Myanmar鈥檚 government has been in the news for the persecution of its Muslim minority, the Rohingya people. This has left many questioning whether they should visit the reclusive Southeast Asian nation. While traveler safety isn鈥檛 a concern and the burgeoning tourism industry provides much needed employment, visiting the country remains a complex personal decision, says Mika Itavaara, a Finnish expat, Myanmar travel expert, and the owner of tour operator .

鈥淚n my opinion, you should visit for the people, not the government,鈥� he says. If you do go, , like the new , one of the first hotels to open in the 800-island Mergui Archipelago. Its founder, American Chris Kingsley, has laid the groundwork for responsible tourism in the region. Wa Ale鈥檚 9,000-acre namesake island is located in , almost guaranteeing it will never be overbuilt.

Since its opening in October, Kingsley鈥檚 conservation efforts have already helped save more than 7,500 sea turtles by guarding their nests from poachers, and have protected the surrounding coral reefs from damaging boat anchors by installing safer sea moorings. Built with reclaimed wood, each of the 11 tented villas and two luxe treehouses are assigned a private guide for exploring the maze of jungle-covered isles. Eight dive sites near the island promise sightings of whale sharks, dolphins, and eagle rays, while kayak excursions might include glimpses of white-bellied sea eagles unique to the archipelago.

Even more enticing than the wildlife is the chance to visit the floating villages of the Moken sea nomads who call the region home.听

Access

From Bangkok, it鈥檚 an hourlong flight to Rangong, Thailand, via Nok Air or Thai AirAsia, followed by a 15-minute boat ride across the border to Kawthaung. From there, a two-hour boat journey arranged by Wa Ale takes you to the resort. From $500 per person for a double room, all-inclusive.

Weather

The hotel is closed June through September for monsoon season. Annual average temperatures hover in the eighties, and light winds November through March provide calm, clear water for snorkeling and diving.

Local Flavor听

Chickpeas are a star ingredient in many Burmese meals, including Shan tofu. The polenta-like dish originated in the Shan State and is made of the peas in lieu of soy. At Wa Ale it comes topped with poached eggs at breakfast.

Go With

鈥檚 Itavaara has been organizing tours across Myanmar for over 15 years. In addition to Wa Ale, some of his favorite experiences include trips to the 3,000-plus pagodas and temple ruins in central Myanmar鈥檚 Bagan Archaeological Zone, the 326-foot-tall Shwedagon Pagoda, and the Old Quarter in Yangon, the country鈥檚 largest city.

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Early last November, was on a ledge roughly 1,100 feet below the top of Hkakabo Razi, pinned down by one of the harshest winds she鈥檇 ever experienced. Hkakabo Razi, in northern Myanmar, is believed to be the highest mountain in Southeast Asia, and O鈥橬eill was leading a two-month expedition to measure the peak鈥檚 true height. If successful, it would be only the second ascent of the relatively unexplored mountain, and a month into it her six-person team was coming apart.

O鈥橬eill had spent two years planning the expedition, poring over Google Earth and World War II鈥揺ra charts. (Modern maps of the area are nonexistent.) Her team of climbers鈥擭orth Face athlete Emily Harrington, National Geographic writer , filmmaker , photographer , and , the base-camp manager鈥攈ad traveled across Myanmar, then marched more than 100 miles through dense jungle as their food supplies dwindled and gear was abandoned to save weight. Once on the mountain, they climbed for five days over false summits and up dead-end routes before finally, their strength diminishing, they neared the top. Up to this point, the climbing was similar to a lot of other Himalayan peaks鈥攕now packed into ice鈥攂ut the group were unsure what conditions they would encounter on the narrow ridge leading to the summit.听

At high camp, the team discussed the summit push. Everyone agreed that a three-person team would be best. As the conversation turned to who should go, O鈥橬eill realized the men had already decided that she should stay behind.

鈥淭he guys were seriously distressed about the safety of the team,鈥� Jenkins later in one of many expedition blog posts on National Geographic鈥檚 website. 鈥淚t was unsafe and thus unwise for Hilaree and Emily to continue the climb. Emily readily acknowledged that she did not want to go any higher; but Hilaree was deeply, furiously offended鈥� Would ego actually trump safety?鈥�

Ozturk caught the confrontation on film in , a documentary about the climb, which premiered last May at Mountainfilm in Telluride.听

鈥淵ou don鈥檛 think I can do this and be strong and fast on it, fast enough to get us there,鈥� O鈥橬eill says in the film.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e taking it personally,鈥� Jenkins says.听

鈥淥f course I am.鈥�

As a ski mountaineer, O鈥橬eill had covered similar terrain the year before on Papsura, a 21,165-foot peak in India. She believed that she had the strength and the r茅sum茅鈥�35 expeditions over 15 years, ranging from mellow climbs like Kilimanjaro to a difficult ascent of Mount Waddington in British Columbia鈥攖o reach the summit. But most of all, she was shocked that the men had come to a decision without consulting her.听

鈥淚 was totally stunned by that sort of betrayal,鈥� O鈥橬eill recalls now. 鈥淚 was also really pissed off.鈥�

Both Jenkins and Ozturk maintain that they were merely starting the discussion about who was best suited for the technical summit push. (Richards could not be reached for comment.) Jenkins pointed out that O鈥橬eill had been nearly hypothermic upon reaching high camp, and Ozturk said that the men had more experience with the fast, technical climbing ahead of them.

