Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Cleaning up after a catastrophe is hard work in any country - witness the debacle that followed Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. But few places are less prepared than the isolated, desperately poor nation of 53 million that is Burma. Ruled by a clique of reclusive generals since 1962, Burma, also known as Myanmar, has degenerated from a resource-rich country, which upon independence from the British 60 years ago was hailed as a model for modern Asia, into an economic disaster zone. Burma now boasts one of the world's worst health systems, a worrisome situation as diseases fester...
...scene of devastation has reached apocalyptic levels. Aerial photos of the Irrawaddy delta, Burma's rice bowl, show much of the region still inundated by a vast surge of muddy water. The few residents who have been able to communicate with the outside world describe rice fields littered with bodies and villages where not a single bamboo shack was left standing. Even in the commercial capital Rangoon, where structures are more sturdily constructed, roofs were sheared off buildings and nearly all the city's main streets were uprooted of their columns of stately trees. "We have a major humanitarian catastrophe...
...Crack Opens Could there be a silver lining to the cyclone's clouds? For decades, outsiders have searched for a way to pry open Burma's secretive regime. So paranoid are members of the junta about any outside influence that in recent years they have severely curtailed movements by foreign aid workers, forcing organizations like the French arm of Doctors Without Borders to abandon the country. When the 2004 tsunami swept over Burma, the generals refused any outside help. This time, though, the military announced it would welcome foreign aid. Three days after the storm, a trickle of donated food...
...willingness of the generals to even entertain the idea of outside help was enough to excite Burma watchers who have been waiting for decades for something - anything - that might augur a sliver of openness from the military leadership. Hopeful aid workers point to the Indonesian province of Aceh, where the 2004 tsunami galvanized warring factions to lay down their arms. But Burma's seclusion is more akin to that of North Korea, a country that gulps down foreign aid without reciprocal political concessions. And corruption is so rampant in Burma that NGOs worry about how much aid will actually reach...
...Disaster After first announcing that the constitutional referendum would take place as scheduled, the junta did finally decide on May 6 to postpone the plebiscite until May 24 in the hardest-hit townships. Initially a state-run newspaper said there would be no delay because the people of Burma were eagerly looking forward to the chance to vote. But, says Aung Zaw, a Burmese in exile who edits the Thailand-based Irrawaddy newsmagazine, "what the people in Burma are eagerly looking forward to is the military government bringing them food and water and shelter...