Kurt Bassuener May 7th, 2008

The devastation to Burma’s Irrawaddy delta region from Cyclone Nargis is becoming clearer as some international correspondents have had a chance to tour the affected areas – Burma’s ricebowl.  22,000 people are reported dead, with more than 40,000 missing, and up to one million without shelter.  The few international media traveling outside Rangoon have heard from those rendered homeless that they have received no assistance up to now.

Al Jazeera English has two correspondents in Burma who have not been identified for fear of government reprisal. In a report broadcast earlier today, one correspondent noted the conspicuous lack of government presence and aid. The army was seen clearing roads, but that was all. She reported seeing a hundred empty Burmese Army trucks on the road back to Rangoon from the low-lying areas she visited, none of which was laden with aid supplies. Residents of the delta region she interviewed noted they had received no warning on state radio of the impending cyclone. The town of Pyinkaya, which had 150,000 residents, “Assistance hasn’t reached them yet and they are dying - completely isolated,” according to Save the Children’s Andrew Kirkwood. CNN International’s Dan Rivers  was also reporting from Bogolay in the affected area, touring a makeshift shelter where homeless and wounded persons had gathered – again with no government presence. The rations on hand would only last two days. Bodies of the dead were being carries to the river. Local officials noted they had not been given authorization to act by the central government. Shops that have reopened today generated unrest as desperate people pushed to get needed relief supplies.

International assistance has been offered, and some from neighboring India and Thailand has already arrived. UN and international Red Cross aid efforts were initiated yesterday.  But the difficulty of getting the regime to allow humanitarian aid experts in to oversee aid logistics, as done in Indonesia after the Aceh tsunami, is retarding efforts to assist. Some humanitarian aid workers are on the ground assessing need and providing help, but visas have been denied to many more disaster relief experts who are on standby. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appealed for humanitarian access: “Forget politics…Forget the military dictatorship. Let’s just get aid and assistance through to people who are suffering and dying as we speak, through a lack of support on the ground.” The regime is more concerned with restricting international presence in the country than in providing for the overwhelming popular need for help. France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner (and founder of Medicins Sans Frontiers and Doctors of the World), noted that the lack of trust in the regime and access was hampering the world’s ability to assist - the junta insists on distribiting the aid themselves. Indonesia’s presidential spokesman, Dino Patti Djalal, asserted in a CNN interview that the scale of the disaster required external assistance on the ground, basing his assessment on the Aceh tsunami recovery effort.

It is as yet unclear how the cyclone and the callous and incompetent reaction to it by the junta will erode the regime’s grip on the state. As of now, popular concerns are consumed by the existential. But the fact that the enormous military buildup of the Tatmadaw since the 1988 coup, including significant logistical capacity, has only been used for repression and not for civic emergencies, will surely not be forgotten. Nor will their footdragging in allowing outside help, which is costing countless lives.  With the military leaders safely out of harm’s way in the new garrison capital Naypyidaw, their detachment from their people’s fate could hardly be more stark than it has proven in these days. In the longer term, the devastation of Burma’s agricultural heartland will necessitate greater external involvement in Burma. 

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