鈥淲e were trying to have an open conversation about how we could summit safely,鈥� says Jenkins.听

Over the next several hours, the men tried to talk O鈥橬eill out of climbing the last stretch of the peak. 鈥淚t was like musical tents, everyone cycling through,鈥� Ozturk says. Tempers flared. At one point in Down to Nothing, O鈥橬eill says, 鈥淚鈥檓 going to say one thing, and it鈥檚 not going to be nice. Fuck you, Mark, for the vote of confidence.鈥�

Richards eventually got tired of the arguments and said he鈥檇 give O鈥橬eill his spot. But come summit day, she felt that conditions were too harsh and her ability to lead had been compromised. She backed down.听

It wasn鈥檛 mountaineering鈥檚 first disagreement, but it was one of the most widely publicized. Ultimately, the men abandoned their summit attempt, pushed back by wind, cold, and a treacherous approach. Tired and hungry, the whole team descended Hkakabo Razi and trekked back through the jungle for two weeks on a diet of nettle soup and rice. O鈥橬eill returned to her family in Telluride, rail thin and depressed.

鈥淚t nearly broke me,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t was almost my retirement trip.鈥�

If this had been O鈥橬eill鈥檚 final expedition, it would have capped an impressive career. The 42-year-old is the first woman to have climbed both Everest and neighboring 27,940-foot Lhotse in 24 hours. (She did it on a sprained ankle.) She skied from the summit of 26,906-foot Cho Oyu, the world鈥檚 sixth-highest mountain, without supplemental oxygen. She climbed Kilimanjaro with a broken leg. She has made first ski descents of big peaks in Mongolia, India, Russia, and Greenland.听

The youngest of three children, O鈥橬eill started skiing at age three in Seattle. In winter, she rode the bus to local ski area Stevens Pass with her brother and sister. In summer, she traveled the Inside Passage on the family鈥檚 boat. She learned to climb between biology courses at Colorado College. After graduating, she left for Chamonix, France, where she planned to spend a winter. She stayed five years, working as a cycling guide and freeskiing on her days off. She became the European Women鈥檚 Extreme Skiing champ in 1996, but it wasn鈥檛 until she took up alpine climbing that she found her niche.听

鈥淥n my own, I think I鈥檇 be a good skier on big mountains, no big deal,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut when I combine it with climbing, the meeting of sports has definitely played in my favor.鈥�

In 1999, O鈥橬eill joined ski mountaineer Mark Newcomb and photographer Chris Figenshau to ski the Bubble Fun Couloir on Wyoming鈥檚 Buck Mountain, a precipitous line that ends at a 200-foot cliff. It was the first female descent, and it launched O鈥橬eill鈥檚 career. 鈥淚 really didn鈥檛 know what I was getting myself into,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t was really steep. It was a bigger deal than I knew at the time.鈥澨�

Three weeks later, the North Face put her on a plane to the Indian Himalayas for her first expedition, up 19,688-foot Deo Tibba. She started rolling through trips at a rate of three or four a year. In 2001, she became a paid North Face athlete.

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 even know this lifestyle existed,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he door was wide open for me in the beginning.鈥�

O鈥橬eill鈥檚 athleticism and stoicism have won the admiration of other climbers. 鈥淚 have enormous respect for her,鈥� Jenkins says. 鈥淪he鈥檚 the toughest woman I鈥檝e ever met.鈥�

鈥淪he鈥檚 got presence, charisma, confidence, and she鈥檚 incredibly strong鈥� says mountaineer Conrad Anker. 鈥淛ust getting to the base of that mountain in Myanmar was an incredible feat.鈥澨�

It took O鈥橬eill months to get over the Hkakabo Razi ordeal. The mental and physical aspects were exhausting enough, but she also felt that Jenkins had publicly vilified her in one of his posts. (O鈥橬eill of the climb for the North Face鈥檚 website, leaving out the group dynamics.)

To recover back in Telluride, she skied, hiked, and spent time with her husband, Brian, a realtor and an accomplished skier, and their two sons鈥擰uinn, eight, and Grayden, six. She has considered scaling back her mountaineering trips to be with her family more often. 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to return from an expedition to that day-to-day humdrum of life, having to pay bills, go grocery shopping, and clean toilets,鈥� she says.

