Pat Dollard | Young Americans

YANGON, Myanmar: Amid signs that a second cyclone may be headed toward the Irrawaddy Delta, the directors of several relief organizations in Myanmar said Wednesday that some of the international aid coming into the country for the victims of Cyclone Nargis was being stolen, diverted or warehoused by the military.

The aid directors declined to be quoted directly on their concerns for fear of angering the ruling junta and jeopardizing their operations, although Marcel Wagner, country director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, confirmed that aid was being diverted by the army.

He also said it was going to be a growing problem, though he declined to give any further details because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The Associated Press reported that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej of Thailand arrived for a meeting with Prime Minister Thein Sein of Myanmar on Wednesday, a week and a half after the cyclone devastated the delta region. Sundaravej told The AP that the government had given its “guarantee” that there were no disease outbreaks and that no survivors were starving.

Sundaravej also told The AP that Myanmar’s rulers did not want any foreign aid workers because they “have their own team to cope with the situation.”

The AP also reported that the U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there was a good chance that “a significant tropical cyclone” would form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy Delta.

Myanmar’s state-controlled media did not broadcast information about the new storm, The AP reported. Residents of Yangon learned about the prediction from foreign broadcasters and on the Internet.

The death toll from the cyclone rose to 38,491, Reuters reported, citing Myanmar state television. In addition, 1,403 people were reported to be injured and 27,838 missing as of Wednesday evening. Independent experts asserted that far more people had died, Reuters reported.

Late Wednesday night, The AP reported that the Red Cross was estimating that the final death toll would be much higher, giving a range of 68,833 to 127,990.

International aid shipments continued to arrive Wednesday, including five air deliveries of U.S. assistance. Western diplomats said their representatives at the airport were making sure the cargo was unloaded efficiently and then trucked to staging areas.

But the fate of the supplies after that remained unknown, because the junta has barred all foreigners, including diplomats and aid workers, from accompanying any donated aid, tracking its distribution or following up on its delivery.

Wagner and the others said they had not heard of high-quality foodstuffs being stolen and replaced by inferior products. There were rumors in the capital on Wednesday that special high-energy biscuits donated for distribution in the disaster areas had been replaced by cheaper, off-the-shelf crackers.

Although aid flights were regularly seen arriving at the Yangon airport, international rescue teams and disaster-relief experts for the most part remained unwelcome.

A small French rescue team has arrived in Yangon, though it was unclear whether it had received official permission. Diplomats and representatives of aid missions said that visas for overseas experts were still being denied.

Wagner said he and his agency’s foreign staff members were now barred from the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta, even from areas where the group has projects dating from before the storm. Luckily, he said, he has Burmese staff who are permitted to come and go through an increasing number of military checkpoints.

The Adventist group specializes in rainwater collection, water filtration and sanitation - just the kinds of expertise most needed now - and Wagner said outside experts were needed to train local people in hygiene and the proper use of filters and pumps.

Reports have been mixed about how much aid is actually getting through to the delta. One longtime relief coordinator in Myanmar said Tuesday that 30 percent of the people in the affected areas had been reached.

But other agencies were encouraged about recent improvements in deliveries, especially those groups with projects and local staff already in place, and the agencies with established working relationships with the government.

The World Health Organization said that its medical supplies were arriving in the country normally, without being diverted, siphoned off or replaced with substandard items. Its deliveries were even being made to Labutta and Bogale, two badly damaged areas deep in the southern delta.

Wagner said that his agency also had success in getting its trucks into Labutta, although daily rainstorms were beginning to make road travel more difficult. The upcoming monsoon season will make things worse, he said, and he and WHO experts said they expected to start getting reports from the field soon about malaria, dengue fever and water-borne diseases.
Wagner was careful to point out that the afflictions were not unusual in the delta region, saying, “They happen every year at this time, with or without a cyclone.”

Shari Villarosa, the senior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said she was encouraged by the military government’s acceptance of aid and said that it was a remarkable development given what she called the xenophobia of the junta, but that aid itself would not be enough.

“The Burmese will see they’re going to need help getting this aid out, but they’re going to come around way too slow - and too late for many,” Villarosa said in an interview in her office.

A number of countries have offered to bring in aid and deliver it from the south, by ship, but the junta has adamantly refused. One of the generals’ most enduring fears is a seaborne invasion by Western powers that it refers to as “foreign saboteurs.”

Fear of a southern invasion is one of the reasons, along with ominous astrological portents, that the junta moved the country’s capital from Yangon to the hinterlands. The new capital, Naypyidaw, was carved out of the jungle about 300 kilometers, or 180 miles, north of Yangon.

“These guys really believe we are planning an invasion,” Villarosa said. The United States said this week that several of its military ships were in the area and ready to provide help in Myanmar. “It’s nuts! We’re not! But if they hear that a large U.S. ship is off the coast, they don’t receive the message that it’s a genuine humanitarian effort.”

Pino Annunziata, a medical officer in the World Health Organization’s Department of Emergency Response and Operations, said Wednesday that the most pressing public health issue facing the delta was not the presence of corpses in the region’s waters.

“I know this issue of dead bodies is a worldwide concern, but the dead bodies do not represent any specific additional public health risk,” Annunziata said. “This is a very negligible risk from a public health standpoint. We have to focus on the survivors.”

(IHT)