Waiting for hope

Magnet

Rangoon, as we know it, is gone. It's as though a huge whipper snipper has swooped over the city, taking out every tree, leaving not a billboard standing. The houses are broken and so are its people. In Burma they have a saying: if the roof is not sound, the whole house is prone to leaks.

If the people at the top are not reliable, there will be problems right through society from top to bottom.This week Burma's roof blew right off, with up to 100,000 people feared dead, a million homeless and the military junta, who run the country, exposed as calcified despots incapable of acting quickly to protect their people, their self-stated reason for being. For the geriatric generals, wedded to astrological signs, these are inauspicious times.

Meteorologists watched for days as Cyclone Nargis built up its storm head in the Bay of Bengal but state-run media issued little warning to the more than 24 million people across southern Burma in the storm's path. They assumed it would turn away. It was supposed to veer north and glance up the west coast of the state of Rakhine state before wreaking its havoc in Bangladesh's Ganges Delta. Each year, at the start of the monsoon season, the cyclones build in the Bay of Bengal between Burma and India then slide past the Irrawaddy Delta, Burma's rice bowl, providing life-giving rain without deadly consequences.

Cyclone Nargis was different; it did not veer north. Last Friday at 4pm, it made landfall in the densely populated Irrawaddy Delta, 250 kilometres south-west of Rangoon, the country's largest city and former capital. It punched through the bamboo village houses that were never designed to withstand 200-kmh winds or the deadly three-metre tidal surge that inundated the delta.Whole towns were decimated and tens of thousands drowned.

By midnight it had battered Rangoon, first with bruising rain and then, in the pre-dawn, with brutal wind gusts, uprooting 100-year-old banyan trees, snapping power poles and tearing roofs off houses.Those who survived in the delta have spent a week waiting for emergency relief - medicine, drinking water and shelter - while rotting bodies float in the water channels around them.

In Rangoon, after six days, drinking water and electricity are slowly coming back on line in some parts of the city.A situation that is already a national disaster could take on even greater catastrophic dimensions if aid does not reach the survivors in the next week. As the world's international aid agencies and governments rush to offer help, they have been met with surly suspicion and grinding bureaucracy by Burma's military rulers. Only a trickle of aid already inside the country has reached the worst-affected areas.

A worker for a non-government organisation inside Burma, who asked not to be named, says the military appears indifferent to the people's suffering.

"It is either that there is not much that they could do or they just refused to do more," the worker says. "The locals believe that it is their way of trying to control the people, that is to have the people pleading to them for help.

"One elderly women says: "We have a saying about a frog being crushed by a log. The log is on top and pressing down on the frog and there is nothing it can do. It will be crushed.

"A fisherman, Zaw Win, tells how he clung to a tree for three hours, watching as his wife, son, 10, and daughter, 4, were swept away in the surging tide. "I just held on and cried. I knew I'd lost my family," the 32-year-old says.

In his village, near Bogalay, only 40 of 2000 people have survived.

Zaw Win waded through water bobbing with corpses until he found a boat to ferry him to higher ground in Bogalay. But once there, he found little to eat or drink. "We need food, water, clothes and shelter," he says. "We'll starve to death if nothing is sent to us.

"Tim Costello, the head of World Vision Australia, says although the Burmese people are resilient and have few expectations of Government help, it is essential to get water purification and sanitation systems in place quickly to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases.

"If we don't - it's still raining and that compounds the issue - it greases the lightning speed of an epidemic if it takes off ...

Because of the fragile, perilous situation, a much more apocalyptic scenario with epidemics could develop," he says.Despite this unfolding disaster, the junta has stubbornly insisted it will still hold today's national referendum on a new constitution in all areas except the disaster zones. Some analysts suggest the regime is insisting on holding the poll now because fallout from this disaster can only increase as time drags on.

A week after the devastating storm, inside and outside Burma people are asking how a country could be so unprepared. Senior General Than Shwe, who heads the junta, is an isolationist who historically has wanted no help from Western nations - he sees it as interference. Burma-watchers had their first real inkling of the disaster's scope when, three days after the cyclone struck, the junta announced it was open to international assistance.

"Because of the scale of the disaster, the Burmese military cannot resort to usual lies and cover up," says Aung Naing Oo, a political commentator and a former Burmese student activist based in Thailand. "They have to say something. This area is the most populated in Burma, close to half the population [of 50 million] live in Rangoon and the delta area."It comes down to Than Shwe; he knows the magnitude of the crisis and he's indifferent. He can say yes or no, he can bring assistance and relief into the country to help. It's not flowing.

"Trevor Wilson, a former Australian ambassador to Burma, says it is sad to see the problems the regime has created for itself. "They took so long to respond;

Firstly, because it's very hierarchical; everything is decided by one man [Than Shwe]. With anything out of the ordinary, it's even more so," he says.

"Secondly, they are obsessed with security and national unity, and their default position is the impact on national security.

And thirdly, they have a real history of downplaying the impact of natural disasters. It has improved since 2004 - now they report them - but it is still controlled and censored. "Aung Naing Oo says: "They always say 'we can manage, we don't need your [international] help'. That myth was blown away. Now they can't let foreigners in because the Burmese military needs to be seen as responding.