It affects her relationship with her family, too. Brian looks after the boys while she鈥檚 gone, and she sometimes envies their closeness. 鈥淚 feel like an alien when I come home,鈥� she says, 鈥渓ike a stranger in the house stepping into the routine and getting in the way.鈥�

Sometimes she imagines finding another sport鈥攅ndurance running, say鈥攖hat she can do during the day and still coach her boys鈥� soccer games in the evening.

But O鈥橬eill isn鈥檛 very good at scaling back. When Quinn was ten months old, she left for a two-month expedition to attempt the first female ski descent of Gasherbrum II in Pakistan. (Conditions forced her to turn around at 24,600 feet.) 鈥淚 look back now and think, Wow, that was probably a little aggressive,鈥� O鈥橬eill says, although she notes that male climbers with kids are rarely questioned about the risks they take.听

When the opportunity arose to join Harrington and her boyfriend, mountaineering guide , in attempting the first ski descent of Makalu, the world鈥檚 fifth-highest peak, O鈥橬eill signed on.听

She also decided to incorporate some family time into the expedition鈥攖his year, Brian and the boys will join her on the ten-day trek to Makalu base camp in August. (Teacher: 鈥淲hat did you do on your summer vacation?鈥� O鈥橬eill boys: 鈥淭rekked to Makalu so Mom could make the first ski descent.鈥�)

O鈥橬eill will then climb with Ballinger, Harrington, and pro skiers Jim Morrison and Kit DesLauriers, the first person to ski the Seven Summits. Makalu is one of the Himalayas鈥� most difficult peaks, with steep ice and a technical rock ridge before the summit. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a beautiful mountain,鈥� O鈥橬eill says. 鈥淢y goal is to climb it without oxygen. But it鈥檚 a much harder climb than Cho Oyu, and I鈥檓 ten years older.鈥澨�

Whether she鈥檚 successful is secondary to the effort itself. 鈥淚 have this intense fear of every day being the same,鈥� O鈥橬eill says. 鈥淢ountaineering gives me a way to keep my life somewhat uncomfortable.鈥� 听听 听

The Making of a First Descent

At 27,766 feet, and with several technical sections, Makalu is one of the most demanding climbs in the Himalayas. Here's how the team plans to do it.

Woman Versus Mountain

Few expeditions have ventured to the world鈥檚 fifth-highest peak, but O鈥橬eill has been working toward this for a long time.听

MAKALU
May 1955: Frenchmen Jean Couzy and Lionel Terray summit via the north col.
May 1977: An American team fails to climb the mountain via the west face.
May 1990: American Kitty Calhoun is the first woman to summit.
May 1997: A five-member Russian team summits via the west face.
January 2006: French mountaineer Jean-Christophe Lafaille disappears while making a solo attempt at the first winter ascent.
February 2009: The first successful winter ascent is completed by Italian Simone Moro and Kazakh Denis Urubko.

翱鈥橬贰滨尝尝
December 1972: Born in Seattle.
March 1996: Wins the European Women鈥檚 Extreme Skiing Champion, Chamonix, France.
January 1999: Makes first female ski descent of Bubble Fun Couloir, on Wyoming鈥檚 Buck Mountain.
May 2002: Completes the first ski descent of all five Holy Peaks in Mongolia鈥檚 Altai range.
October 2005: Skis from the summit of Cho Oyu without supplemental oxygen.
May 2012: Becomes the first woman to climb two 8,000-meter peaks鈥擡verest and Lhotse鈥攊n 24 hours.

听

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During one of the deadliest weeks on Everest, in May of 1996, a vicious storm overcame the three multinational climbing teams on summit day. Eight people died, and reports of the catastrophe, chronicled in 国产吃瓜黑料 and elsewhere, called into question the dynamics of accountability among climbers attempting the world鈥檚 highest peak.

As any experienced mountaineer will attest, predicting who will reach the summit on Himalayan mountaineering expeditions and who will die trying is nearly impossible. But according to a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, you may have a higher chance of succeeding鈥攐r dying鈥攊f you come from a country with a rigid social structure. Anecdotally, climbers already have a sense that this is true. Expeditions from the former Warsaw Pact nations and from Korea have a reputation for pushing for the summit at all costs.听Conversely, the study also found that teams from more egalitarian countries summited less often and experienced fewer deaths.

鈥淗ierarchy both elevated and killed in the Himalayas,鈥� report the study authors, a doctoral candidate and a professor from Columbia Business School鈥檚 management department and an assistant professor from the Department of Organisational Behavior at INSEAD in France.

The researchers examined 5,104 expeditions鈥攃ommercial and non-commercial鈥� that took place on more than 100 mountains between 1905 and 2012, using data from the , an online archive of expedition records. They controlled for a wide range of variables, including the year each expedition took place and whether the climbers used supplemental oxygen. They elected not to include expeditions that were comprised of multiple nationalities, meaning that teams like the one Jon Krakauer traveled with during the 1996 disaster were excluded. (Krakauer, an American, was led by a guide from New Zealand and accompanied by a Japanese woman and other Americans. Monoethnic teams from 1996 were included in the study.)

