Harry’s Place

Sounds like a reasonable plan. Hope it is done the way Neil suggests.

Great post, but check out this fuckwit….

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/14/burma.china

It’s time for China, Burma’s patron, and India, Burma’s neighbor, to grow up and start acting like the regional hegemons they surely are. They both have the resources to deal with this.

Belmont Club:

***Now in all probability if the “good old U.S. military” actually does invade Burma it will incinerate every vestige of armed opposition in its path. Burmese Army units will stand about as much chance as ants before a kid’s homemade flamethrower. And then all of a sudden the assumptions will collapse in reverse order. People are going to say, ‘we didn’t realize invasions meant killing people’; ‘we didn’t realize we wouldn’t have allies’; and finally ‘we did not think it would be so expensive’. And then we will hear that classic line: “I was for it before I was against it.”***

Maybe this can be a chore for the mighty European Union.

Should we have intervened when you refused our Katrina aid?

Another thing you will never intervene in Myanmar, despite what the media feeds you they do not produce oil in even remotely significant quantities, their entire yearly production would not pay for even a week of what is paid in Iraq.

The Burmese military rulers earn billions a year from their natural gas.

And a war costs hundreds of billions, wake the fuck up the ME is home to trillions of dollars each year (well 500 billion to be exact). Iraq was just the foothold the prize is it’s, and it’s region’s oil.

Mike: It’s pointless to intoduce actual facts into one of Flanker’s tantrums. The earth is barren and rocky; the seeds find no purchase there.

It wouldn’t take billions to drop some food aid.

As for the middle east; they are currently robbing us blind with the price of oil, but that’s a seperate issue.

The entire operation is definitely worth a pretty penny, remember you are advocating holding a beachead. That and you would not get any oil in return (even if it is just a pitiful 7k barrels a day according to the factbook)

That said I would not oppose massive food aid drops in the slightest, that is a net win and clearly moral in a reverse utilitarian way.

I have posted elsewhere the following on this subject: Why did the U.S. accept a draw in the Korean War? Ans: China. Why was an invasion of N. Vietnam taken off the table during the war in Vietnam? Ans: China. What do the two aforementioned countries, plus Burma share borders with?
Ans: China. End of subject. Period. No invasion of Burma in this or any other parallel universe. Ever.

Let’s see. Where would I rather be post hurricane? The US or Burma?

The US of course! Then again we have warnings when a hurricane is coming. Why weren’t the Burmese people warned? You can see those fucking things coming a day or two in advance. Oh wait. You have to (somewhat) trust the outside world!

As ever with these neat little dichotomies that HP makes of everything (evil lefty anti-interventionists v enlightened muscular liberals, as ever), the truth is rather more murky.

The French have been pretty matey with the Burmese junta for years, not least international Decent hero Kouchner who was paid by Total to deliver a whitewash of the regime, and urged co-operation and increased ties with the generals. Kouchner is by no means a bad chap, he has many feathers in his cap.

But it’s a detail from the real world, one that suggests that the familiar Manichean purview extolled here may be somewhat simplistic (i.e. that complex international issues are simply sticks to beat British irrelevancies like the RCP, which actually doesn’t exist, and the SWP, which barely does; or big up the usual well paid British newspaper columnists). It’s such a parochial approach.

Nothing is simple:

“Once upon a time, the high-spirited French Minister of Foreign Affairs was a consultant for Total-Burma. This week, the French doctor performed a strange belly dance in a neighboring country he was visiting. In Singapore on October 29 [2007], he came up with another suggestion based more on smoke and mirrors than true substance : a funding project for Burma that would allow the international community to finance micro-credits to assist the country’s development, on condition that the junta become more democratic. All under the auspices of the World Bank… which can no longer operate in Burma since the Americans vetoed it.

