Qualla: Kaptai Dam

Kaptai Dam: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Moheen Reeyad, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bangladesh has exactly one hydroelectric power station. That fact alone makes Kaptai Dam significant -- a single earth-fill embankment on the Karnaphuli River, upstream from Chittagong in the Rangamati District, generating every watt of hydroelectric power the country produces. But the dam's significance extends well beyond its turbines. When the reservoir filled in the early 1960s, it drowned the farmland and homes of the Chakma people, an indigenous community that had lived in the Chittagong Hill Tracts for generations. More than 40,000 Chakma fled to India. They were never compensated. The scarcity of land that followed is considered a root cause of armed conflict that has simmered in the Hill Tracts ever since.

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Image: Moheen Reeyad | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kaptai Dam: Sixty Years of Planning

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Govt. Official, CC BY 2.5. Engineers first contemplated damming the Karnaphuli in 1906, during the British colonial period. A second study followed in 1923, but nothing came of either. After partition, the idea gained urgency: East Pakistan needed power, and the Karnaphuli's flow through the steep hills no...

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Image: Govt. Official | CC BY 2.5

Kaptai Dam: Concrete, Corruption, and Cold War Cash

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Dominis, Public domain. The dam was a Cold War project as much as an engineering one. Financed jointly by the East Pakistan government, the United States, and the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund, it carried a price tag of $100 million -- enormous for the era and the region. American aid to Pakistan w...

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Image: John Dominis | Public domain

Kaptai Dam: The People the Reservoir Swallowed

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hrksmp, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Kaptai Lake began to fill behind the new dam, it swallowed farms, villages, and a way of life. The Chakma people -- an indigenous Buddhist community with deep roots in the Chittagong Hill Tracts -- lost their homes and the fertile valley land they had cultivated for generati...

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Image: Hrksmp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kaptai Dam: Power and Its Price

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Moheen Reeyad, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the air, Kaptai Lake is striking: a long, sinuous reservoir winding through green hills, its fingers reaching into narrow valleys. It looks like wilderness. It is, in part, a graveyard of villages. The dam itself -- an earth-fill embankment, unremarkable by engineering stand...

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Image: Moheen Reeyad | CC BY-SA 4.0