The complaint on the streets is 'you show up immediately for the Saffron uprising [when thousands of soldiers brutally suppressed a popular uprising led by monks last September], but where are you now?"'State-run television is crowded with images of soldiers clearing trees and repairing houses just as last year, during the uprising, it was filled with images of staged pro-government mass rallies.

"There is an inherent distrust of the military," Aung Naing Oo says. "When they see the TV footage of soldiers they think it's just for show."Wilson says the junta place a low priority on relief for natural disasters but they have never had to deal with one on this scale. Yet still they stall. In Bangkok, Thailand, stockpiles of plastic sheeting, water purification tablets, cooking sets, mosquito nets, emergency health kits and food, sit ready for airlift into the country. But until organisations get junta permission they cannot do a thing.

"Their emergency-service management is inadequate in normal times. If they are going to control everything, the movement of aid workers, every aid shipment, it's going to slow things down," says Wilson, who believes aid agencies already working in the country are best situated to help.

"They will be uncomfortable. They won't want foreign aid teams running around making their own decisions. They won't want the UN co-ordination office becoming a state within a state."They are not going to refuse aid, but they will make bad judgments and bad calls about how much, how, quickly and where. They are not experienced but the aid will get through, groups like World Vision and World Food Program know what they have to do.

"Susu Thatun, a Burmese national and a senior policy adviser with World Vision Australia, says: "World Vision's years of investment in development projects, working with local communities and partner organisations, gave the organisation credibility in the Government's eyes."I think based on the work we have done, it's a clear indication to the Government we are here to work with them.

"She says because the military is a key institution in Burma, it is natural that it is involved in aid distribution. "Military and civil administration have always worked together in Myanmar [Burma] for a consolidated approach. The reality is that, to do aid work [here], you have to work with the parallel structures.

"The early promise to co-operate with international agencies that have a record of non-political aid work in Burma has stalled. Costello is in Rangoon to try to break the deadlock. "Because we have been here 30 years, our initial understanding was it would not be difficult to get visas and bring in rapid relief experts," he says. "Whether it was the chorus of international disapproval with the slowness of the response [that changed their minds], I don't know.

"The US first lady, Laura Bush, upbraided the junta for failing to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path. "The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs," she told reporters in Washington.Given the US Government's poor performance in dealing with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, "it was appalling for Laura Bush to be criticising the Burmese", Wilson says. "The regime is mistrustful of the US.

They think there is always another agenda."The US has offered $US3 million ($3.2 million) in assistance on condition US experts are granted access to the country and disaster areas. With the Burmese refusing permission for US planes to land, Washington is now considering unsanctioned air drops of relief supplies in the disaster zone.Aung Naing Oo says one outcome of the disaster may be that the United Nations and other countries such as the US will have to look at the long-term impact of isolation they have imposed on Burma's military.

"Whether it is working or having a negative impact, the international community will have to think about that. This is an important fundamental question in the long term, if Burmese military remain in charge."Analysts say it may take months to fully understand the social, political and economic impact of Burma's greatest natural disaster. In the meantime, the generals insist they will go ahead with their constitutional referendum.

"The last thing on the minds of the people is politics. They need to survive," says Aung Naing Oo, who predicts a 70 per cent "no" vote. "Yet the military will continue with it because they cannot allow time for opposition to regroup."The new constitution is skewed towards the military; it would give us five to 10 per cent freedom. People may want to vote for or against the constitution but they are clearly against the military, so they will definitely vote no.

"On the streets of Rangoon, there is a new joke: with all the "big greens" - the trees - gone, how about they root out the "little greens" - the military - next. That is a scenario the longest-surviving military dictatorship in the world cannot contemplate."They believe, with a religious fervour, that without them, the nation would not exist," a Western diplomat in Rangoon said recently.

This Government's priority has always been military: it spends 40 per cent of gross domestic product to fund its 450,000-strong army, but only $US1 per person per year on health and $US3 per person a year on education. Before the disaster, by some estimates, 70 per cent of the population was below the international poverty line benchmark, of living on less than US$1 a day. Late this week the junta committed just $US5 million for cyclone relief, suggesting it still has little idea what will be required to stem this tragedy.

When the flood waters recede, the extent of damage to the nation's rice-producing farmland will be exposed. The planting season begins next month, so the season can still be salvaged if the delta's antiquated irrigation systems have not been badly damaged."They haven't destroyed the harvest but it might have damaged the rice in storage [needed for planting]," Wilson says. "Ongoing rice production depends on damage to the paddies and irrigation channels.

"Costello believes many levees need rebuilding. "At the moment [the priority] is to stop the water-borne diseases and give them appropriate shelter and blankets. I can almost positively say any rice [in storage] would have been lost. Such a volume of water went through these areas."There is also damage to transport infrastructure and communications, which will create ripples across the nation. Rangoon is a transport hub for food distribution around the country.

People are too busy surviving to strike back at the junta, but the long-term impact on the Government's standing with the people could be devastating. "It could be a turning point for the regime. It won't lead to political unrest now but if the military handle themselves very badly in this crisis, it could mean trouble later," Wilson says.

"This is a testing period for the military; they can gain back what they've lost in the past few days if they do well. If they were sensible, they would pull out all stops, defer the referendum, and actually do all they can, not just be seen to be doing all they can."But it's not likely. They are chronically incompetent." with agencies