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Bangkok: In the eyes of Myanmar's military rulers, everyone is a potential enemy. Even foreign aid workers. As the international community waits to deliver desperately needed aid to Myanmar's cyclone survivors, it is getting a lesson in the mind-set of the country's military rulers: reclusive, xenophobic generals who despise the Western world.
Six days after Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar's western coast, killing more than 22,000 people, the impoverished country's needs remain enormous. After initially pleading for urgent help, the junta now seems in no rush to welcome it.
"The military regime is extraordinarily xenophobic. They are afraid of everything," said Sean Turnell, a Myanmar expert at Australia's Macquarie University.
Among the junta's fears are internal uprisings, a US invasion, globalisation and its capacity to dilute traditional Burmese culture. In the aftermath of last Saturday's cyclone, the junta appears to be afraid of losing face with its people.
"If they can't handle the situation and they let Westerners come in with helicopters, this will demonstrate to their own people the shortcomings of the military," Turnell said.
"They are more concerned with control and maintaining an omniscience in front of their people than saving lives."
Not yet ready
Myanmar's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that it wants relief supplies but not foreign aid workers in the country. It said the government "is not yet ready" to receive foreign rescue workers or journalists and was capable of delivering emergency aid "with its own labour to the affected areas".
After days of stalling, the junta gave clearance Thursday for the first major international airlifts carrying aid to cyclone survivors. But it was not allowing US military planes to fly in critical relief and continued to withhold visas for several UN teams seeking entry, said Richard Horsey, a UN spokesman in neighbouring Thailand.
A foreign military's presence in Myanmar would mark a major concession for the junta.
But Myanmar's foot dragging has a deeper, historical context.
For decades, the military regimes that have ruled Myanmar have isolated the country from the world.
The junta particularly mistrusts the Western world, stemming from more than a century of British colonial rule that ended in 1948.
A parliamentary democracy survived only until the ruthless dictator Ne Win seized power in a 1962 coup. During his 26-year rule, Ne Win's regime curtailed human rights and political opposition and closed off the country to outsiders, earning Burma, as it was then known, the nickname "Asia's hermit."
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