Last September the Burmese people were on the streets, fighting for their political rights. Now they are on their knees, fighting for their lives. In both cases the main obstacle they face is the military junta that has ruled the country with merciless brutality since the 1988 coup.
Just as the pro-democracy protests last year were bloodily and thoughtlessly crushed, so does the regime’s paranoia and incompetence threaten to undermine or even derail international relief efforts in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. As one aid official warned this week, the aftermath could prove more lethal than the storm.
Any government would struggle to cope with a disaster on this scale. But, thanks in large part to the generals, Burma is exceptionally ill equipped. The country still relies on infrastructure created roughly 100 years ago. There has been little or no investment in modern roads and railways. Internal transportation of relief supplies looks likely to be a major headache.
The secretive nature of the regime, discouraging open, efficient communication, is set to be another problem as aid workers desperately try to identify the main areas of need. The junta’s failure to alert Burmese to the cyclone — there is no early warning system — has already drawn protests and probably exacerbated the storm’s human toll.
”This is yet another example of how the regime ignores the welfare of the people of Burma,” said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK. ”Instead of warning people about the potential danger, state-owned newspapers were full of propaganda telling people that they must vote for a sham constitution that will keep the military in power.”
That referendum has been widely dismissed by Western governments as a clumsy, see-through attempt to defuse external pressure for democratic reform following last year’s crackdown. Having characteristically refused to recognise the size of the disaster, Burmese officials finally announced on Tuesday the vote would be delayed for two weeks in the worst affected areas.
Increased access for independent NGOs, and for foreign media keen to publicise Burma’s needs, is another looming point of friction. The flood of offers of help from United Nations agencies, the United States, the European Union and countries such as Australia, all critics of the regime, will certainly trigger the mistrustful, fearful caution for which the country’s dictator, Senior General Than Shwe, and his cronies are renowned.
While all these factors are expected to hamper the relief effort, Burma’s basic dilemma remains unchanged: a regime that has been at war with its people for years is now being called upon to save them.
Its reputation for cruelty, mismanagement and corruption only adds to the gaping trust deficit between oppressors and oppressed. In most countries news that the army is being deployed to help would be welcome. In Burma it will only increase the trauma many ordinary Burmese are now experiencing in the wake of the tempest.
People always look for good out of bad, and it may be that the prising open of Fortress Burma’s gates by an advancing army of humanitarian workers will wreak a permanent, beneficial change in the country’s domestic politics and its relations with the outside world.
The First Lady, Laura Bush, the US administration’s unofficial spokeswoman on Burma, is not prepared to wait. The US would help, she said, but only if the junta — on which Washington has imposed tough sanctions — swallowed its pride and asked for it. She also suggested the regime would hinder outside relief efforts.
”The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta’s failure to meet its people’s basic needs,” she said. ”This once wealthy nation now has the lowest per capita GDP in south-east Asia. We know already that they are very inept.”
Such overt hostility is certain to put backs up in Naypyidaw, the regime’s remote capital. Indeed, the cyclone disaster may have the opposite effect to that hoped for in the West. As the urgent impulse to help fellow human beings in trouble takes over, the crisis could divert the spotlight away from the junta’s feeble, self-serving efforts at political reform.
If they are allowed to, the generals will simply take what they need in the short term, then carry on dictating. — Â