Each country was rated on how rigid its cultural hierarchy is relative to others. (The calculus for this is derived from the research of contemporary social psychologists S.H. Schwartz and Geert Hofstede.) China was rated the most hierarchical, with Russia and India close behind. Norway was the most egalitarian, followed by Austria and Italy. The U.S., ranked in the middle of the pack, was rated as being slightly more hierarchical than Canada. The authors wouldn鈥檛 disclose which countries鈥� teams were responsible for the most deaths or the most summits out of concern for tarnishing reputations and peddling stereotypes. Anecdotally, climbers already have a sense that this is true. (Interestingly, the authors found that hailing from a country with a strong hierarchical culture did not have the same effect鈥攇ood or bad鈥攐n solo climbers, who are rare but nonetheless present in the Himalaya.)

The findings confirm long-held beliefs among experienced climbers. 鈥淚 think we kind of knew it from the seat of our pants,鈥� American expedition leader said of hierarchy鈥檚 influence. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 good to see it鈥檚 been proven.鈥� They are also consistent with past research on social structure. 鈥淗ierarchy is an advantage but it鈥檚 also a disadvantage,鈥� said Cecilia Ridgeway, the Lucie Stern professor of social sciences at Stanford University, who has studied hierarchies and collective action extensively.

In dissecting why more hierarchical groups are outfitted for both ultimate success and ultimate sacrifice, the authors take a scientific approach. 鈥淭he academic literature would suggest decreased psychological safety, better group coordination, and decreased information sharing would all be factors in hierarchical cultures,鈥� said study coauthor Eric Anicich. 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 want a reader thinking that we can predict life or death or summiting probability based on which country they鈥檙e from.鈥�

According to Ridgeway, the crucial factor to a hierarchical team鈥檚 success or failure is often the leader鈥檚 competence. Whether or not that competence is compromised by certain ingrained social structures is hard to say. What is clear, Rideway said, is that egalitarian teams are better positioned to survive in the face of potentially dooming conditions, which can overwhelm a single decision maker.

鈥淭he reason for that is when they hit these complex situations, under best circumstances they share their information, the ideas bounce off, and they come up with things that none of them would have thought of alone about how to survive,鈥� Ridgeway said.

More than simply confirming suspicions and reinforcing past research, the results offer a stark warning for climbers to consider when assembling their teams, no matter what nation they hail from. Hierarchy is inherent in the relationship between expedition guides and the climbers they lead. Guides dictate the route taken, how fast and how far their teams go each day, and the altitude acclimatization process, among other things鈥攁ll of which complicate an ascent or descent.

鈥淭he clients pay you for your judgment. I鈥檓 there to protect them,鈥� says international mountain guide , who lives in Chile and has climbed the 26,906-foot Cho Oyu in Nepal. He isn鈥檛 convinced that culture is the key factor driving a team鈥檚 fate. 鈥淣o way does it matter,鈥� he said. After all, the Himalaya is a fluid and dangerous environment, not a vacuum. Success or failure is never the result of one factor, but many. 鈥淵ou still don鈥檛 know who鈥檚 going to summit,鈥� Mujica said. 鈥淪ome people can get sick. It鈥檚 one day at a time.鈥�

The question then is how can a team find an optimal balance of egalitarianism within the inherent hierarchy of a guided expedition?

鈥淭he team would have to know itself well and all the members would really have to trust one another and be willing to go with their boss but also pull back from that in a kind of kaleidoscopic way,鈥� Ridgeway said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not impossible but it wouldn鈥檛 be easy to do. It would depend a lot on the interpersonal skills, not just the climbing skills, of everybody involved.鈥�

Anker has distilled Rideway鈥檚 theory into a simple method. 鈥淵ou have a Scotch every night. 鈥楬ow鈥檇 your day go?鈥� It鈥檚 the same with having a family,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou sit around and talk through things.鈥�

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On June 22, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named the 听in Botswana the 1,000th site on its World Heritage List. The list spotlights the world’s most important natural wonders and cultural sites, and the Okavango Delta certainly fits the bill.听

Instead of ending in the ocean as most river deltas do, the Okavango River empties into a savannah to create the 6,500-square-mile delta. It’s also rare in that “the annual flooding from the river Okavango occurs during the dry season, with the result that the native plants and animals have synchronized their biological cycles with these seasonal rains and floods,” according to the UN World Heritage statement.

The fan-shaped delta is home to several endangered large-mammal species, including cheetah, white and black rhinoceros, African wild dog, and lion, making it a top safari destination in both Botswana and Africa at large.

The delta is best known for explorations by mokoro鈥攄ugout canoes that easily navigate the mazelike lagoon channels and papyrus swamps. These nonmotorized boats glide silently through the water, making them ideally suited for game watching. Tented camps at destinations such as Khwai and outfitted by and are launching points for nighttime game drives, during which visitors tour by Jeep when the animals are most active.

