Bangkok: Help For Burma Soon To Run Dry

Over at Bangkok’s old international airport Don Mueang you will not only find the old international passenger terminals as dark and eerie as a ghost town. You’ll find new life at the revived domestic terminal – and you’ll find a trace of life at Cargo Terminal 3: Welcome to the U.N. World Food Program’s staging area to reach Burma’s victims of Cyclone Nargis.

While filing this small report it’s exactly four weeks to the day since Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta. And it’s a week to the day that U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki Moon inspected mountains of relief supplies destined for Burma at Don Mueang’s jam-packed Cargo Terminal 3.

Not too soon though that terminal will be as empty again as a ghost hall. “We’re not getting any new supplies,” says a Belgian U.N. coordinator. Hundreds of tons of instant noodles, mosquito nets and water purifiers still wait to be loaded on board the gigantic Russian Illushin 76 transporter to be flown to Rangoon. But new supplies seem to run dry.

WFP spokesman Paul Risley assures us that new supplies are coming in. There’s even good news. All recent WFP visa requests were granted by the Burmese government, Risley says. With ten new international staff flown to Rangoon the past week there are now 26 international WFP personal in Rangoon. But that’s exactly the problem:

“To move our staff from Rangoon to the Delta still isn’t very easy,” Risley told us in Bangkok. “The same old problem is continuing and makes it very difficult to do our job.”

At least the United Nations get their people to Rangoon. Other major relief organizations? “Visas remain a major challenge,” Risley says. “The government is (even) reluctant to grant permission for water filters.” Why?! “They’re preferred, specialized goods.”

There are signs that the major international aid push for Burma is about to die down. The first batch of Thai medics just returned from the delta, while the commander of U.S. naval operations in the Pacific Ocean, Admiral Tim Keating, said that U.S. Navy ships off the coast of Burma waiting to deliver thousands of tons of food, shelter and medical equipment might soon depart.

The Burmese regime, fearing an invasion, still refuses to give the U.S. warships permission to unload the goods directly at Rangoon port. Because, as the quixotic regime tries to fool not only itself, there’s no more need for outside help.

At the same time, after several days of praising the work of the United Nations and charities, the regime’s official mouthpiece The New Light of Myanmar renewed its attacks on foreign aid and insisted Burmese could survive without outside help.

“The people (of the Irrawaddy Delta) can survive with self-reliant efforts even if they are not given chocolate bars from (the) international community,” the paper wrote on May 30st.

The people of Myanmar, as the regime renamed Burma, “can easily get fish for dishes by just fishing in the fields and ditches. In the early Monsoon, large edible frogs are abundant.”

Well then, let them eat frogs.

And why not dip them in a chocolate fondue. Yummy!