Myanmar set for political, economic shocks

Military-ruled Myanmar, among the globe's poorest and most authoritarian nations, is reeling from a natural disaster of such magnitude that both the people's suffering and political aftershocks are certain to persist long after the last emergency aid has been doled out.

As bloated bodies are counted and survivors face disease and hunger in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, dramatic scenarios are foreseen in a country that has changed little since an army coup 46 years ago.

These range from a revolt led by disenchanted army officers to the specter of the entrenched, xenophobic junta allowing thousands more to perish rather than risk its grip on power by opening gates to the outside world.

"If a split in the Burmese military between reformist and hard-line elements doesn't occur now, it will never occur," said Donald M. Seekins, a Myanmar expert at Okinawa's Meio University.

In continuing to march to their own, longtime tune even in the face of such a disaster, the generals who rule the country also known as Burma are comparable to Zimbabwe and North Korea, which insist on controlling the distribution of the relief goods while keeping foreign aid personnel on their soil to a minimum.

Myanmar's attitude to disaster relief has seemed resolutely out of step with a globalized world that takes for granted its duty to step in and help out in other countries' hour of distress.

As time was running out for many survivors last week, the regime seized food shipments, ensnared foreign aid experts in red tape and insisted its own nationals could do the job themselves.

More than 60,000 people are officially listed as killed or missing, but the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, Shari Villarosa, fears that more than 100,000 could eventually die. Other estimates are even greater.

A death toll of 100,000 would rank Cyclone Nargis - "daffodil" in the Urdu language - as the world's fifth worst natural disaster in four decades, and the worst in Myanmar's modern history.

The Southeast Asian nation's options are drastically limited.

Infrastructure, from roads to electricity, is feeble and in 2000 the U.N. World Health Organization ranked Myamar's health system as the world's second worst. About 90 percent of the population lives on $1 a day.

Myanmar's once stellar civil service has been decimated as its best and brightest have fled repression. And at its top sits the all-powerful military, which has by every account mismanaged the country since the 1962 putsch.

Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the 75-year-old junta chief, is a former postal clerk. Superstitious and now physically ailing, he is hunkered down in Naypyitaw, the capital he ordered carved out of the bush three years ago in a remote corner of the country.

Although the cyclone cut a swath through less than 5 percent of the country's area, the fierce winds and floods struck precisely at its two most vulnerable points - the country's rice bowl and the political tinderbox that Yangon, its largest city, has long been.

"The rice economy has been irreparable damaged, at least for many years to come," said Seekins, who predicted food shortages could prove the most important factor propelling political change.

Also feared is a health catastrophe as stagnant water, contaminated by decaying human bodies and animal carcasses, spawns malaria, cholera, dengue fever and other potential killers.

"With each passing day, we come closer to a massive health disaster and a second wave of deaths that is potentially larger than the first," said Gordon Bacon, emergency coordinator in Myanmar of the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee.

Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, also was hit. It is a political tinderbox of 6.5 million people who include a nascent, increasingly frustrated middle class, students, the well-educated and many Buddhist monks. All are more prone to activism and dissent than those in rural areas.

The city has a history of revolt, from its years under the British colonial yoke to the 1988 pro-democracy uprising led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to last September's mass, monk-led protests. The regime's inadequate response to the cyclone and its unwillingness to allow foreign help has further fueled the anger of many residents.

"From this week on, the military better watch their backs," said Josef Silverstein, a retired Rutgers University professor who studied Myanmar for more than a half century. "It's a mark upon the military that never will be erased."

But the generals are past masters at survival, ready to resort to bullets when threatened, impervious to outside criticism.

They have repeatedly hoodwinked the United Nations, snubbed even their closest allies, ignored economic sanctions and shrugged off a litany of reports accusing them of human rights abuses.

Judging by its past performance, the junta's instinct will likely be to stonewall - accept foreign aid but only enough to prevent a real catastrophe and as long as it can control the donated resources.

"It is possible that the junta will finally open up the country to a large foreign aid presence, including Western experts, and this may lead to some form of liberalization," Seekins says. "But right now, things don't seem to be going in that direction."

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Denis D. Gray is The Associated Press bureau chief in Bangkok, Thailand, and has reported on Myanmar since the mid-1970s, including the 1988 uprising.