Questions for Myanmar’s rulers

And for the Associated Press, the source of this story about the horrendous disaster in Burma.

President Bush called on Myanmar’s military junta on Tuesday to allow the United States to provide disaster assistance after a devastating cyclone.

“The United States has made an initial aid contribution but we want to do a lot more,” Bush said in the Oval Office. “We’re prepared to move U.S. Navy assets to help find those who have lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation. But in order to do so, the military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country.”

The obvious question here is what’s the resistance?! The death toll is over 22,000 and climbing. There are at least 40,000 people missing.

“So our message is to the military rulers: let the United States come and help you help the people,” Bush said.

The U.S. Navy has three ships in the Gulf of Thailand that could be dispatched to Myanmar if needed. The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship, as well as two other vessels in its strike group – the USS Juneau and the USS Harper’s Ferry – are there preparing to participate in an annual exercise with Thailand naval forces.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. military is ready to move Navy ships to Myanmar but will not do that until assistance is authorized.

And…..? What’s the holdup, for crying out loud?!

The article doesn’t say.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said a variety of Navy ships are within reach of Myanmar, including two aircraft carriers – the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Nimitz – as well as a command ship, the USS Blue Ridge, with the capability to coordinate the movement and activities of naval vessels.

Morrell said the USS Essex amphibious assault ship has 23 helicopters aboard, including 19 that are capable of lifting cargo from ship to shore. The Essex group also has 1,800 Marines aboard, he said.

“They (the ships) are all close enough that they could provide valuable assistance” if the Myanmar government requested it, Morrell said.

How about, if they allowed it?

At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said members of a disaster assistance response team were standing by and could get to Myanmar “very, very quickly” when the government gives permission for them to enter the country.

What’s going on here that so much international relief is being held at bay by a military dictatorship while the region is devastated and a humanitarian crisis worsens?

In France, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also expressed regret over Myanmar’s policy on international aid, saying the country insists only on aid that the government would distribute itself and has spurned French as well as U.S. offers of personnel. Kouchner, co-founder of French aid group Doctors Without Borders, said he had applied for a visa to travel to Myanmar to help coordinate, but was highly doubtful it would be granted.

France has so far proposed $309,200 in aid. “It’s not a lot but we don’t really trust the way the Burmese ministry would use the money,” he said.

So….don’t give it to a junta you don’t trust. But since they’re ‘in charge’, what does the world do to help people?

The New York Times has some of the answers to the some of these questions in this article, which updates the scope of the devastation.

A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said that as many as one million people might have lost their homes and that some villages were almost totally destroyed.

Apparently the military junta had a vote planned that would tighten its grip on the people, but the cyclone forced them to delay it in the destroyed region.

The postponement of the vote, a centerpiece of government policy, along with an appeal for foreign disaster relief assistance, were difficult concessions by an insular military junta that portrays itself as all-powerful and self-sufficient, analysts said.

“It suggests that they realize that they’ve got a real problem on their hands and have limited capacity to deal with this,” said a Western diplomat in Yangon, speaking on condition of anonymity because of his embassy’s policy.

That’s a grand understatement. So help is on the way. Hopefully.

A military transport plane was scheduled to arrive Tuesday with emergency aid from Thailand.

A number of other nations and organizations, including the United Nations, the European Commission and Myanmar’s powerful neighbor China, said they were prepared to deliver aid.

In Geneva, a United Nations spokeswoman, Elisabeth Byrs, said that Myanmar had said it would welcome aid supplies and that disaster assessment officials were now awaiting visas to enter the country.

But the ruling regime controls the visas. 

All politics aside, here’s one relief agency getting help in there.