The Stealth Rescue

They line the roads south of Burma's main city, Rangoon. Aid groups call them "separated children" because many don't know if their parents are dead or alive. They await food, water and other essentials delivered by private groups operating without legal authority in this brutal dictatorship. It's all surprisingly open; drivers stop, pop their trunks, and hand out noodles and water as soldiers look on. The kids then return to the churches, temples and schools that have become refugee camps across the Irrawaddy Delta.

The storm that battered Burma on May 2 left as many as 128,000 people dead and orphaned thousands of children. Two weeks on, scenes from the disaster zone reveal a halfhearted government relief effort. The generals have barred all but a few international aid workers, rejected help from foreign militaries and called on outsiders to send money and matériel, not people. The strategy: keep the disaster response internal—despite the warning of Amanda Pitt, of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, that this could trigger "a second wave of deaths." To the paranoid men who run Burma, such a calamity is a price worth paying to keep foreigners at bay. "They see the outside world as a bigger threat," says a Burmese intellectual who does not wish to be named.

Yet even this strategy carries a risk. Because the Army's and government's efforts have fallen so far short of what's needed, various community networks, nongovernmental organizations and religious groups are scrambling to fill the void. They're networking on the fly, moving food, medicine and other essentials into the flood zone to survivors, most of whom still haven't received any official assistance. The NGOs "have established channels to work around the government and deliver aid directly to the villages," says Jasmin Lorch of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

These hardworking civilians are not only bailing out Burma's neediest, they are also undermining the junta's efforts to monopolize all forms of social organization. Lorch, who did fieldwork in Burma between 2004 and 2007, found a civil society emerging in the shadows. Community-based schools, orphanages run by Buddhist monks, homegrown Christian charities and several dozen registered NGOs were already "active in areas in which the state fails, like health, education and basic welfare." In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, these groups have become the conduits of foreign aid provided by several dozen charities and agencies (among them World Vision, the World Food Program and Oxfam) that have been denied access to the disaster zone.

One such grass-roots group—formed by church parishioners near Rangoon—sprang into action soon after the storm swept through. Concerned about a low-lying, mostly Roman Catholic town, they paid $300 to rent a boat, evacuated about a thousand survivors and gave them shelter in their own church school. "Luckily our town is rich in rice, so we've been able to use our stock to feed them," says one leader, who requested anonymity for herself, her group and the foreign organizations that fund them. "The military says [the school camp] is illegal, but we're negotiating with them to keep it here," she says.

Nationwide, the relief effort is now made up largely of "three main types: large groups registered with the government, religious organizations and informal local organizations," says a senior Western relief expert familiar with the situation. Most "work under the radar," because the military government doesn't recognize them, he says. The work they do "is extremely vital and extremely sensitive," says the spokesperson of a European religious charity. "We do not want to jeopardize it because doing so would [deny] many thousands of people lifesaving aid."

What happens to these unsung heroes once the crisis passes remains unclear. But if they continue to find common cause with local officials, use their good works to win tolerance from the military and cast themselves as apolitical—and therefore nonthreatening—the social structures they've created could become permanent. And that could lead to a blossoming of civil society that could slowly eat away at the junta's supremacy. "There is a potential for that dynamic," says John Virgoe, Southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "But because of the way the country has been [misgoverned] for so long, people are not accustomed to coming together." Given the junta's brutal record, moreover, a benign outcome remains remote. "Never forget that the Army stands ready to shoot its own people," says one foreign expert familiar with the country's political dynamic. That, not Nargis, is the real danger Burma still faces.

© 2008