Ahead of Sunday’s Asean-UN International Pledging Conference in Rangoon, where Burma’s military rulers will seek US $11 billion in aid to support the rehabilitation and resettlement process in cyclone-hit areas, top leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe told UN chief Ban Ki-moon he would allow “all aid workers” into the country to help cyclone survivors.

This should have been welcome news to all—from the Burmese cyclone victims who so desperately need whatever assistance they can get, to the relief workers, local and international donors, and governments around the world who have waited more than three weeks for a chance to provide it.

However, after so much deceit in the past, observers are generally cautious about hailing Than Shwe’s latest promise as a breakthrough.

Before anyone can say that the weeks of foot-dragging are at an end, we will need to see real progress on the ground. And unfettered access to the worst-hit parts of the Irrawaddy delta must come immediately, not at the junta’s convenience. There’s too much at stake and not a moment to waste.

Clean drinking water, emergency food rations, and medical and sanitation assistance are all urgently needed in the disaster area. Even more importantly, there must be logistical expertise to ensure that all of these things reach the estimated 75 percent of victims who have thus far seen little or no aid. 

Most fresh water in the affected region is unfit to drink. According to the Red Cross, many victims are drinking water from stagnant and often contaminated ponds, which breed disease-bearing mosquitoes. Children and the elderly are suffering from dysentery, dengue fever and dehydration.

Malnutrition is also a growing concern. Even three weeks after the cyclone, victims are continuing to rely mainly on private donations of food, which the authorities are in many cases blocking in their efforts to ensure that “discipline” remains the top priority.

Many survivors also have inadequate access to shelter. According to a Thai medical team now treating cyclone survivors n the Irrawaddy delta, many patients have respiratory diseases because of crowded living conditions and exposure to rain.

Even with all of these problems far from solved, the junta has announced that its rescue and relief operations have been completed. Now, it says, it is ready to begin the next phase—the capital-intensive rebuilding stage, which will claim the lion’s share of the aid the regime believes it is entitled to receive from the international community.

Already, the regime has said that the Myanmar Commerce Ministry and the army-monopolized Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry are coordinating ways to resume agricultural work in cyclone-hit areas. Part of this effort evidently involves evicting cyclone survivors from monasteries and schools where they are currently taking shelter, and returning them to their devastated homes to work the fields.

Perhaps the most crucially missing thing from the relief efforts that the regime has so far undertaken is trust. Recipients of aid know that the junta gives nothing away for free, and are as wary of their self-described saviors as they are worried about the many dangers—disease, starvation and natural disasters—that continue to threaten their existence.
 
The international community also needs to consider how much it can trust this regime. So far, the junta has shown that it does not trust foreigners at all, and responds to calls for cooperation only when it is facing unrelenting pressure.

Bizarrely, at a time when it should be welcoming outside assistance, the regime has been conducting a witch hunt for unauthorized aid workers in the hard-hit Laputta and Bogalay Townships, where owners of guest houses have been ordered to submit their guest registers to local authorities and report the arrival of foreigners or persons from organizations that could be aid-related.

Not only aid workers, but also journalists, have been put on the junta’s watch list. On Monday, eight Burmese journalists who were trying to cover the cyclone disaster in Laputta Township were arrested and detained for one night.

In its recently released report, the Asean Emergency Rapid Assessment Team also complained that it could not visit the region freely.

So far, no one has any clear idea what Than Shwe’s green light for foreign aid workers will mean in concrete terms. But it should not be lost on anyone that this sudden, major concession came just days before the regime intends to ask the rest of the world for a massive handout to deal with a crisis that it has so far treated as a minor bump on its road to “disciplined democracy.”