Myanmar's cyclone
The regime is satisfied
May 15th 2008 | JAKARTA AND YANGON
From The Economist print edition
The junta lets a bit more aid in—but less than cyclone victims need
STARVING, homeless and vulnerable to infectious disease, the inhabitants of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta must feel that things could hardly get worse. Almost a fortnight after cyclone Nargis struck, killing perhaps 130,000, the country's ruling military junta had not yet let in more than a trickle of humanitarian aid and was still barring most of the foreign aid workers and equipment needed to distribute it. Supplies were being delivered—or not delivered—at the whim of the army officer in charge of each district.
But unfortunately for the 2.5m or so survivors, things could indeed get worse. By midweek, heavy rains were hampering the meagre aid operations in the delta. And the outside world's attention and compassion was being diverted to the earthquake in China. A Russian rescue team quit Myanmar to offer its services in China, where they were welcomed.
Friends of the Burmese regime—China itself, India, Bangladesh and Thailand—were belatedly allowed to send a limited number of aid workers. Its arch-foe, America, was allowed to land military cargo planes in Yangon, the main city, this week. But the World Food Programme, the largest emergency-relief supplier, was managing to deliver less than one-fifth of the 375 tonnes of food a day that it reckons is needed on the ground.
The regime's leader, General Than Shwe, rebuffed repeated attempts by the United Nations' secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to speak to him by telephone. Admiral Timothy Keating, the head of America's Pacific Command, and Thailand's prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, both visited Yangon to try to persuade the regime to let in a big international rescue mission like the one assembled after the 2004 tsunami. Neither succeeded.
Myanmar's state news media made a big fuss about the dribbles of aid the regime did provide—and even some that it did not: the army was caught sticking labels with the names of top generals on aid that had been provided by Thailand. The UN said it was worried about aid supplies being diverted by the regime, though it had no hard evidence of this. Demonstrating its priorities, the generals sent enough armed troops to man checkpoints to keep foreigners out of the delta. Some Burmese drove out in their cars from Yangon to try to offer whatever help they could to their compatriots.
On May 10th the junta went ahead, in areas unaffected by the disaster, with a sham referendum on a new constitution designed to entrench its rule. It hailed a triumphant turnout, though its widespread intimidation of voters, to make them vote “yes” and stop them from urging a “no” vote, will render the result—93% in favour—widely disbelieved. Even more absurdly, it is still talking of holding a vote on May 24th in the cyclone-hit areas.
Diplomats with access to the junta say it appears to be split between hardliners, led by General Than Shwe, who believe that the presence of foreigners will threaten their grip on power, and relative moderates—the most senior of whom is the junta's number three, Thura Shwe Mann—who recognise the gravity of the crisis and the need for international help.
European Union countries, meeting in Brussels, talked of getting aid to Myanmar by whatever means necessary. But they stopped short of backing an idea floated by France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, of invoking a UN principle of the “responsibility to protect”, which evolved in the 1990s and was adopted by the UN in 2005. This says that national sovereignty may be overridden in extreme circumstances. Britain and Germany were said to support the idea but any proposal would probably be blocked by China at the UN Security Council. Oxfam, a British aid charity, expressed doubts over suggestions this week that aid could be parachuted into the delta without the regime's permission: its spokeswoman argued that in the past such air-drops proved hugely costly and often failed to reach the most vulnerable.
Mr Samak's efforts notwithstanding, the response from Myanmar's neighbours in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has so far been feeble. ASEAN admitted Myanmar in 1997, telling the West that sanctions against the regime were not working and that “constructive engagement” would achieve more. To judge from the cyclone, it has not.
ASEAN is planning to discuss Myanmar's emergency on May 19th and is promising to form a “coalition of mercy” to aid the country. But whatever, if anything, it decides, will be too little and too late.
The region's leaders, like the Chinese, are afraid that any intervention would set a precedent for outside meddling in their own affairs. Some are also loth to risk their considerable business interests in Myanmar. The $200m that the UN has appealed for, to finance aid to Myanmar, is a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign-exchange reserves the ASEAN members have stacked up. If ASEAN's leaders had quickly and publicly pledged substantial aid, even if it had not immediately been accepted, it might have shamed the regime into moving a bit further than it has. One of the many aid workers stuck in Bangkok this week, pleading with the Burmese embassy to grant him a visa, argued that by leaving so many people to die unattended, the regime was committing a crime against humanity. If so, that makes the country's self-interested neighbours accessories after the fact.
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