Word: burma
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...First Lady Laura Bush rarely speaks out strongly on foreign affairs. One exception: Burma. She has been a consistent critic of the military junta and a supporter of jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In May, she worked with 16 women Senators to draft and sign a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, calling for the U.N. to pressure the Burmese regime to release Suu Kyi. The following month, Mrs. Bush wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, lamenting the fact that Suu Kyi was spending her 62nd birthday while under house arrest...
...Third, there's the changing nature of the state itself. Over the past couple of decades, the Burmese army has more than doubled in size, to over 400,000 men, and is today one of the largest armies anywhere. In many ways, the army is the state in Burma. Other institutions of government - the civil service, the health and education systems, local administration - are either extremely frail or virtually nonexistent. Insurgent armies still hold sway over parts of the borderlands. And in some other areas there simply isn't much government at all; perhaps an army battalion to keep down...
...growing underclass facing greater hardship than ever before. Millions of poor people from rural areas are on the move, in search of work and food, including across the border into Thailand. Many are now in desperate need of basic life-saving assistance, and yet per capita international aid to Burma (less than $3 a year per person) remains about a twentieth of what's provided to Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam...
...Finally there is the looming presence of China, the rising superpower on Burma's doorstep. While Western countries have been wondering how to promote democracy, China has been quietly changing the facts on the ground. More and more of Burma's economy is being linked north and east, with new roads, bridges and railways, and now plans for a multibillion-dollar oil pipeline extending from the Bay of Bengal across the Irrawaddy Valley to China's Yunnan Province and beyond. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese have already settled in Burma in recent years and more will likely follow...
...future democratic government. And it's not impossible that China's growing presence, combined with rising economic frustrations, will lead to anti-Chinese violence. Sanctions and long-distance condemnation do little to address the multifaceted challenges facing the country today. They were a response to the very different Burma of nearly 20 years ago, when it looked like democracy was just around the corner and a good push from friends overseas might make all the difference. Without a fresh international approach, it may soon be too late to avoid a catastrophe in Burma...