Look at these faces.  While the rest of the world wrings its hands and waits helplessly on the sidelines, Burma’s government says it will accept aid, but that it doesn’t want the help of foreigners in getting it to the people. (BBC News)  The UN is pretty sure the government’s own unaided efforts won’t be enough. 

The UN says that up to 1.5 million people may have been affected by Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region on Saturday. Burmese state media say 22,980 people were killed, but there are fears the figure could rise to 100,000.

Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water or shelter. Officials say people could die because no help is getting to them.

In a statement, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the junta to prioritise the aid effort over tomorrow’s nation-wide referendum on a widely-criticised new constitution.

It would be "prudent to focus instead on mobilising all available resources and capacity for the emergency response efforts", he said.  (BBC News)

International experts say that the military regime doesn’t have the resources to deal with a disaster of this magnitude. (BBC News)   The UN is concerned that failure to get help to the people who urgently need it may cause an even worse disaster.  (BBC News)   

The US is prepared to offer help, but so far haven’t been granted permission to fly in military planes.

"We are in a long line of nations who are ready, willing and able to
help, but also, of course, in a long line of nations the Burmese don’t
trust," US Ambassador Eric John said in Bangkok.

"It’s more than frustrating. It’s a tragedy," he said. (BBC News)   

I’ll say.  I’m shocked that this story isn’t getting more attention from the US media.  Nothing that is happening in the primaries is as important just now as what’s going on in Burma.  Speaking of priorities, what’s happened to ours?  Last September, progressives all over the internet were intent on showing solidarity with the monks of Burma.  Where are they now?   

This is one horrific situation piled on another….piled onto the previous ones. (BBC News)    A BBC reporter, Paul Danahar, has published a report on the current condition of the people most affected by the cyclone.

You drive round a corner and you see a village which has literally been wiped off the map. People are scavenging around, trying to get bits of corrugated iron to rebuild their homes, trying to get some shelter.

For now they have no food and no shelter. Their water supplies have been contaminated…

So the people who have survived are living with thousands of corpses, polluting their environment, polluting their water supply, and the risk of disease taking hold is getting worse and worse by the day.

What is uncommon is that it’s taking so long to get a clear picture of the challenge ahead. Normally three or four days after a disaster such as this, the numbers of casualties lurch upwards. But by now we should at least have a clear idea of the scale of the problem.

We still do not know because there are hundreds of thousands of people locked off by the broken bridges and blocked roads, and by a government which simply cannot commit to allow in outside help and assessment. (BBC News)

The BBC journalists who wrote the piece were literally having to hide from the Burmese government.  (BBC News)   As they said, this is bizarre — normally, governments in countries which have experienced disaster welcome the foreign journalists who get the story out.

We’ve seen close to home what the Burmese people are going through.  Their situation brings back memories of Katrina — the bafflement and misery of the people waiting with slowly diminishing hope for help that in many cases didn’t arrive till it was too late; the disproportionate effects on the poor, while the president was promising to rebuild Trent Lott’s house and his mother was speculating that things were actually working out very well for those ‘fortunate’ enough to get out. 

Here’s more from the BBC journalist inside Burma:

One man said to me earlier in the week: "When we had demonstrations last year the army were everywhere; where are they now?"

Villagers we have talked to say we were the first people they had met from outside their own community. They don’t know why help has not come.

One villager told me: "We don’t know the reasons why - we have heard that foreign aid may be coming. We really want it, but we don’t know when we are going to get it."

This was a man standing in the wreckage of his home. (BBC News) 

And of course it’s worse for the Burmese in direct proportion to the extreme poverty of those who are most endangered by the delay in help.

The BBC has posted some reports from Burmese who were affected by the cyclone here and here.

The French—via Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner—called for aid to be flown into Burma, permission or no permission. (Reuters)   "Kouchner suggested on Wednesday invoking a U.N. "responsibility to protect" to deliver aid without the junta’s approval, but France’s bid
to make the Security Council take a stand was rebuffed."  (Reuters)     The European Union Executive, Amadeu Altafaj Tardio, found the suggestion untenable. 

We cannot force the entry, the delivery of aid, we are not in a position to do that…. We put the accent on the diplomatic efforts to convince the Burmese authorities that the best way to assist the population is to allow humanitarian organisations to work independently."(Reuters)

In the meantime, your help in the form of money is desperately needed.  Doctors without Borders is appealing for aid.  Here’s a description from their site of conditions on the ground:

People are extremely traumatized. One man, a sailor, told us his village had been completely destroyed. He said he had no news of the 4,000 inhabitants of a neighboring village, which is to this day still under water. People tell stories of spending the night of the cyclone hanging on to trees all night long, while watching their villages being destroyed.

People say Burma has never seen such a catastrophe; they have lost everything and have very little hope of receiving assistance. In the Twantey and Dalla areas, 80 percent of the villages are destroyed. Some villages are still under water and not reachable. All bamboo constructions have been blown away. These constructions represent the majority of houses in these villages. A third of the town of Twantey has also been destroyed….

Food, shelter and access to clean water are critical. The population affected by this cyclone was already vulnerable. They now live in extremely precarious conditions, without food or clean water, often sleeping outside. In addition, malaria and dengue fever are prevalent in this area. We’re planning a mosquito net distribution in the coming days.  (Doctors without Borders site)

Please see also, if you haven’t already, this piece by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

CROSS-POSTED AT BUCK NAKED POLITICS

Cartoon by Paul Zanetti, Australia