On October 30, 2007, in Bangkok, Kouchner laid it on even thicker by singing the praises of Total’s pipeline, which, he said, was beneficial for the people of Burma and Thailand. And again, on October 31 in Beijing, he tried to sweet talk Chinese leaders – to get them to reason with their Burmese protégés – by offhandedly mentioning that French president Nicolas Sarkozy could be convinced not to receive the Dalai Lama during his planned visit to Paris in August 2008. Unlike a certain George W. Bush. During his visit to Beijing in December 2007, President Sarkozy asked his Chinese counterpart to intercede with his Burmese protégés in order to have visas granted to Bernard Kouchner and Rama Yade, his Secretary of Human Rights –raising snickers in diplomatic circles around the region, but otherwise to no avail…”

So, politics as usual, then.

http://takizen.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/total-kouchner-see-eye-to-eye-on-burma-%E2%80%93-oliver-dours/

Benji, Kouchner certainly didn’t white wash the Burmese regime. He was asked to provide a report on Total’s social programmes in Burma and consulted with aid agencies and human rights groups. You can read it here.

http://burma.total.com/en/controverse/p_4_4.htm

That will teach you not to fall for the simplistic, anti western, do-nothing, hate sites, Benji. David Aaronovitch has written an article about you above.

Neil,

Nick Cohen also wrote an excellent article on this in the Observer, praising the response of France’s very good foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner.

“It will take true bravery, as the French foreign minister has tried to show, to stand up to the junta’s horrifying intransigence”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/11/cyclonenargis.burma

Mike

Yes, being happily spoon fed by the Total website is hardly going to furnish you with a critical view. Total have solidly supported the regime for years, along with the Indians and Chinese.

Total paid Kouchner. Use the golden rule: follow the money. No company pays anyone good money to supply a publicly critical report, especially over such a sensitive topic. Kouchner did what was expected of him. Kouchner was paid by Total’s PR - that is, public relations.

Benji, you were caught out lying that Kouchner white washed Burma’s human rights record. This was not true. Now you expect one to believe the rest of your malicious, silly and sectarian spin in your desperation to attack ‘Decents’ rather than deal with the issue at hand.

As it happens, Total do not support the Burmese military. That is like saying you support the Chinese regime because you exploit an international tax haven in part of China. I thought people like you were against sanctions against dictatorships in any event?

Others can view Kouchner’s impeccable history, his renowned integrity, can look at what he was asked to judge in that particular instance when he spoke to human rights groups and aid agencies to see if Total were sticking to French rules, and judge for themselves whether some crass spin on the net that you have latched onto is correct.

Thank you for highlighting some of your words.

Mike

Kouchner supports investment in Burma, and has written a report, in the pay of French corporation, supporting that. This report does what it is meant to do: downplay the junta’s appalling human rights record, in favour of French profiteering.

It is not a credible human rights report; it was written in few months with minimal input from human rights groups and it was paid for by corporation.

If a human rights groups get no money from government and corporations, this lends them credibility. A report funded by a single source (Total) has little. Even groups and reports with government (tax money) support (e.g. State Department or Freedom House reports) have more credibility than this report.

As regards China, no one is suggesting disinvestment or economic sanctions. However, in the case of Burma this is already US govt policy - and I support that.

Look, comrades, all of us know there’s no chance of western military intervention in Burma, but let’s not allow that to distract us from the most urgent work this disaster requires of us… Namely, cranking out yet another 150+ comment thread bashing the same-old same-old as betrayers and thought criminals, while offering ostentatious declarations of support to the Burmese and vague, unspecified assertions about “plans” for “supporting democracy”.

Even shorter Neil D - Reality? Fuck it, it’s optional when there’s moral grandstanding to be done and reds to bait. Forward unto victory!

As Milliband pointed out on the radio last night, the Burmese Junta has an army of 400,000. It seems that any humanitarian intervention would be resisted by said army. Do we really want to start another large war? We must find another way. I read three suggestions here: “the international community should continue to pressurise the Junta in Burma using sanctions, increase long-term direct aid to the people of Burma, and seek to explicitly support the democratic opposition.” Maybe these would be effective. But lets not, again, fall into the trap that there are only two possible options: Do nothing or launch a war.

