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COMMENT
The problem with dictators and
disasters
By Sreeram Chaulia
NEW YORK - As the full extent of the devastation wrought by
Cyclone Nargis dawns, it is clear that Myanmar's military
junta has earned one more black mark in its egregious record
of rule. United Nations officials reveal that the response
of the country's long-reigning tyrants to offers of
humanitarian aid has been typically suspicious and opaque,
even though the scale of the disaster is massive
(approximately 100,000 casualties and more than 1 million
displaced persons).
The tardy relief measures mounted by the Myanmar army,
coupled with the blockading of United Nations relief efforts
through various barriers, reflect the criminality of the
regime. By inordinately delaying aid flights and visas for
UN relief workers, and confiscating international emergency
supplies, the junta has demonstrated not only total
insensitivity towards the suffering of its own people but
also its paranoid insularity.
Having ruled with an iron fist for more than four decades by
sealing off the country from outside influences, the
generals in their secluded new capital at Naypyidaw, led by
Senior General Than Shwe, clearly do not see any reason for
relaxing the imprisonment of their population in the wake of
Cyclone Nargis' fury. A number of calculations underlie the
junta's obstructionist attitude to foreign assistance for
cyclone victims.
First, it is motivated by fear of exposure of the
socio-economic and political conditions that prevail in the
Irrawaddy Delta, the hardest cyclone-hit region. If the UN
is able to access the Delta, there is a danger of civilians
lodging a deluge of complaints not only about their
immediate travails from the cyclone, but also concerning the
long-term oppression they have faced under military
dictatorship.
While the scale of repression in Myanmar is known
generically, the gory details are locked behind layers of
state intelligence and military penetration of society.
Opening the country to foreign-led cyclone relief teams
threatens, through their inevitable communications with
global media, to spill the beans on the military's brutal
grassroots security policies.
Second, disaster relief organized by foreigners would be
unpalatable to the junta's obsession for command and control
through tight supervision and surveillance of the people.
Admission of outsiders for cyclone relief would be seen by
the hardliners in Naypyidaw as a potential crack in the door
that could widen and loosen their grip on power.
By its very nature, the humanitarian enterprise lingers
after a disaster and devises "post-emergency" projects that
would potentially entail a near permanent presence in the
country. That has been witnessed with the 2004 tsunami
disaster and the long stay by foreign aid organizations in
disaster-hit areas of Indonesia and Thailand. The junta is
afraid that the UN, not to mention the United States, might
use the cyclone as a Trojan Horse to eventually promote real
grassroots democracy in Myanmar.
Interestingly, Naypyidaw did not procrastinate in accepting
emergency aid from India, China, Thailand and Indonesia
immediately after the cyclone. These Asian countries are
perceived as innocuous compared to the UN because of their
close strategic relations with the junta. Their aid is being
handed directly over to the Myanmar authorities without
tracking the endpoint distribution or monitoring the use of
the supplies.
The International Herald Tribune reported that part of the
UN relief tranche that did manage to enter Myanmar had been
confiscated by the junta to organize its perverse referendum
on a new constitution, which was held in most areas of the
country on Saturday and was apparently a bigger government
priority than rescuing cyclone victims.
Diversion of emergency aid to military purposes is a
worldwide problem compounded by bilateral
government-to-government assistance involving undemocratic
recipient regimes like Myanmar.
A third reason why the junta has stymied international aid
is apprehension that it might awaken domestic civil society.
Local community-based organizations, citizens' self-help
groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are
independent of state direction are virtually non-existent in
Myanmar. Strict regulation of societal activism is necessary
for the junta to deflect criticism and popular calls for
accountability.
Fear of 'NGO-ization'
The entry of foreign aid organizations on a large scale
usually goes hand-in-hand with the spawning of local
"implementing partners" and "NGO-ization" of the social
sphere. While partner NGOs of international humanitarian
organizations rarely address sensitive subjects like
protection of civilians from atrocities and abuse, they
could have unintended consequences of allowing spaces within
which more radical citizen activism could emerge. Hence, the
determination of the junta to contain domestic dissent is a
likely factor behind obstructing UN and Western-led
humanitarian aid.
To be sure, Myanmar's junta is not unique in mishandling
disaster relief. North Korea's totalitarian regime has long
shown no mercy for its starving population. Since the late
1990s, more than 3 million North Koreans are believed to
have died from the man-made disasters of food shortages. The
hermit regime has hence become dependent on foreign food
assistance. However, the UN is reeling under donor fatigue
due to legitimate concerns that the aid is being siphoned
off by the Kim Jong-il regime to maintain and even
strengthen the hold of his totalitarian government and the
army on the hapless population.
In Africa, the despotic governments of Zimbabwe and Sudan
have shown similar symptoms of either refusing foreign aid
or misusing it for partisan purposes. The humanitarian
crisis in Zimbabwe under the authoritarian President Robert
Mugabe adversely affects more than half of the country's
11.6 million people who wilt under severe drought, poverty,
an HIV/AIDS pandemic, economic decline and
government-sponsored excesses. Yet Mugabe angrily denies
that his country needs food aid and exacerbates the crisis
by clamping down on expression of social concerns.
The military regime of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan has presided
over a series of life-threatening humanitarian crises by
orchestrating army and militia violence on civilians in the
country's southern and western regions. UN initiatives to
provide material relief and protection to Sudan's people
have been frustrated at every step by the Bashir
dictatorship, with the backing of tyrannical regimes in
Egypt and Algeria. The Myanmar junta's botching of the
Cyclone Nargis relief effort is thus part of a larger trend
of authoritarian regimes mismanaging disaster response.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has argued that
democracies are better positioned than non-democracies to
deal with famines, droughts and other disasters. Elected
governments act in a more responsible fashion when their
populations are buffeted by natural or man-made disasters
since power for politicians depends on popular mandates at
the polls, not through the barrel of a gun. Moreover,
democracies have a relatively freer media that scrutinizes
the post-disaster response of the authorities for the public
interest. The relative success of India in handling
disasters like tsunamis, floods and earthquakes vis-a-vis
Myanmar, North Korea or Pakistan would seem to vindicate
Sen's thesis.
The gross inaction and belated response of the US government
to Hurricane Katrina, which battered the southern state of
Louisiana in 2005, however raises questions about the
quality of democracy and its relation to effective and
humane disaster response. According to a Gallup poll
conducted shortly after the hurricane lashed New Orleans,
six out of every 10 black residents said that "if most of
Katrina's victims were white, relief would have arrived
sooner".
The callous and biased approach of the US government to a
huge natural calamity was contextually no less criminal than
what the Myanmar junta has done in the wake of Cyclone
Nargis. It turns out that both Naypyidaw and Washington have
their respective fiddling Neros. The counter-example of
Katrina shows the limitations of the intellectual case for
democracy as a panacea for improved disaster response.
A state will have to be democratic not so much in form but
in substance (i.e. respectful of minorities and weaker
sections of society) to effectively mitigate disasters or
relieve citizens after they inevitably occur. The junta's
lack of response to Cyclone Nargis sends another
unmistakable signal that Myanmar sorely needs an end to its
dark night of military dictatorship. Yet establishing real
democracy - not the sham constitutional referendum process
held by the junta over the weekend - is the only way for
Myanmar's pummeled people to train and prepare themselves
for future calamities.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher of international
affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse
University, New York.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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