Chicago Tribune May. 7, 2008
NEW DELHI - With the death toll in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar passing 22,000 and foreign aid only beginning to reach victims, anger is surging against the isolated country's longtime military rulers, analysts said Tuesday.
But what form that frustration might take - and whether it could lead to the political change long sought by protesting monks and democracy campaigners - remains unclear as thousands in the Southeast Asian nation struggle simply to cope with the aftermath of the disaster.
"People in general are quite frustrated and angry, but I cannot say whether that will lead to street protests," said Soe Myint, editor of the Mizzima News, a New Delhi-based Myanmar publication run by exiles. "People right now are fighting just for their survival."
The disaster has posed dilemmas for the ruling junta: To help the country's estimated 1 million homeless, it has taken the unusual step of requesting international assistance, but the response has come with criticism and conditions, including demands to open the country to foreign-aid workers and disaster-assessment teams.
President Bush on Tuesday offered the help of the U.S. Navy, a contribution unlikely to be accepted enthusiastically by a regime that accuses the U.S. of trying to subvert it.
Natural disasters have a long history of altering political landscapes.
The failure of Mexico's ruling party to adequately respond to Mexico City's 1985 earthquake is widely believed to have sparked its eventual fall from power. Fury over Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza's theft of aid money following a 1972 earthquake fueled the Sandinista uprising that eventually overthrew the government.
By contrast, earthquakes in Pakistan in 2005, Turkey in 1999 and Greece a few weeks later spurred political rapprochements when neighboring enemies reached out to help.
"Catastrophic 'natural' disasters create the conditions for potential political change - often at the hands of a discontented civil society," wrote Mark Pelling, a human-geography expert at King's College London, in a research paper. "A state's incapacity to respond adequately to a disaster can create a temporary power vacuum, and potentially a watershed moment."
Myanmar's military junta, which has ruled the country since 1962, has resisted internal and external pressures to allow democratic reform.
It showed little sign of bending to popular frustration in September, when thousands of highly respected Buddhist monks led the largest pro-democracy protests in nearly two decades.
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