That radio programme can be listened to here, region by region. Theres a discussion of Burma and also the bit on Darfur by Alex de Waal was, I thought, very good.

Agree completely, and this where we are now. The government failed to make the case in a meaningful way, so much obfuscation so it’s hardly surprising that most people were more persuaded by talking heads on Question Time, than by Paul Berman.

But I also feel a bit of resentment to those “average punters” that instinctively reacted against intervention; that always do for reasons that are really more about isolationism and concern on spending money on solving other people’s problems. This is exactly what I thought would happen; that point about “the West” having no moral legitimacy to intervene” - in what way should that inform decision making?

Fair point about the reality of a 400,000 Burmese army, but really - there isn’t going to be a better chance to test the resolve of that army to support the Government than people turning up literally to feed their families…

Surely wouldn’t fighting a war distract everyone’s efforts away from delivering aid? Indeed given that the concern is about the length of time to deliver aid wouldn’t the time required to organise and put troops into place take longer? Moreover where are these troops going to come from? And where is this war launched from? Or is this just grandstanding as others have suggested?

I don’t see much in the comments here but trivialisation and denigration, rather sad for those who can get so worked up about Boris and Gaza.

Frank Field laid it out pretty well in Any Questions. “We” have three unpalatable and mostly ineffectual options:
Work through the Generals. They will steal most of our aid, sell some and present the rest as their own magnanimity.
Drop aid directly. This is costly and horrendously inefficient. Much of the delta infrastructure had gone. The strong will grab the aid and a black market will develop, with the needy at the end of the queue. And how long can we keep it up? What if the Generals start shooting at “our” planes?
Remove the Generals. This is a logistic nightmare for little return, and carries high risk. The UN will not support it because China (and probably the Arabs) will veto it. It will also take time, during which thousands will die, and “we” shall get the blame.
And just who is the “we” to do all this? The “International community”? Not really, it is only Western democracies that have both the compassion and the capability, and only the “imperialist” USA that has sufficient punch and sufficient decency. Good old Blighty is far too stretched to do anything. China and the Arabs are both sitting on cash mountains, but have no compassion that you would notice, and much to lose should any “intervention” succeed. Russia, Malasia, Indonesia - gimme a break.

That leaves us pretty much with “do nothing”. We can throw a spotlight on the regime, but that would undermine the other viable, if feeble, strategy - to try to get China to lean on it.

After a couple of centuries in which essentially decent and powerful democracies (primarily Anglo-Saxon) could slap down dictatorships almost at will (although sometimes at high cost), we now look forward to a century in which the boot will be a jackboot wielded by the “emerging” powers. Interventions will look more like those of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, Africa and Afghanistan. There will be far worse events than the Burma typhoon, some of which, like Katrina, will hit “us”. “We” would be well advised to direct our dwindling resources to preparing for the possible consequences on our own people, trade and economies, while we still have economies that are not owned by or in thrall to Chinese and Arab thugs.

Alcuin - Another three options, well described. I would argue for the second. The advantages are: no military involvement, which will show this not some effort at expanding an empire; it focuses on the immediate problem - i.e. the starving suffering people; it will be much much cheaper than any invasion; there will be no collateral damage (unless an aid drop lands on a person, but that is a risk worth taking). The disadvantages: its inefficient. So what. Double efforts, and let 50% of the aid go to waste. It will still be much cheaper than the cost of bombs and tanks. Another disadvantage in some people’s eyes is that we get no material benefit from it. Well, if we are really so “compassionate” and selfless, this would prove it.

There, I think the answer is clear, is it not?

By the way, the Burmese generals are neo-con zionist Jews…and that one who is their leader, the admiral in a landlocked country, is the originator of the stealth kosher tax

The key is China: more political pressure needs to be put on it. There are levers (the Olympics being one). They are open to political pressure if carefully calibrated. They are also concerned about political image. Also remember that both Burma and China are still poor countries and they need the West as the West needs them; if the West is serious about democracy it needs to put more pressure on China, as discussed.

