A Reclusive Government, Forced to Ask for Help

May 8, 2008

News Analysis

A Reclusive Government, Forced to Ask for Help

By SETH MYDANS

BANGKOK — In opening its doors to international disaster relief, Myanmar’s military government is breaching a wall of isolation it has built around itself over nearly half a century.

The devastation of Saturday’s cyclone, which took more than 22,000 lives, has forced the junta to soften its pose of self-sufficiency and ask for help from a world it fears and resents.

The request for aid comes less than nine months after the ruling junta rejected the almost universal condemnation it received internationally after brutally cracking down on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.

Yet the government is showing its reluctance now by accepting the aid it requested only slowly, complicating visa procedures for international donors and apparently seeking to limit the access of foreign relief workers.

In Geneva, United Nations officials said travel and visa obstacles were hampering deliveries of aid to an estimated one million people who were believed to be homeless.

Relief officials said that some help was reaching Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, and elsewhere, but that flooding and road damage had cut off many of the hardest hit coastal areas.

Relief agencies said that hunger, thirst and the threat of disease must be urgently addressed.

Since a military coup in 1962, Myanmar, the former Burma, has sealed itself off from the outside world in what was once called the Burmese Way to Socialism. That barrier has grown in recent years with the West’s imposition of economic sanctions for human rights violations.

“Normally they would be saying, ‘We are going to stick it out, we don’t need anyone’s help,’” said Zarni, a visiting research fellow at Oxford University who goes by one name.

“That barrier has been broken,” he said. “They must know that asking for help means some degree of international involvement in the country’s internal affairs, whether poverty reduction or democratization.”

This aid, if the government fully embraces it, will require a new degree of cooperation with foreign governments and with relief agencies whose operations inside Myanmar have been increasingly restricted.

The government runs the risk that foreign relief groups and governments will be seen as the rescuers of people it was incapable of helping on its own.

“I don’t think any one country would be able to manage a disaster on this scale,” said Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar, speaking from Yangon by telephone.

“They need outside assistance,” said Ms. Villarosa, the chargé d’affaires. “The international community is ready, willing and able to come in big time and help. Again, their distrust of foreigners is keeping that out.”

She added: “They are very suspicious. They think that they’re up to no good.”

The government also faced the possibility of anger from hungry, homeless people who feel it has failed them. Already it is common to hear complaints from Myanmar that the military, which crushed peaceful demonstrations in September, was nowhere to be seen last weekend.

A steep rise in fuel prices was the initial cause of demonstrations in August that swelled into huge protests of the government. Rice price increases were one cause of even larger demonstrations in 1988 that were halted at the cost of many hundreds of lives.

“The experience around the world is that people who don’t have enough food and water are desperate and will do desperate things,” Ms. Villarosa said.

For now, most analysts said, people are too concerned with survival to express their anger in any open way.

The most likely avenue for change in the long term is within the military, which controls most aspects of life in Myanmar, the analysts said. It is the mood of the military that concerns Myanmar’s top leaders more than the general welfare of the people, said U Win Min, a Burmese exile and military analyst.

“This is the only thing that matters to them, not public opinion,” he said. “The junta is not relying on public support but on public fear that can be done only by people in the military. Their worry is to have the support of the military.”

The government offered an indication of its priorities when it said it would proceed with a constitutional referendum despite the scale of the disaster. The constitution, which would legitimize its grip on power, is the product of more than a decade of work and is the centerpiece of the junta’s policy for the future.

The government announced that the vote, scheduled for Saturday, would be postponed for two weeks in the hardest hit areas but would proceed in most of the country.

“They don’t prioritize relief, which is an urgent need for the people, but they prioritize their own plans to legitimize their government through the constitution,” Mr. Win Min said.