Five days after the storm, aid is crawling toward the most devastated areas of Burma. Food and supplies, unloaded from a United Nations container in the capital, Rangoon, on Tuesday afternoon, are beginning their slow trek toward the Ayeyarwady region of the country, the area hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis. Trucks stocked with water, tarps and other supplies are inching their way along roads strewn with uprooted trees and debris toward the lower delta. When necessary, U.N. workers get out and clear the roads by hand, even constructing logistical bridges in order to get the aid where it is needed most. When the roads disappear under water, supplies will be transferred to boats. "The entire lower region is flooded, which means we have to take the supplies by boat, and that adds a day," says Richard Horsey, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

Details of Nargis's destruction are still trickling in, but according to the few journalists and aid workers on the ground, Burma—also known as Myanmar—is facing the worst natural disaster in its history. The storm, which struck the country late Friday with winds of up to 125 miles per hour, caused waves up to 12 feet high in the Ayeyarwady delta region. According to a Burmese government spokesman, the surge destroyed 95 percent of the homes in the region. Official state media puts the death toll above 22,000, with an additional 41,000 missing, and more than a million people left homeless. Some officials have said the toll could reach as high as 100,000. The storm affected 24 million people, 6 million in Rangoon alone; the capital reportedly resembles a war zone, with toppled telephone poles and burst water pipes. In the Ayeyarwady area, which supplies the country with an estimated 70 percent of its rice, paddies had already been planted for the rice crop. The fields are now under water, causing unknown damage to the country's primary food source at a time when the world is in the throes of a global food crisis.

Politically, too, Cyclone Nargis hit Burma at an extremely delicate time. Last September the military-led government was widely criticized for its crackdown on prodemocracy protests led by Buddhist monks. Government soldiers opened fire on protestors, killing 10 by the government's official count and some 200 according to dissident groups, who said that more than 6,000 were detained. The cyclone and its aftermath could be the biggest challenge the dictatorial junta has yet to face, as residents become increasingly angry over the lack of assistance coming from their leaders. According to witnesses in the country, the cyclone-hit roads are being cleared not by the government but by the people themselves, including monks and nuns.

There was initial concern that the junta, known for its extreme xenophobia and paranoia, would not let relief agencies into the country. Those fears appeared unfounded when government officials publicly admitted the scale of the disaster and appealed for international assistance. On Tuesday the Royal Thai Air Force flew in the first shipment of medical and food aid; another plane arrived from China. According to Chris Kaye, director of the World Food Program in Burma, the government has provided "valuable cooperation," but much more cooperation will be needed in the short term to meet the needs of the hardest-hit.

Even while the government publicly appeals for aid, however, scores of relief workers from various agencies are sitting in Bangkok waiting for visas to enter the country. Aside from the materials brought in from Thailand and China, the supplies now getting through were pre-positioned by agencies before the disaster struck. Once additional aid is allowed in, relief workers will face the enormous task of getting it to the flooded lower delta region, where more than a million are believed to be without shelter, water, food, or sanitation. "The constraint is getting out to the affected population. Whole townships are underwater," says Horsey of UNOCHA.

The bottleneck is not getting supplies to Rangoon but getting them out to the countryside. Another concern is fuel. Stocks, including natural gas for cooking, are running low, and there is no domestic capability. The main port in Rangoon, which was badly damaged, is closed. If fuel stocks run low, that could hamper relief efforts, says Horsey.

While relief workers in Thailand await visas, their colleagues in Burma struggle to reach the victims and assess the true scope of the disaster. Teams from Doctors Without Borders who were already in Burma are working their way down to the Ayeyarwady region and are expected to arrive early Thursday. Their main focus will be to avert a second-wave catastrophe of waterborne diseases such as cholera, malaria, and dengue fever. "Waterborne diseases don't start up in the first couple of days," says Paul Heymans, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders. "But we quickly have to get the people water and chlorination. The sooner the better."

