Chittagong Division

Chittagong Division functions as Bangladesh's gateway to the world—its port handles 92% of the country's seaborne trade, making it the chokepoint through which $39 billion in annual garment exports must pass. The geography is specific: a natural harbor where hills meet the Bay of Bengal created port conditions that the Mughals, British, and Pakistanis each exploited. The division's hinterland stretches from Cox's Bazar (the world's longest natural beach, 120 kilometers) to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where indigenous Jumma peoples maintain identities distinct from Bengali-majority Bangladesh. This ethnic complexity produced the 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord, ending a 25-year insurgency but leaving tensions that periodically resurface. Ship-breaking at Sitakunda employs tens of thousands dismantling vessels that global shipping considers obsolete—dangerous work that provides steel for construction and income for communities with few alternatives. The port city itself is Bangladesh's second-largest, with 5 million people and growing. The August 2024 political transition hit Chittagong's export-processing zones, with factory closures affecting workers dependent on continuous operation. The Trump administration's 37% tariffs announced April 2025 specifically threaten the garment factories clustered here, potentially redirecting orders to Vietnam or India. Cox's Bazar also houses nearly a million Rohingya refugees, creating humanitarian and political pressures that Bangladesh's interim government must manage. By 2026, Chittagong's future depends on whether its port infrastructure expands fast enough to maintain competitiveness, and whether tariff walls force the diversification that dependency on American markets has long delayed.