“The key is China” - Maybe long term. But the immediate problems need to be addressed effectively, and without triggering a greater disaster.

Short term too. The Olympics is short term; it can be used now to put pressure on the Chinese to pulling some strings in Burma right now. They have serious leverage with the Burmese. If the Chinese really believe they will lose face at the Olympics, things may change pretty quickly.

Bizarrely though, China and the Western governments agree the Olympics is sacrosanct. If it’s sacrosanct it can’t be used as a lever.

In fact, where are we… Mid May. The closer we get to the Olympics the more powerful this lever becomes.

There, I think the answer is clear, is it not?

You will not find much support for this among the charities. This from Jane Cocking, Oxfam’s Humanitarian Director:

“From Oxfam’s experience aid air-drops can help but are hugely expensive, very limited in what they can deliver and are far from being smart aid bombs. Food and mosquito nets are needed and can be dropped from the sky but they cannot be targeted at the most vulnerable where they are most needed. Not only is food needed but also needed is clean water systems and safe sanitation which cannot be dropped from the sky.

“At best aid air-drops can only be a partial solution, at worse they give the illusion that somehow we are addressing this ever worsening humanitarian crisis. The biggest risk is that aid air-drops will be a distraction from what is really needed - a highly effective aid operation on the ground. The highest diplomatic effort is still required to ensure that aid and aid experts are allowed into Myanmar to help save lives,”

The US Navy is best placed to deliver real aid. Their Carriers can generate (if I remember correctly) 7000 tonnes of fresh water daily, but were refused in Sumatra, and are very unlikely to be accepted in Burma.

I know the League of Democracies concept has already been shot down by some, but it seems worth considering as all else fails:

A Liberal Democratic Challenge to the UN: A League of Democracies?”

5:30 – 6:30pm, Monday 19th May 2008
Committee Room G, House of Lords, Westminster

Professor Thomas Cushman, Founding Editor and Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Human Rights, Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College

Exasperation with the United Nations has grown in recent years. Many decisions on human rights issues have been blocked by undemocratic regimes, resulting in a failure to co-ordinate agreement on genocide, and the weakness of its Human Rights Council. As a result, the purpose of the organization as a whole has been called into question as membership is open to all countries regardless of their form of government, meaning that the UN system promotes a moral equivalence between democracies and autocracies. Support has correspondingly grown for alternative institutions that better reflect democratic values. One such possibility is the creation of a ‘League of Democracies’, a proposal that has already won the backing of US Presidential candidate John McCain. So how deep are the UN’s shortcomings in the field of Human Rights, and how likely is it that an alternative institution will be created to address these failings? How would a League of Democracies operate? Which countries would be included? What could such an organization be expected to achieve, and how quickly?

Well, I would definitely support all efforts in that direction. But I think I have a skewed perspective on China, since all the Chinese people I know are at Imperial College, hence pretty privileged (we even had a member of the communist Party whose met the Hu Jintao in our office a couple of years ago). They tend to have hyper-nationalist perspective on things - critical of the Tibet protests, adamant that the BBC is biased against them, and so on. This feeling of “everyone else is against us”, combined with blind support for the official communist party line on events past and present, seems to me to be the bedrock of the Chinese system, and I can’t see how Olympic protests will change this - indeed they may reinforce it.

If you are going to use me as a reference on Burma could you not actually at least quote what I have written about the country rather than about somewhere else entirely different.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/05/crisis_measures.html

The article (which was written 10 days ago) actually says “Junta-ruled Burma is a dilemma for aid agencies. But in the wake of such a devastating cyclone, they must act fast to save lives”. This is the complete opposite to your view that I think we should “do nothing in practical terms”.

My opinion about this website is plummeting rapidly, so I am not going to waste any time arguing with you. Please put a factual correction on the article.