The list of World Heritage Sites keeps growing; the committee added听. UNESCO identifies natural (Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, for example) and man-made landmarks (the Pyramids of Egypt) that are of outstanding value to humanity. Although UNESCO designates the sites in the name of cultural preservation, it’s up to the individual countries to take action on the directive.

This year, the first site in Myanmar and one in the United States听, bringing the total number of World Heritage Sites to 1,007 in 161 countries.

In Myanmar, the site includes the remains of three brick, walled, and moat-encircled towns (Halin, Beikthano, and Sri Ksetra) that flourished between 200 BC and 900 AD. The cities include partially excavated palace citadels and monumental Buddhist stupas.

In the United States, , also a Louisiana State Park, became the country’s 22nd site UNESCO site. At this site, 3,400-year-old earthworks stand as a testament to the master engineering talents of Native Americans who constructed the five mounds and six concentric ridges around a plaza that was a major political, trading, and ceremonial center in its time.

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Endless flying hopefully gets you someplace interesting. And today, it did鈥攔ight in the middle of a waking dream floating above Myanmar鈥檚 ancient Kingdom of Bagan. I was there on assignment for , biking through Mandalay, Inle Lake, and Bagan, shooting for their catalog.

About a year ago I stumbled across one of the most remarkable landscape photographs I鈥檇 ever seen; red balloons rising with the sun above a sea of glowing temples. I didn鈥檛 know where it was taken or even if it was even real. Little did I know I鈥檇 soon have the opportunity to shoot aboard one of those very same balloons.

I鈥檝e been anxious to try out my new full-frame, Nikon D800E and couldn鈥檛 imagine a better location. I also brought along my rangefinder (a Leica M9 with the Noctilux 50mm f/.95 lens) for some wide-open shooting.

Bagan is a complex of temples, monasteries, and stupas constructed in the Mandalay region of Myanmar between the 9th and 13th centuries. There are literally 2,000 temples here on the shore of the mighty Irrawaddy River, most built to honor the Buddha. Each temple is a work of art, worthy of exploration, but the immensity of Bagan is best appreciated from up high. Early risers climb Shwesandaw Pagoda (among quite a few other coveted spots) in the dark to view the sunrise. Those who make it can鈥檛 help but notice a fleet of picturesque balloons gracefully ornamenting the morning sky. Onboard those six beautiful balloons, 100 people are grinning from ear to ear, gazing at a Pandora-esque vista, and waving to the hoards of temple-bound sun worshipers.

My adventure began at 5:30 a.m. when a vintage 1944 Chevrolet World War II surplus bus screeched to a halt in front of my hotel. This was the real deal鈥攈ard-core military hardware that has survived more than a half-century in the Burmese outback. After climbing in, we rambled our way to a dark field where six Englishmen dressed in proper field khakis waited for us with coffee while a virtual army of helpers inflated their magnificent flying machines.鈥淢y name is Nobby, and we鈥檙e going flying,鈥� the first pilot said. The entire morning had a distinctly colonial feel to it. The British may have officially left Burma, but their presence is felt everywhere.

I hopped straightaway into the right front compartment (each gondola has four compartments with four people per compartment) and, before I knew it, we were on our way up, alongside five other balloons. Floating is so much different than flying鈥攖he only sensation of movement is visual, there鈥檚 no turbulence, acceleration, or wind. The experience was surreal, made especially so by the immense beauty in every direction鈥攁 brilliant red sun bathing the temple complex in rich, warm colors while tendrils of smoke and mist moved like thousands of small white streams.

For the first 30 minutes, I shot about 800 frames on the Nikon and 50 or so on the Leica. I primarily used the Nikkor 24-70mm lens but would occasionally shoot with the 14-24mm lens. Throughout the shoot, I kept reducing the ISO, from a high of 1,000 at the beginning of sunrise to 200 by the time we landed.

After about 30 minutes, the colors became much more subdued as the sun was now well above the horizon. I put both cameras down for the first time since taking off, and simply enjoyed the quiet stillness of this incredibly holy place. Our ever-growing teardrop shadow followed us across temples as we slowly descended.

The quiet of the moment was shattered when the pilot commanded, 鈥淟anding positions!鈥� and with a slight bump, we were back among the land-dwellers on terra firma.

Much like that briefest moment just after waking from a spectacular dream, it鈥檚 hard to know what鈥檚 real and what isn鈥檛. And, inevitably, the conscious mind drags us back to reality, often leaving us with a bit of melancholy at the loss of a world we once loved. Balloonists are used to this sort of thing and have developed a fool-proof cure: champagne. Nothing better to raise your spirits than a champagne toast to the dream we shared together.

