How responsible is a government for the impact of a natural disaster? In the ever-widening aftermath of Cyclone Nargis last week, this question is beginning to hound the Burmese Junta and its inexplicable resistance to international aid offers (much of which is still waiting on the Burmese border). Some analysts fear that the junta’s resistance to aid is an attempt to cover up how much devastation has been caused by government shortcomings.

Myanmar’s government has told the UN on Tuesday that it lacked the radar equipment necessary to detect the cyclone early enough for its citizens to evacuate. But a report from India indicates that the Indian government provided all the radar information necessary for Myanmar to warn the southwest Irrawaddy region. The Indian Meteorological Department revealed Tuesday that it had given Burma sufficient warning of the incoming storm. “Forty-eight hours before Nargis struck, we indicated its point of crossing, its severity and all related issues to Burmese agencies,” said a spokesperson for the department.

Whether or not the junta had the information in time, however, communicating a warning to the population in the Irrawaddy region–some 30 million people, over 60% of the Myanmar populace–would have been nearly impossible. In Myanmar, there are six radio stations, four television stations, and only a hundred internet servers. Telephone land lines and cell phone lines together number fewer than a million. By contrast, in neighboring Thailand, albeit with a slightly larger population (60 million to 47 million in Myanmar) there are nearly 50 million phone lines in use, over 600 radio stations, 111 television stations, and close to a million internet hosts.

Even if the government had overcome the communication obstacle, however, the Burmese population had no way to escape the path of the storm. Myanmar has only 2,000 miles of paved roads, and another 27,000 miles of unpaved roads; Thailand has 35,000 miles of paved roadway. Myanmar’s 10,000 miles of waterways, which would have been the most significant method of transportation for those in the hardest-hit areas, are also the most dangerous during a storm of this magnitude.

Al Gore has called the cyclone in Myanmar a consequence of global warming. The loss of life, however, clearly seems to be the consequence of something else altogether.

The Times Online from Britain has written that the government in Myanmar is “Running the country on a combination of internal repression and xenophobia.” This has lead to the (now fatal) insufficiency in communication and transportation infrastructure. As the CIA note on Burma’s economy observes, the nation “suffers from pervasive government controls, inefficient economic policies, and rural poverty.”

This week brought that suffering was brought to a new, devastating height.