“After a couple of centuries in which essentially decent and powerful democracies (primarily Anglo-Saxon) could slap down dictatorships almost at will (although sometimes at high cost),”

you are quite delusional, aren’t you.

When a regime comes to despise the people it rules over, there seems to be little that outsiders can do to sway the rulers. Look at Zimbabwe. Or Sri Lanka come to that - where it was virtually impossible to get aid to the worst hit after the tsunami due to the endemic corruption. There are plenty of examples.

Even if aid is allowed into Burma, there are few opportunities to move it quickly. Most of the infrastructure in the worst hit areas, and at least one major port has been destroyed and there is little lifting gear or modern equipment available. Meanwhile there are torrential rains and another cyclone reported on its way.

I gave a donation to the Red Cross as I understand they are the only organisation the Burmese junta has officially allowed up country to inspect the damage. The regime and the military are “pinching” whatever supplies do get in. There are reports of such aid as has arrived being put into warehouses and spoilt and inferior alternatives being distributed in small quantities.

Large chunks of Burma are controlled by regional warlords, who are former ethnic guerrilla fighters who have been co-opted onto the government ’side’. They get a Burmese army rank, but run their fiefdoms pretty much as they wish. If troops were sent in they would quickly find themselves defending themselves and forgetting about aid distribution, remember the Brits went to Helmand to build stuff originally. So no military options then.

Neil says:

“…the international community should continue to pressurise the Junta in Burma using sanctions, increase long-term direct aid to the people of Burma, and seek to explicitly support the democratic opposition.”

Quite so, very sensible and sadly there is little else we can or ought to do. Would this satisfy David Aaronovitch?:

“There has been, right from the first day of this crisis, a wing of the anti-interventionist movement that has sought to shift blame for the aid debacle from the Burmese generals to the West in general and America in particular”

Has there? And what exactly is the non-interventionalist movement, how do you become a member? Why can’t Aaronovitch cease his mud-slinging against anyone who advocates a realistic approach to foreign policy and grow up a little.

Conor Foley writes:

“Junta-ruled Burma is a dilemma for aid agencies. But in the wake of such a devastating cyclone, they must act fast to save lives”. This is the complete opposite to your view that I think we should “do nothing in practical terms”.

My view is on how your regional co-operation model, which you proposed as an alternative to ‘humanitarian invasions’ and ‘philanthropic imperialism’ (whatever they are) could be used to overcome the difficulties in delivering aid to the people of Burma.

I would like you to set out how this wonderful idealistic “coalition of the willing” would occur in the short time frame of this crisis, as disease starts to spread in a malnourished population living without shelter, many of whom may have injuries, without sanitation, and fresh water. Meanwhile, the imperial philanthropists you so loathe are sat off the coast with the means to deliver aid.

I fully accept, and have no doubt, that you believe aid agencies “must act fast to save lives”, a more facile and obvious point would be hard to make, but if you have noticed that work is being somewhat hampered by the junta in Burma.

Aaro: The issue isn’t whether we have the right to intervene… but whether or not, practically, we can. Everything else is a polite conversation in a sunny church.

Welcome, brethren, to the Church of St Neil, bathed as ever in glorious sunshine.

We should bear in mind that with the disastrous destruction of infrastructure suffered by the Burmese population, the most pressing problem is clean, safe drinking water. You can’t do that with airdrops. But people can survive hunger much longer than dehydration, or the diseases caused by drinking polluted water. They need a significant engineering effort just to re-establish sufficient infrastructure to start the feeding and watering. They need medical and probably some surgical teams, and that kind of thing needs a lot of skilled aid workers with millitary support.

Another thing we need to keep sight of, is that 400 000 man army. Burma hasn’t refused the aid per se, they want the food, blankets, etc. The junta needs to keep the army on-side and that means they want control of those aid supplies. In these circumstances, food and water aren’t just commodities, they are instruments of control, to be granted, withheld, or repackaged and re-sold for foreign currency, as the regime sees fit. They are ruthless enough to turn every foreseeable crisis into an opportunity. Crooks usually do.

