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Rangoon ceased to be Burma’s capital in November 2005, when the country’s ruling junta suddenly and inexplicably abandoned the city for its jungle redoubt of Naypyidaw. It has proved to be a prescient move. Now, nearly two and a half years later, the generals are comfortably ensconced in their new capital, while Burma’s largest city is left largely to its own devices as it struggles to recover from the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

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One week after Nargis struck the Irrawaddy delta on May 2-3, the regime went ahead in the rest of the country with a referendum on a constitution that it spent 14 years drafting. Despite claims that the referendum attracted a 99 percent turnout, polling stations in Pegu, just beyond the stricken area, were nearly empty. The polling stations were not difficult to find, as they blared brash music inviting citizens to help the regime seal the country’s fate. But there were few takers. Stage-managed months in advance, it proved to be a non-event. When significant things happen in Burma, they tend to come without warning—like Cyclone Nargis, or last September’s monk-led protests.  

The day after the referendum, it was time to return to real life. A short ferry ride from downtown Rangoon, the town of Dala makes the squalor of parts of the former capital look like luxury. Bamboo shacks, many of them swept away by the force of Nargis’ fury, sit atop fetid pools of stagnant water. Like much of rural Burma, most of the town resembles poorly administered refugee camp. Schools and monasteries were full of people displaced by the cyclone.

From Dala, a road leads to Kungyangone, a town located deeper in the disaster area. Along the way, residents occasionally cheered as trucks from Rangoon approached, laden with food and clothing. The mood was, in fact, almost festive, as private donors from Rangoon tossed buns or longyi into the air and cyclone victims raced to catch them. It was an almost bizarre counterpoint to the atmosphere at the polling stations in Pegu, where the loud, forced cheerfulness of the music, played through bad sound systems, was almost intimidating.

Five minutes from Kungyangone, the mood changed dramatically. An immigration checkpoint had been set up to prevent non-Burmese from reaching the town, which days before had served as an unofficial base for foreign journalists and aid workers who had managed to get into the area before the military arrived to take control of the situation. Three German aid workers from a Red Cross-affiliated NGO were refused permission to go any further.

Beyond this point, hundreds of thousands of people remain without aid, waiting for some sign of help. Sources in Rangoon said that some is, in fact, trickling in, although it is contingent on the cooperation of officials who are sometimes acting on their own initiative. But as the military’s chain of command reasserts itself in the region, after largely neglecting it in the run-up to the referendum, a fate worse than abandonment awaits the surviving cyclone victims. According to Burmese relief workers in Rangoon, now that matters are firmly in the hands of the leadership in Naypyidaw, some survivors have been forced to flee again—this time from military-run camps.