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.

As the death toll in Myanmar surged to 50,000 today, international governments and aid organizations jumped at the opportunity to help the reclusive southeast Asian nation, which spurned aid in the aftermath of a 2004 tsunami. Unfortunately, the Burmese junta seems somewhat less anxious to let aid workers into the country.

The U.S. Embassy provided an initial $250,000 package Monday after Cyclone Nargis swept through the southwest portion of Myanmar. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) followed with another $3 million on Tuesday. The USAID Disaster Assistant Response Team (DART), positioned next door in Bangkok and waiting for permission to enter Myanmar, will allocate the funds.

China has offered $1 million in aid, half of which is measured in relief materials such as tents, bedding and biscuits, and has promised to “closely follow Myanmar’s disaster relief.” China committed no personnel as of Tuesday.

a five-member UN disaster assessment team rushed to the region to mobilize UN relief efforts, only to wait for their visas to enter Myanmar. The UN has 1,650 personnel on the ground in Myanmar, and is waiting for the five specialists to enter before releasing $5 million in emergency response aid.

Operation Blessing International, a non-governmental organization with German funding, is also waiting—with doctors and water purification systems in hand—to “get green light to enter the country and permission to clear customs,” says OBI president Bill Horan.

One NGO, however, has been able to mobilize with the surprising acceptance of the Burmese junta. “Our organization has been given permission, which is pretty unprecedented, to fly people in. This shows how grave it is in the Burmese government’s mind,” World Vision Australia head Tim Costello said.

Myanmar’s government granted special visas to World Vision, allowing them to increase their present staff of 600 to provide assistance and materials like tents, clothes, and medicine.

World Vision analysts—some of the few allowed in Myanmar since the cyclone hit Saturday—have estimated that nearly 2 million people have been immediately affected by the storm. The UN has predicted that nearly 24 million people live in the areas most affected.

Almost two months after the Myanmar government imprisoned and killed pro-democracy protesters, international outrage builds. Today Canada announced that it is imposing “the toughest sanctions in the world” against Myanmar. But Myanmar Deputy Defense Minister Aye Mint is still showing the world a brash front, announcing today that the country “will not accept the interferences that will harm our sovereignty.”

Sandra Bunn-Livingstone, executive director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide USA, told WoW that Myanmar’s murder of religious dissidents is nothing new. She said the government’s motto is “one race, one language, one religion,” and when governments sponsor one religion and suppress all others, “they also eventually turn against that one religion.”

Myanmar brutally persecutes Christians, who are usually guilty of being a different race and speaking a different language, too. Christian Solidarity Worldwide obtained a leaked government document that outlines “A Program to Destroy the Christian Religion in Burma.” The document directs Buddhists to marry Christian women, target Christian teens who wear Western clothing, report and imprison Christian evangelists, and attack Christianity’s weakest points.

These are the government’s gentle methods. Christian villagers usually live in pockets of ethnic minorities and often set a bamboo cross on the village’s highest hill. The military enslaves the men in these villages, raping the women and children and then selling them to slave traders across the border in China and India. Bunn-Livingstone said, “They’ll put a gun to villagers’ heads and say, ‘I’ll blow your brains out unless you convert to Buddhism.’” The military pays and feeds villagers who renounce their faith. Some Christians flee to refugee camps in Thailand, but the military crosses the border and attacks these camps as well.

Bunn-Livingstone said Christians numbered among the 110,000 pro-democracy protesters the military attacked last September. Christian Solidarity Worldwide is working with humanitarian organizations, European governments and the United States to pressure Myanmar’s government and to persuade China and India to stop propping up the regime with trade and weapons. “Now’s the time,” Bunn-Livingstone said. “With the protests, it’s so obvious that everyone’s suffering.”