I know this comment provides no easy answers, I have none to offer. But there is no ethical silver bullet to have the desired effect, whilst keeping us on the side of the angels.

Benji

you were caught out lying that Kouchner white washed Burma’s human rights record. This was not true - he does nothing of the sort. Now you expect one to believe the rest of your malicious, silly and sectarian spin in your desperation to attack ‘Decents’ rather than deal with the issue at hand.

As it happens, Total do not support the Burmese military. That is like saying you support the Chinese regime because you exploit an international tax haven in part of China. I thought people like you were against sanctions against dictatorships in any event?

Others can view Kouchner’s impeccable history, his renowned integrity, can look at what he was asked to judge in that particular instance when he spoke to human rights groups and aid agencies to see if Total were sticking to French rules, and judge for themselves whether some crass spin on the net that you have latched onto is correct.

Very droll. However:

1. My post accepts that we are unlikely to so anything in this case of worth, although I think we should attempt to do all we can that is practical, including intervention if feasible.

2. The point of this post is really to focus on starting to undermine totalitarian regimes before events like this occur.

Neil: the article that you linked to was one I wrote about Zimbabwe!

Three days before that I wrote an article about Burma, which appeared in the printed version of the Guardian. If you want to know what I think about Burma then quote from that article. What is happening in Burma and Zimbabwe are completely different subjects, completely different crises and in completely different places.

What part of that do you not understand?

If you had read the Burma article then you would see that the central point that it addresses is exactly the problem about the regime restricting access to humanitarian organisations (so your sarcastic quip about me not noticing “that work is being somewhat hampered by the junta in Burma” is particularly purile).

As I said, I cannot be bothered arguing with you. Please put a factual correction into the article, which quite clearly gives a false and defamatory account of my views.

I fully accept, and have no doubt, that you believe “we should attempt to do all we can that is practical”, a more facile and obvious point would be hard to make.

Conor,

I read your Burma article.The central point was that relief agencies should not make aid conditional on reform. I have no issues with that. I would find the denial of aid relief to suffering people both counterproductive in the longterm and morally abhorrent in the short-term. I also accept that you do not want to do nothing. I retract:

I fully accept, and have no doubt, that you believe aid agencies “must act fast to save lives”, a more facile and obvious point would be hard to make, but if you have noticed that work is being somewhat hampered by the junta in Burma.

which was unnecessarily snarky, and would prefer I had written:

I fully accept, and have no doubt that you believe aid agencies “must act fast to save lives”, but as you have made perfectly clear in your article on Burma the junta are impairing the aid that can be delivered.

However, your Burma article does not really address the issue of humanitarian intervention, which you appear to want to distance yourself from as a failed concept after Iraq.

However, that is why I felt your Zimbabwe article was so interesting. In fact, you do it a disservice by suggesting that it is so region specific. It is clear from the byline, and the fact you also bring in Darfur and Somalia as part of a trend towards regionalisation, that you feel your idea extends beyond Zimbabwe. You bring in other areas:

Brazil’s role leading the UN mission in Haiti and Australia’s role in East Timor are the best known of these, but there have also been lower profile interventions, such as the role of the Organisation of American States in defusing the recent crisis between Colombia and Ecuador, and the successful observer mission to Aceh by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

It is clear you see this model as applicable to many other situations.

Your article did not exclude Burma from such a concept, so all I am guilty of is attempting to see how your regionalisation plan might work in an acute disaster with a regime that denies aid to its own people. I suggest that given the time frame of events in Burma, such a solution would not be practical and would be similar to “doing nothing”. If you choose to misinterpret this as a suggestion that I think you believe nothing should be done in Burma, then there is nothing much I can do about it.

I’d be much more interested, given your implied acceptance in your last comment that your regionalisation model would not work in Burma, if any practical humanitarian interventions without the consent of the junta would be justified and possible (since a full-scale invasion is not the only possibility).

