Hinayana or ‘Lesser’) Buddhism

Literacy now stands at 93%

In 1900, 6% of Thailand’s population lived in Bangkok, now 17% do

Since the economic boom began in the 1960s, Thailand has lost 45% of its old growth forests to illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture. The Thai economic miracle has been largely achieved by devouring Thailand’s environmental base

About 1% of Thai women in their teens and twenties – about 200,000 are prostitutes

Cambodia

Under the communist regime of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, between 1 and 1.5 million Cambodians out of a population of 8 million were shot, bludgeoned, starved or worked to death or died of disease in the most intense and awful attempt at social transformation history has ever recorded.

Cambodia has lost a third of its forest cover since1969. Forests still cover 49% of the country. 3 to 4% of Cambodia’s old growth forests were being lost to illegal hardwood logging

Angkor Wat is the single largest religious building in the world, built by the Khmer King Suriyavarman II between 1113 and 1150 ACE. The compound comprising Angkor Wat is 960 metres – or over 10 football fields – long and 800 metres wide…….it was completed in only 37 years

30% of the earths inhabitants have no access to any health care whatsoever; 50% have no toilet to use

The industrialized countries which accounted for 40% of the worlds population after World War II now account for only 20% though they earn 85% of the worlds income. In the coming decades the industrialized world is expected to make up only 12 to 15% of the planetary population as 90 to 95% of all births take place in the poorest countries

The rich nations of the industrialized world consume 70% of the planets energy, 75 of its metals and 85% of its wood