During a visit to Burma a few years ago, I decided to avoid the country's legendarily deadly airlines and instead hire a car to take me along the somewhat less deadly roads. Distances that on the map looked like they should take an hour to cover took entire days.
The criminal extent of the country's neglect was already obvious in Rangoon, where I saw a mother sitting with a large crowd on a downtown sidewalk, despondently holding in her arms a baby so malnourished that I'm sure it died not long after I gave her a small amount of money -- probably more than she had ever held in her hand at one time, and definitely more than the country's malignant military government spends on any of its desperate citizens in an entire year.
It comes as no surprise that Burma's army, one of the largest in the world, is largely absent during the people's time of need, following the devastating blow from Cyclone Nargis. On Wednesday, Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Burma, said up to 100,000 people may have died. Even so, the brutal government of Burma is a no-show. The best its people can hope for is that the world will persuade the junta to allow international aid without the generals stealing too much of the money. Burma, according to Transparency International, is the world's most corrupt country. It also spends less on health and education than almost any nation on Earth -- about $2 a year for both. By some accounts, most Burmese live on less than a dollar a day, enduring hunger in a country that used to be the world's leading exporter of rice, and one of the most promising economies in Asia.
The Burmese generals, talented as they are, could not have managed to destroy their country all alone. No, to achieve that, they secured support from China. Yes, that China. The same one that grinds its heel on Tibet and helps finance genocide in Darfur; the proud host of the upcoming Olympics is the one country that can influence the greedy generals to let the world do what they themselves should be doing: Help the Burmese people.
China, which never saw a dictator it would not do business with, has sold weapons and handed cheap loans to the generals. If China will not intercede now, it does not deserve even a single head of state attending its precious propaganda games.
Instead of attacking the generals, as the Bush administration is doing when seconds count, it should be pressuring Beijing to push the doors to Burma open. Otherwise, no aid will travel the treacherous roads to the region where people will soon die of thirst, hunger and exposure without urgent help.
The roads outside Rangoon -- which was the capital until recently, when the government, afraid of its people, decided to move the seat of power deep into the jungle -- came to mind when I heard about the latest tragedy to befall the tragedy-overloaded Burmese people. Even without a cyclone, the roads are impassable. That's because the authorities have little to gain by investing in any infrastructure that doesn't enrich the generals. It's hard to imagine large quantities of supplies making it through to the millions in need.
When talking about Burma and Rangoon, it must be noted that the generals who stole power from their people 46 years ago renamed the country Myanmar and its former capital Yangon. As long as their power-grab remains illegitimate, the new names, too, are illegitimate.
Along the road to the ancient city of Bagan -- from where residents were expelled by the generals -- we saw gangs of slave laborers, including children working in the broiling summer heat. With metal picks they carried minor road repairs as a soldier stood guard with his rifle. More common were sad efforts by villagers to make money by filling the impassable craters with the help of a small, broken shovel, rather than the bulldozer the government should have provided. Drivers handed a few Kyat, the worthless Burmese currency, to the emaciated entrepreneurs.
Burma is one of the world's poorest countries. Or, more precisely, the Burmese people are some of the world's poorest because the tyrants of Burma have stolen their nation's vast natural resources to make themselves rich and hold onto power.
Washington's reaction, however well-intentioned, can only prove counter-productive. Speeches by President Bush and his wife praising pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi are fine, but attacking the generals now will only arouse them. The generals plainly don't care about their people. They will listen only to their patrons in China. Right now, China does care what we think. It's time to tell China that it, too, will be held responsible for the tragedy in Burma, unless it acts at once to have the junta open the country to international aid. The road to Burma's salvation goes through Beijing.
Frida Ghitis writes on global affairs.
