The full extent of the cataclysmic cyclone that has devastated southern Burma has taken time to become so horribly apparent. That was time during which the paranoid and isolated military junta led by Than Shwe should have been straining every muscle and mobilising every resource – in and outside the country – to come to the rescue of its stricken countrymen in the heavily populated Irrawaddy delta.

But this army, so adept at crushing any challenge to its authority and monopoly of scarce resources, and deployed purely to safeguard the privileges and power of the generals, has done nothing of the sort.