The immediate needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis are clear. What remains to be seen, however, is the long-term impact the storm will have on Burma and its isolationist regime. The generals have held the country and its citizens in an iron grasp since seizing power in 1962. During 46 years of brutal rule and economic mismanagement, the people have at least had enough to eat—thanks to fertile land and a favorable climate. But now food prices are soaring and lines for gas are said to be stretching for miles in Rangoon in the wake of the disaster. The junta's vicious response to last year's protests—sparked by a rise in fuel prices—might have intimidated the long-suffering Burmese into accepting the current hardships. But some analysts feel the lack of assurance about basic necessities could trigger further resistance to the generals. "If they don't get enough proper assistance out in the next couple of days or weeks, the people will be very angry, and that anger might overcome their fear because they may feel they have nothing to lose," Win Min, a lecturer on Burmese affairs at Thailand's Chiang Mai University, told the German press agency DPA.

One sign that the junta is not making concessions to the devastation: it's still planning to push ahead with a referendum on a new constitution that will cement its power indefinitely. The authorities did postpone the voting for two weeks in the worst-affected regions, but the rest of the country will cast its ballots on schedule on May 10. Before the storm the government was expected to declare victory regardless of the true outcome—and in spite of an April poll by a consortium of 10 independent media organizations that found that almost 65 percent of those polled planned to vote no on the referendum. With journalists and aid workers heading into the country, that result may now be harder to hide.

A fresh face and new energy are what do we need from critics rather than repeating noisy stuffs those are out of touch with reality, let alone hard-edged political tactics that had never been the province of oppositions whose hearts were artificially made purple somewhat. Democampers and opposition sympathizers are taking political advantage of the looting, which has made cyclone nargis an equal opportunity disaster. Gee!

Ma Than,

To me (my assessment) you are nothing but a weed springing out now and then from cracks of bricks/walls/concrete. Nothing more, nothing less.

Vote trumps storm for Burma leaders


Perhaps the most baffling aspect of Burma's response to Cyclone Nargis is its insistence that the referendum on a new constitution will go ahead as scheduled on 10 May, except in areas immediately affected by the disaster.



Even at the height of the disaster the state broadcaster has devoted much of its airtime to cheerful entertainment programmes urging people to vote in favour of the new charter.

The military is reported to have commandeered large numbers of vehicles for use during the referendum, and in towns unaffected by the cyclone, like Mandalay, trucks have been driving continuously through the streets, blaring out the government's pro-referendum message.

Residents contacted by the BBC have expressed their disgust that this is happening when so many are in such distress in the Irrawaddy delta.

It is a measure of the ruling military council's determination that it is ploughing on even in the face of the worst natural disaster in Burma's recorded history.

Unchallenged power

There are reports from within the military that senior general Than Shwe personally over-rode requests from his officers to divert army resources to help the cyclone victims, in a country with nearly 500,000 soldiers, and where more than 40 % of the government budget goes to the military.

He was more concerned about maintaining security for the referendum.

Why this extraordinary intransigence, this refusal to respond to pleas for greater co-operation with the international community?

Reading the minds of the top generals, who decide pretty much everything in Burma, is pure guesswork. We know they are superstitious men, of limited education, and minimal exposure to the outside world.

They have lived entirely inside an army that wields unchallenged power over civilians, and which sees itself as endlessly fighting enemies bent on destroying the unity of the country.

These are the same soldiers who decided to seal Burma off from the world 46 years ago, and who retain deep suspicion of all foreigners.
But they also crave legitimacy. Ever since the bloody upheavals of 1988 Burma has been living without a constitution, its military rulers technically illegitimate.

They made a huge miscalculation holding the 1990 election, which was resoundingly won by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

After annulling the results, they set about preparing a far more carefully-controlled process to legitimise their rule. The constitution, which is the subject of this referendum, is the end result of that process.

It began back in 1993, with the formation of an assembly meant to draw up guidelines for the new constitution. That was suspended after delegates from the NLD walked out in 1996, complaining the assembly was being manipulated by the military.

It did not re-convene until 2004. By then the delegates were mostly hand-picked, and locked in an isolated complex to carry out their deliberations.