TIPS
Book early. fills up way in advance ($320 per person). Snag the right, front gondola compartment鈥攜ou鈥檒l have an unobstructed 180-degree view (the rear compartments have small control lines in front of them). Don鈥檛 be afraid to shoot into the sun; just meter the ground, keep the shutter release half-pressed, and tilt the camera up until you have the perfect frame for your shot. Shooting around the sun can require a bit of post processing; an iPhoto can do the trick but Photoshop is better.

is a photographer, writer, and entrepreneur. He has photographed some of the world鈥檚 most unusual places and people, from the jungles of Papua New Guinea to the edge of space aboard a U-2 Spy Plane.

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On a sticky 90-degree day last November, the sun blazed high over a village in northern Karen, a province of 7.5 million people in southeastern Myanmar. At the edge of a riverside clearing, farmers dressed in rags, sweaty and soiled, trickled home from the fields to their thatched-bamboo huts for lunch. They chatted and laughed freely鈥攗ntil a mortar exploded 50 feet away.

Rangers entertaining village children.

Preparing for a recon mission.

Karen villagers lining up for an FBR medical clinic.

Karen freedom fighter Saw Nay Moo Thaw.

Rangers report for duty.

A school in the village of Tha Da Der.

The states of Myanmar.

Within seconds men in Myanmar Army uniforms strafed the village with semi-automatic gunfire. Shouting soldiers dragged women to the ground and held pistols to the men鈥檚 heads. The platoon leader wandered from hut to hut, using a torch to ignite grass roofs.

Then something strange happened. A young blond girl鈥攄ressed in black and wearing flip-flops, her face streaked with grease鈥攕uddenly leaped to the top of a boulder, holding a bow and arrow. Narrowing her eyes, she pulled back and fired.

鈥淲ay to go!鈥� A lean, fit American guy, dressed in running shorts and an Army green T-shirt, emerged from the sidelines, clapping and cheering like a proud parent at a soccer game. 鈥淒id you see that? She jumped up like Robin Hood and just nailed the guy!鈥�

This was the 52-year-old founder of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a humanitarian relief outfit operating in Karen and other Myanmar states. I鈥檒l call him Scott, which is not his real name. (Because the FBR鈥檚 work involves crossing into Myanmar illegally and could be shut down at any time鈥攁nd because of the security risks I observed FBR teams take behind enemy lines鈥擨 agreed not to reveal the identity of the group鈥檚 founder or members of his family.) The blond girl is Scott鈥檚 12-year-old daughter, and what I鈥檇 been witnessing was the kind of attack that has occurred many hundreds of times in the country鈥檚 ethnic regions鈥攊n the border states of Karen, Kayah, and Shan, among others, whose rebel militias have resisted Myanmar鈥檚 military since the country gained independence in 1948. Even as Myanmar鈥檚 government has made headlines for its recent reforms, the fighting has continued in some areas, and a full-fledged war has erupted in Kachin, where 90,000 people have been displaced since June 2011.

This time, however, the arrows were blunted and the bullets blanks. The mock village burning was the elaborate launch of the final two-day exercise at FBR鈥檚 six-week training session, at a place called White Monkey Camp. A former U.S Army Ranger and ordained minister, Scott founded the Free Burma Rangers in 1997. Run by a staff of Western evangelical volunteers and funded mainly by Christian churches, FBR trains teams of ethnic rebels to go toward the front lines, help evacuate internally displaced people (IDPs), treat the sick and wounded, perform reconnaissance of enemy troops, inform villagers and allies of their whereabouts, and document the Myanmar Army鈥檚 carnage with video, photography, and written reports, which they transmit to news organizations, NGOs, local governments, and church groups around the world.

The FBR鈥檚 work is dangerous. Rangers are often armed with whatever weapons they can find鈥攕hotguns, 22s, AK-47s鈥攁nd have been the target of enemy fire on a number of occasions. Since 1997, 13 Rangers have died in the field鈥攐ne caught and tortured to death by the Myanmar Army, others killed by land mines, malaria, and a lightning strike.

Scott runs five training camps each year, with the largest, held each November, at White Monkey Camp. This time there were 76 trainees in attendance, ranging in age from 18 to 36, representing seven of the country鈥檚 135 ethnic groups. Most of them were rebels sent by the (KNU), one of the largest movements fighting for autonomy from the Myanmar government. Over the previous few weeks, the trainees had attended seminars in strategic reconnaissance and wilderness rescue and received specialized instruction from volunteer medics, engineers, photographers, and videographers. Beginning at 4:30 a.m. each day, they鈥檇 also undergone grueling physical conditioning, including climbing canyon walls and hours of sit-ups, push-ups, and trail runs. During the final mock-fighting exercise, they wouldn鈥檛 sleep or eat much.

鈥淔ood鈥檚 a crutch, Ranger,鈥� Scott said. He calls everyone Ranger. His Ranger name: Tha U Wah A Pa. It means Father of White Monkey. White Monkey? That鈥檚 his 12-year-old daughter, who earned the nickname crawling around this jungle as an infant.

