International aid is beginning to trickle into Burma, or Myanmar, as it is also known, despite the obstructionism of the xenophobic junta that runs the country. On Monday, a plane-load of American supplies arrived in Rangoon and was turned over to the military for distribution; more aid shipments from the U.S., the United Nations and international aid groups are expected as the week progresses.
It is not nearly enough, however, and the tragedy is that, as perhaps two million people face death from starvation and disease, Burma is surrounded by generosity and the tactical know-how and equipment to deliver all the aid that the country needs if its government would only permit the world to help.
But the government will not permit it. It seems determined to allow in only as much aid as its army with its primitive equipment, inexperience and inadequate transportation can itself distribute in an attempt to disguise from the Burmese people the origins of the assistance. It does not matter how many Burmese might die as a consequence of this policy as long as the junta remains secure.
There is no shortage of goods or good will waiting to be delivered to Burma -- aid, in fact, is piling up at an alarming rate; already Burmese are complaining that the government is delivering rotten rice to them while the army takes the best of the scant aid supplies. A Canadian emergency response team that can supply clean water is still waiting for visas, cargo planes are backed up at airports in Southern Asia and in Europe, and a U.S. naval task force has four ships with helicopters and 11,000 men and women in the region who can be directed to the relief effort if that is permitted.
That seems unlikely and it leaves the international community with a hard choice -- to intervene without the permission of the Burmese government or stand by and watch as hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people die. Britain has suggested unauthorized air-drops of aid, but the United Nations has a far more effective tool at its disposal -- the so-called "responsibility to protect," a Canadian sponsored initiative that gives the Security Council the authority to intervene to protect a population when its government will not, as seems to be case in Burma today. France has proposed invoking this measure, but Russia and China have threatened to block it with their vetoes. If the worst happens in Burma, if Moscow and particularly Beijing, do not bring their influence to bear on the junta and facilitate the flow of aid, they will be as much to blame as the generals themselves for what amounts to an act of genocide.
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