Cyclone in Myanmar

Myanmar's misery

May 8th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Despite their appalling government, the Burmese people deserve all the help they can get

THE decision by Myanmar's ruling generals to move their capital in 2005 from Yangon, the country's biggest city, to the remote mountain fastness of Naypyidaw was as baffling as many of their other policies. Local rumour ascribed it to the advice of fortune-tellers, who foretold revolt and disaster in Yangon.

Revolt came last September. It was suppressed easily enough, by an army willing to shoot unarmed protesters. Now natural disaster has come, and on an unimaginable scale: a cyclone that has killed tens of thousands, left hundreds of thousands without shelter and placed millions at risk of disease and hunger (see article). In recent years only the Asian tsunami of December 2004 and the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005 have wreaked devastation as great.

You do not have to believe in astrology to see the essential truth behind the fortune-teller rumour, for this is a regime more interested in looking after itself than its people. It failed to prepare them for the approaching danger, despite having been forewarned. Its soldiers, quick enough to respond to monk-led protests last September, were invisible for days as citizens struggled to cope with devastation, death and injury. And, as a horrified world offered help, the generals were obstructive. Aid workers waited for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplies. This is criminal. The first few days after a disaster are, in terms of the lives eventually lost, by far the most important.

The politics of saving lives

For foreign donors, Myanmar raises a dilemma seen also in North Korea, which may be on the verge of another famine (see article): how to rescue desperate people whose own government spurns outside assistance, and how to do so without providing a lifeline to an illegitimate and unpopular regime. In the aftermath of a disaster, only the first of these questions matters: when so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime. Nor, on the whole, is there any way of sidestepping the junta (or the North Korean regime) in the distribution of aid. Some foreign aid agencies have existing networks in the country. But none has a nationwide reach.

In theory it may be possible, as France's foreign minister has argued, to obtain a United Nations' resolution obliging the junta to accept aid. In practice, Myanmar's friends on the Security Council would probably block such a move and it will remain a question of coaxing the generals into accepting help. That means avoiding the risk of feeding the junta's paranoia. It sees the offer of help as the thin end of a wedge of political interference aimed at prising it from power. In this sense it was unfortunate that George Bush's magnanimous offer this week (“Let the United States come and help you!”) was made as he signed legislation awarding a congressional honour to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's detained opposition leader.

The generals will also have noticed that on the same day Congress passed a resolution condemning their constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10th as “one-sided, undemocratic, and illegitimate”. This is an accurate description of both the process and the constitution the generals want to impose on their people—with such urgency, after 14 years in the drafting, that they have delayed voting in the worst-hit areas by just 14 days. Of course they should postpone the vote. Evil enough in itself as a way of providing some legal cover for the perpetuation of military rule, administering it (and presumably fixing the outcome) is now a distraction from what should be the army's main task: saving lives. However, pressure from America will not make the junta yield. Instead, it will make it even cagier in handling the offers of aid. Postponement would have a better chance if the neighbours who have maintained good links with the junta—Thailand and, especially, China—added their weight to calls for a suspension.

Please, please help you

Encouraging Myanmar's rulers to accept more assistance is more than a short-term problem. Partly thanks to Western sanctions, but largely because of its own go-it-alone policies, Myanmar is among the world's neediest and least-helped countries. Some 30% of its 53m people live below the poverty line. Infant mortality rates are high, at 76 per 1,000 live births. The UN's World Food Programme says that about one-third of children under five are malnourished. Of children enrolled in primary school, 57% drop out. Yet, at $3 per head a year, Myanmar receives proportionately less foreign aid than does almost any other country. Neighbouring Laos receives almost 20 times as much. The cyclone has added another huge—and long-lasting—burden to Myanmar's existing misery. Whatever the regime, it needs more long-term humanitarian aid simply to meet basic needs.

Two faint hopes flicker in the sodden gloom left by the cyclone. The first is the possibility that the need for humanitarian help may lead to a renewed engagement with the West. At the very least it might advertise Western expertise, wealth and generosity, and restore some of the influence that has been lost to Myanmar's big commercial partners in the region. Second, the regime's shocking, bungling response to the crisis might lead even some of its own members to wonder whether their leaders know what they are doing. The army believes it must stay in power because no other force can hold the country together and run it competently. The cyclone must have brought home to some senior soldiers what most civilians have long known, that this is nonsense.

It is not unprecedented for a natural calamity to bring political change: in 1972, the embezzlement by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's dictator, and his cronies of aid sent after an earthquake contributed to the unpopularity that eventually toppled him; more recently, the tsunami was instrumental in bringing peace to Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Myanmar, superstitious generals and civilians alike will have seen the cyclone as a sign of divine impatience hinting at the looming downfall of a tyrannical government. You don't have to believe in portents to hope that they are right.