Junta Unable To Dole Out Aid, Experts Say

With only a few aging helicopters and little disaster experience, Myanmar's junta is risking the lives of cyclone survivors by running a massive relief operation alone, aid experts say.

Since Cyclone Nargis struck a week ago, few of the estimated 1.9 million survivors in the country's flooded Irrawaddy delta have received any assistance. Aid agencies fear deadly outbreaks of diseases with clean water and food in desperately short supply.

The military government seized U.N. aid shipments Friday and continued to block entry of many emergency relief experts from international agencies and foreign governments. The junta said it would distribute the aid itself.

"Not only don't they have the capacity to deliver assistance, they don't have experience," Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, which campaigns for human rights and democracy in the country, said Friday. "It's already too late for many people. Every day of delays is costing thousands of lives."

The flow of aid has picked up speed but nowhere near enough, said CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey, reporting from Bangkok.

Food has begun to reach some of the worst hit areas, but there's a chronic shortage of medical assistance and little sign of government help, according to a CBS News source who has just visited one of the villages devastated by Cyclone Nargis.

A convoy from across the border in Thailand, even though it was a gift from the Thai king, still had to be dropped at the airport, where the Myanmar authorities would take it away, Pizzey reported on the CBS Early Show.

"They weren't even going to let the Thai see where it went," Pizzey said. "We have to take them on faith that they are delivering it. But they can't say for sure that it is getting there in the quantities that it has to."

Today, planes were loaded with food, medicine and three generators, items sorely needed in Myanmar, where there is little prospect of any power being restored in the near future. The ruling junta is maintaining its hard line against allowing in aid workers.

Few countries have the capability to deal with a disaster of this magnitude, and Myanmar's plight is magnified by its status as one of the poorest nations in Asia.

The government has spent the bulk of its money on building up the 400,000-strong military - at the expense of almost everything else - and lacks even the most basic equipment for a relief effort.

Andrew Brookes, an aerospace specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, an independent think tank, estimates the country only has 15 transport planes and fewer than 40 helicopters. The planes, he said, are not capable of carrying tons of food, while many of the choppers no longer work.

"Even if they (the helicopters) were all serviceable, it's not even a drop in the ocean," Brookes said. "The task is so awesome. It would faze even a sophisticated force like the British, French or Germans."

Foreign aid agencies and governments, many of which have been stymied in their efforts to get visas for their workers, argue they can bring years, if not decades, of experience from managing disasters like the 2004 tsunami and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake.

They have the helicopters, cargo planes and trucks to quickly deliver supplies, the expertise to reach survivors in the most inhospitable conditions and the ability to avert humanitarian crises like disease outbreaks and starvation.

"As we know, the first two weeks are crucial. Speed is crucial," said Sarah Ireland, a regional director for the aid agency Oxfam, which has yet to receive permission to join the relief effort.

"The government of Myanmar can draw on huge amounts of experience, goodwill and resources to help in this effort," Ireland said. "Whilst we understand concerns the government might have, we would urge them to listen to organizations like us."

Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program, agreed aid agencies are an integral part of any relief effort because of their expertise.

"You need people who know how to do the job," Berthiaume said. "When it's a situation of life or death, you have no time for training."

Others contend that handing over relief supplies to the government - especially one as secretive as Myanmar's - without outside oversight could result in assistance being diverted to the military and junta supporters or lost to corruption. Myanmar ranks with North Korea and Zimbabwe as one of the world's most isolated countries, and the regime is both unaccountable to its own people and suspicious of any foreign influence.

Already, Farmaner said he has heard reports of the military taking relief supplies from some Asian countries and putting generals' names on them as part of a government propaganda campaign.

"We have to be accountable to our donors in the states that paid for this assistance and we have to be transparent," said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We have to be sure the aid is reaching the victims."

So far, arguments on allowing experts and equipment into the country have fallen on deaf ears.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, government spokesman Ye Htut said the junta was already conducting relief operations "systematically and orderly" and saw no need for outside assistance beyond cash and relief supplies.

"Myanmar has prioritized receiving emergency relief provisions and is making strenuous efforts to transport those provisions without delay by its own labor to the affected areas," Ye Htut said.

The government hammered home that point Friday, when it seized 38 tons of high-energy biscuits from two WFP flights that had just landed in Yangon. The biscuits were enough to feed 95,000 people.

That prompted the U.N. agency to say it would temporarily halt relief flights. Later, WFP chief spokeswoman Nancy Roman said flights would resume Saturday while negotiations continued for the release of the supplies.

But the government appears to be more concerned about losing its iron grip on the country, said Pizzey. Instead of news about the national disaster, state TV was broadcasting cheerful advertisements calling on people to vote for their future in the national referendum. That vote is being held this weekend, to extend the junta's 45 years in power.

It is also seen as one reason why foreign aid officials are banned. >>

"They don't want anyone to witness this massive rigging of the referendum," one man told a reporter, who called the election "a sham."