The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/

Disaster's impact will spread far
Richard Lloyd Parry | May 07, 2008

EVEN at the best of times, the Irrawaddy Delta is one of the least
accessible areas of one of Southeast Asia's most closed and
impenetrable countries.

Roads are few and rough. Communication between the scattered farm
villages is by boat along the myriad streams and channels known as the
"Mouths of the Irrawaddy". The river sustains rich fishing and the
most fertile rice fields in Burma.

But early on Saturday - in the space of a few hours - the wind and
waters turned deadly. It is too soon to know the full extent of the
destruction, but there is no doubt a humanitarian catastrophe has hit
Burma. Cyclone Nargis, with its 190km/h winds, coincided with a
3m-high tidal surge.

Even last night there was limited information on the extent of the
damage, but it is clear that huge trees, roads, houses and entire
communities have been blown and washed away.

"According to the latest information, more than 10,000 people were
killed," Foreign Minister Nyan Win told state television yesterday. By
last night it was 15,000, with the Thais saying 30,000 more were
missing.

The numbers of injured, it can be assumed, are several multiples of
the dead. And masses are homeless - the best that Richard Horsey, a UN
official in Thailand, could guess was several hundred thousand "but
how many hundred thousand we don't know".

No one in Burma has seen a disaster like this in living memory. And
the consequences do not end with the dead and injured. The effects
will be felt across the region, and it has the potential to shake up
the entire country.

Apart from the loss of life, the terrible injuries and the destruction
of tens of thousands of homes, the disaster may have far-reaching
social effects. The flooding and destruction of sanitation systems
increase the risk of epidemics, including malaria and typhoid, and the
loss of livelihoods is crippling in communities where many people
subsist on less than a dollar a day.

The features that made the area vulnerable to the disaster - low-lying
land and proximity to water - made it Burma's rice bowl. The cyclone
has done terrible damage to the country's agriculture. Burma is a rice
exporter, and the destruction of the crops in the Irrawaddy will add
to the pressure on international food prices.

International aid agencies were racing to mount Southeast Asia's
biggest relief effort since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The Foreign
Minister yesterday sought help from the UN.

In Rangoon, there were reports of resentment at the military's failure
to assist with the clean-up. If these sentiments grow, Cyclone Nargis
may turn out to have blown away much more than houses, towns and
trees.

The Times
+++++++++++

Tragedy unlikely to topple regime
ANALYSIS: Emma-Kate Symons | May 07, 2008

GENERAL Than Shwe's military junta may be showing signs it fears for
its survival in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, but Burmese
activists, academics and regional analysts say the disaster is
unlikely to spell the end of the rogue regime.

The highly unusual call for international aid organisations to enter
Burma and run the relief effort shows the paranoid and secretive
generals are "clearly worried", said Win Min, who fled Burma after
leading the 1988 student protests.

Former student agitators, now exiled in neighbouring countries such as
Thailand, are not surprised the junta is pushing ahead with its plans
for Saturday's constitutional referendum.

"The military only cares about its survival - and this referendum is
about reinforcing military power," said Min, a Harvard graduate and
professor of Burmese history and politics at Payat University in
Thailand.

Despite a death toll rising above 15,000, widespread hunger and
large-scale destruction of rice farming lands, the military cabal will
proceed with the vote in most areas outside of Rangoon and the
devastated Irrawaddy Delta.

But as the UN, Burmese political groups and human rights organisations
have argued, the constitution is far from a "roadmap to democracy".

It will simply further entrench the military's grip on power, and
completely exclude Nobel Peace Prize winner and imprisoned National
League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under the new so-called
"discipline-flourishing democracy".

"It (the cyclone's aftermath) is a very big problem but it is not the
end for the military regime," said Min. "Right now people are just
trying to survive, they are trying to find food to eat and trying to
rebuild their houses.

"But in the coming weeks, if the people continue to see that the
soldiers and the military are doing nothing to help them, and there is
hunger and the spread of diseases such as cholera, they could organise
themselves to protest."

Malcolm Cook, program director East Asia at the Lowy Institute for
International Policy, agrees with Burmese analysts that Cyclone Nargis
alone is unlikely to topple the junta, which seized power in 1988.

"I doubt very much that the typhoon and the destruction it has caused,
including to the rice crop, will trigger the collapse of the regime,"
said Dr Cook.

"People have been predicting the collapse of the regime for years and
years and it is still there. Clearly it is a political system based on
fear and control, not on popular support and legitimacy.

"That is unless the typhoon weakens the state's ability to keep
control, including through oppression."

Dr Cook said reports coming out of Burma that state employees were
being coerced to vote in favour of the constitution meant the
referendum would not be seen as credible by the West.

But he added: "The regime's friends and countries seeking better ties
with it - China and India - may support the result."

A former student activist from Burma who did not want to be named said
she had been "frustrated reading about the politicisation (of the
cyclone aftermath) from both sides when we need to put people's
interests first and foremost".

She said it was "disappointing" the junta was not letting US
assessment teams in and was controlling the movements of foreign
organisations. But on the other hand, the opposition was "using this
to play blame games".

"I don't think this cyclone in and of itself will spell an end to the
junta - they've been around too long - but they'll have to make some
quick and hard decisions if they want to improve the humanitarian
response, including relaxing controls on aid agencies," she said.
*************From Uncle Yap**************
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