Myanmar one year after the cyclone

The country receives $2.80 per head in foreign aid, compared with $55 for Sudan and $49 for the communist dictatorship next door in Laos. In particular, almost no one wants to finance infrastructure; so schools, clinics, raised footpaths, fishing jetties and bridges in the watery delta have not been rebuilt.

Most Western governments prohibit the routing of any of their aid money through the regime. Some Europeans are reconsidering even that, though the European Union this week renewed its sanctions directed at members of the junta and at the export of Burmese gems, timber and metals. Japan and some UN agencies already attempt to co-operate with the government on health and education. And some of the independent Burmese groups that emerged to help cyclone survivors are still active. It is hard to argue when they say they deserve some help from abroad.