Regards

Conor,

Out of interest, you state in your article about Burma:

Some humanitarian agencies, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, have left the country

But according to the Guardian, the local staff of MSF were only recently ejected by the regime:

In Burma, only a trickle of international aid is reaching nearly 2 million people made homeless by Cyclone Nargis. By yesterday, 11 days after the cyclone hit, 35 flights had landed at Rangoon - less than a 10th of what is required. Local staff of Médecins Sans Frontières have been ejected from the worst-affected delta area and 200 of the humanitarian organisation’s local staff in Bogolay have not been allowed to leave the town. The US has 11,000 troops, four ships and dozens of helicopters and cargo planes in the region, but the junta is determined to keep out all but a handful of foreigners.

Furthermore the MSF site states that:

“Our big advantage is that we have been operational in this country for over ten years with a big number of qualified staff and therefore we were able to send a large number of qualified medical people very quickly into the region who could start work immediately.

When exactly did MSF leave Burma?

Thanks for the correction Neil, but, seriously, I don’t have much time to discuss this.

The article that you linked to was about regional peace-keeping and foccused on the situation in Zimbabwe. Regional peace-keeping is part of a growing trend in conflict and post-conflict zones and, I gave a few more examples from around the world. I did not mention Burma, because the article was written before the disaster (the Guardian held it for a few days for this reason). I also did not mention the post-tsunami operation in Sri Lanka and Aceh (which I did mention in the Burma piece) because they are obviously of limited applicability. Specifically, the article says that a regional approach “emphasises diplomacy over the threat of military force”, which is pretty much irrelevant when you are talking about responding to a natural disaster because there are not “two sides” to try and get together.

The priority in a natural disaster is to get aid to affected people as soon as possible. If the relevant authorities obstruct this or attempt to use the aid for particular political purposes (or as a weapon of war) than there is a much longer discussion about the relevance of R2P and the Geneva Conventions. I have a chapter in a forthcoming book on this and it would take that long to explain it fully.

The continuing assumption by some people here that humanitarian aid workers do not support humanitarian interventions has, however, always struck me as bizzare. If you look at Barbara Stocking’s piece on air drops at Cif, for example, she is just pointing out that they are not a very effective way of helping people. I have made the same point about the the no-fly zone in Northern Iraq and some of the more hair-brained plans for Darfur. Of course, military interventions in certain humanitarian situations will be justified, it is agreeing on what those circumstance are that is more difficult.

I have not written anything else about Burma since last week because I am not there, (and will not be going in the forseeable future because I am returning to Afghanistan in a few weeks time). If you want to get the view of people on the ground read Andrew Kirkwood’s piece of a few days ago or look at some of the humanitarian websites. They are far more in touch with what actually needs to be done than the armchair commentators (and I include myself in that category on this one).

On MSF there was a mix-up between me and the subs. I had meant to refer to the departure of MSF France in 2006. Other national sections of MSF remain there. I have been in touch with MSF UK about that over the past few days.

I thought Mr Foley’s pre-emptive Burma-has-oil-so-it’s-a-conspiracy comment in the CIF combox was a hoot.

I think that military juntas are cowardly in the end, and that the “threat” of forced humantarian aid would, at one and the same time, reduce the junta’s grip on power while relieving the widespread suffering of the Burmese people.

Natural diasters are just the opportunity that’s needed to bring any country’s tyrannical leadership to heel.

That said, the main objective must and should remain solely humanitarian in nature.

If not, then similar humanitarian initiatives involving similarly corrupt and tryannical régimes will be much more difficult in the future.

I think the West should give massive support to Aung Suu Kyi and arm her followers. The junta are evil shits. Juntas always are. Unless the coalition of the willing brandish a few J-DAMs over their heads, I fear they will be perfectly happy to winnow a million or so poor folk out of their little fiefdom. After all, the poor must hate them.

China’s role in preventing UN action on this should cost them the Games. As if Darfur were not enough reason.

Bah.