The constitution they produced was, unsurprisingly, condemned by the government's many critics.

It enshrined the military's dominant role in politics, immunising the men in green from prosecution, giving them a quarter of the seats in parliament, and guaranteeing that the president would be a military man.

Few Burmese have been able to read it. The charter only went on sale a month before the referendum, at a price most Burmese cannot afford.

Criticising the referendum is a crime punishable by three years in jail. Those few activists brave enough to campaign for a no vote have been jailed or beaten up by pro-government thugs.

Civil servants have been pushed to vote ahead of the referendum, and put under enormous pressure to vote yes.

There are no independent monitors, and the final tally will only be announced in the military's citadel Nay Pyi Daw, giving ample opportunity to manipulate the result.

So there is very little chance Than Shwe can lose this referendum, even if large numbers of Burmese use it to express their anger against the government. It has been widely dismissed as a sham outside Burma.

But it seems to matter a great deal to the generals, opening the way to what they call a "discipline-flourishing democracy".

There must also be some Burmese who think, however objectionable and undemocratic the new charter may be, it may at least dilute the misrule of the military.

At the age of 75, Than Shwe is in poor health, and said to be worried about what will happen to his cronies and family after he's gone. He may hope that the formalisation of the armed forces' dominant role in the constitution will protect them.

Isolated as he is in Nay Pyi Taw, his self-styled "Abode of Kings" capital, he may simply not have grasped the scale of disaster, and the certain inability of his soldiers to deal with it.

In the rigidly hierarchical army, even generals who do grasp this may not dare to confront him with the truth.

In his mind the referendum probably looms larger than the fate of one or two million survivors eking out a desperate existence in the Irrawaddy delta.

Nothing to point out to anyone how horrendous the situation down in Irrawaddy today, cyclone nargis has proved to be the worst natural disaster to strike beloved Myanmar ever since, and the effects of this unprecedented catastrophe will definitely be felt in this country for several months, and perhaps years to come. As rescue workers from all over the country converge on the delta Irrawaddy, millions of other Myanmar are giving much needed help and aid to the relief effort, and community leaders from Yangon to Myitkyina, Mandalay to Taungyi are working days and nights to save the lives of untold numbers of victims. All concerned citizens around our nation are doing their best to stay focussed on the task at hand, and avoid complaining about anything and helping their best, let alone taking political advantages and stepping up smear camp during this important time. Many of our citizens seem united in the task of helping the many hundreds of thousands of people directly effected by the brutal assault of cyclone nargis. All of their calm resolve, and determination to carry on in the face of such a horrible event is typical of the way burmese majority buddhist deal with disasters, and of that we can all be proud, yeah!

Unquestionably and unfortunately, there are a few crap people in and out of the country who have decided to focus on something else entirely, so-called PETTY POLITICAL AGENDAS. Some of those here even took advantages from such devastation for their personal gain and those oppotunists are already cranking up their collective spin machine in a pathetic attempt to blame their political enemies for disastrous cyclone nargis.

We understand very well that it's difficult for most people to believe such opportunists taking advantages, however one thing for sure, it appears that such terrible inhumane tasks for their blatant hypocrisy, unsubstantiated rhetoric and shameless exploitation goes absolutely no bounds, gee! gee!

"Unquestionably and unfortunately, there are a few crap people in and out of the country who have decided to focus on something else entirely, so-called PETTY POLITICAL AGENDAS. Some of those here even took advantages from such devastation for their personal gain and those oppotunists are already cranking up their collective spin machine in a pathetic attempt to blame their political enemies for disastrous cyclone nargis.

We understand very well that it's difficult for most people to believe such opportunists taking advantages, however one thing for sure, it appears that such terrible inhumane tasks for their blatant hypocrisy, unsubstantiated rhetoric and shameless exploitation goes absolutely no bounds, gee! gee!"

Ma than,

Are you talking about you and your like minded associates? Ko Sate Net Nyaing....Ma Yang. That's the saying in Burmese for you and your paranoid psychotic maniacs.