As the smoke cleared, veteran Rangers split up to oversee one of 19 test stations for, among other things, orienteering, security, and rappelling. I headed over to the land-mine station, run by a shy, slender woman named Hsa Geh, who is 29. When she was 16, Myanmar soldiers murdered her parents and little brother in their Karen village during an invasion similar to the drill I鈥檇 seen today. One sister was raped and killed, the other shackled and imprisoned at a Myanmar Army base, never to be seen again. Geh escaped and lived on the run for two years before the (KNLA) took her in. She joined the FBR six years ago.

鈥淭alk about tough, man,鈥� Scott said as we watched Geh put her team through the paces. 鈥淎 lot of our Rangers have stories like hers.鈥�

Moments later, at the rappelling station, Scott鈥攃alves and biceps bulging, abs as ripped as a young Marine鈥檚 after basic training鈥攚as unhappy with the tie-off. After adjusting the line, he dropped over the edge of a river bluff, sans harness, and eased down, hand over hand, then smoothly climbed up before he allowed the first recruit to clip in.

I鈥檇 arrived at the camp a few days before. I鈥檇 spend the next week here, then trek with Scott and his recruits deeper inside Karen to the village of Tha Da Der, the first stop on a three-month FBR relief mission. It would be a rare look at the front lines of one of the more unusual relief efforts in the world鈥攁 humanitarian movement with both Bibles and guns.

I MET SCOTT IN Shan State in 2007, when I spent four days with him as he trained Shan State Army-South rebels for a relief mission there. My first impression: he is one Jesus-loving badass.

On that trip, he told me about his U.S. Army career, his relief work in Southeast Asia, the triathlon he鈥檇 won, and the mountains he鈥檇 climbed. At times he would begin to pray spontaneously. The only son of a Texas oil speculator turned preacher and a Broadway star (his parents met before his mother鈥檚 USO show during the Korean War), he was born in Texas but prior to his first birthday moved to Thailand, where his parents worked to build schools and cultivate Christians.

鈥淏ack then, Thailand was a lot like here,鈥� Scott said, gesturing toward the surrounding mountains and jungles. 鈥淚 learned to ride, swim, and shoot when I was five. I already knew that I wanted to be soldier.鈥�

By the eighth grade he was an Eagle Scout. Ten years later, in the '80s, he was leading an elite airborne strike force in Central America. A few years after that, following a stint as a U.S. Army Ranger, he joined Special Forces and relocated to Thailand. During his time in the Army, he began participating in triathlons鈥攚inning the Panama Studman鈥攁nd climbing. He has summited Nepal鈥檚 21,247-foot Mount Mera, Alaska鈥檚 Denali, the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and Mount Rainier (twice in one day). When he retired from the Army in the early '90s, he earned a postgraduate ministerial degree from California鈥檚 prestigious Fuller Theological Seminary, then moved back to Thailand to work in Karen and Shan refugee camps on the Thai border.

In the mid-1990s, the Myanmar Army initiated a campaign to weaken rebel forces in the ethnic regions. It鈥檚 a conflict that goes back centuries, between the central Burmans鈥攚ho account for almost 70 percent of Myanmar鈥檚 population and are largely Buddhist鈥攁nd the 135 ethnic minorities in the states, who are also predominantly Buddhist but have their own languages, traditions, and rites.

Tensions escalated in 1947, after revolutionary hero Aung San, who鈥檇 crafted a constitution for a federal democratic Burma, was assassinated. Following years of upheaval, a military coup in 1962 put dictator Ne Win in power, backed by a junta of ruling army generals. Win turned Burma into a police state, censoring the media, imprisoning political rivals, and declaring war on rebel ethnic armies鈥攁 war that has continued, with varying degrees of violence, ever since, and which many believe is as much about the states鈥� resources and key border locations as it is about quashing ethnic rebellion. The repressive regime, which changed the country鈥檚 name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, has been most violent in the states of Karen and Shan. Since 1996, according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an alliance of NGOs that provides aid to refugees and displaced people, 3,724 villages have been torched, with more than a million people displaced and a large but unknown number dead.

Scott entered this tragedy in 1997, during one of the most ruthless outbreaks of violence, when the Myanmar junta鈥攚hich was renamed the (SPDC) that year鈥攍aunched a major offensive in Karen, Kayah, and Shan, slaughtering thousands. He heard the sounds of mortars and gunfire while working with Karen refugees near the Thai border, stuffed a pack with supplies, and headed toward the fighting in Myanmar, where he saw some of the 200,000 IDPs.

鈥淚 had four backpacks full of medicine, so I figured I would respond,鈥� he said. On the way, he met a lone Karen rebel. Together they hiked to the front lines, where they treated refugees until the medicine ran out. The idea for the Free Burma Rangers was born.

As we talked in his solar-powered office at White Monkey Camp, Scott scrolled through a hard drive full of images documenting SPDC brutality鈥攖he contorted bodies of children buried in rubble, the bruised limbs and vacant eyes of rape victims, several landmine amputees. By the end of the army鈥檚 offensive, in 1998, Scott told me, there were four Rangers. In 2001, he held his first six-week FBR boot camp, modeled after his Special Forces training.

Today there are approximately 350 Rangers, divided into 70 teams operating in the states of Karen, Kachin, Kayah, and Shan. Each team consists of four to five Rangers: a team leader, a medic, a photographer, videographer, a security specialist to map their route and liaise with rebel armies, and a counselor, who is in charge of the education and health needs of village children. Once trained, the teams are deployed by veteran Rangers, who work with rebel militias and Scott to determine where to send them.

David Taw, a high-ranking member of the KNU, lauds the FBR鈥檚 efforts. 鈥淭hey make a very positive move because they help the ethnics help themselves,鈥� he said. Scott 鈥渉as a lot of credit with ethnic groups.鈥�

鈥淔BR has saved the lives of thousands,鈥� said Roland Watson, the founder of the Burma watchdog site , 鈥渂y treating life-threatening diseases, helping tens of thousands of people with less serious health issues, and, perhaps most important, bringing hope to a terribly oppressed population.鈥�

But not everybody is thrilled about armed rebels trained by American evangelicals running through the mountains of Myanmar. 鈥淚t is difficult to say that the FBR鈥檚 operations are humanitarian, which implies following principles of neutrality and impartiality,鈥� says Richard Horsey, a former International Labor Organization representative to Myanmar who also advised the U.N. on the international response to the country鈥檚 2008 Cyclone Nargis. 鈥淩ather, they are involved in a kind of solidarity work. There is no doubting their commitment and dedication. But the fact that FBR staff carry arms, cooperate closely with particular armed factions, and represents an evangelical Christian ideology in an area of significant religious tensions are all troublesome.鈥�

It鈥檚 a criticism Scott has heard before. 鈥淩egardless of your religion,鈥� he said, 鈥渢he evil going on in Burma must be confronted. Little girls are being raped, villages burned. That鈥檚 wrong. I鈥檓 going to do something about it.鈥� Scott has always been clear that the FBR trains soldiers in rebel movements to relieve the ongoing oppression from the Myanmar government. The FBR does not supply weapons to Rangers, but they are free to arm themselves. 鈥淎 lot of times, Rangers have to put themselves in harm鈥檚 way, so we don鈥檛 have any qualms with them carrying a weapon,鈥� Scott says, but strictly, he emphasizes, for self-defense. 鈥淥ur role is not to fight the Myanmar Army, and we try not to.鈥�

Meanwhile, late last year, with the world watching, everything seemed to change in Myanmar. After easing restrictions on a highly censored Internet, President Thein Sein, a former high-level general in the military junta, who came to power in 2011, released more than 600 political prisoners. Aung San Suu Kyi, San鈥檚 Nobel Prize-winning daughter, who鈥檇 spent 15 of the previous 21 years under house arrest, began meeting publicly with President Sein and was elected to parliament in April. Even the Kachin seemed to get a reprieve, as President Sein abruptly halted a controversial dam project on the region鈥檚 Irrawaddy River鈥攚hich had ignited fighting between the Kachin Independence Organization and the Myanmar Army in June 2011鈥攃iting environmental concerns.

But despite encouraging political signs and the cautious optimism of some ethnic leaders, the fighting in Kachin continues over its lucrative jade mines and has been exacerbated by the extension of the Shwe oil-and-gas pipeline into China. In the state of Rakhine (formerly Arakan), long-standing tension between ethnic Arakan Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya people erupted in a deadly race conflict in June, with reports of as many as 100,000 newly displaced people and government forces firing on unarmed civilians. 鈥淭he conflicts in Burma won鈥檛 end until there are free and fair elections, a new constitution that guarantees ethnic self-determination, human rights, and a justice-and-reconciliation committee to address the crimes of the past 60 years,鈥� Scott says.

For many in Myanmar鈥檚 states, where up to 450,000 IDPs are still hiding in the jungle, the FBR is their only relief.

MY FIRST MORNING AT White Monkey Camp, I woke before dawn to call-and-response chants of 鈥淔ree Burma, Rangers! Free Burma, 搁补苍驳别谤蝉!鈥�

The camp consists of two dozen bamboo structures, including Scott鈥檚 house, where he lives with his wife, Susan (not her real name), and their three children鈥攖wo daughters, who are 12 and 10 years old, and a seven-year-old son鈥攁bout two months a year. (The rest of the time they鈥檙e in nearby countries, on FBR missions in Myanmar, or in the U.S., where they spend about a month each summer.) A sign dangles from above the entrance to their home. A biblical reference, Philippians 4:13, reads: 鈥淚 can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.鈥� There鈥檚 also a schoolhouse that doubles as a chapel, as well as an administration office, staffed by a revolving group of 10 Western evangelical volunteers.

Hulking mountains, dense jungle, and a creek surround the camp. The FBR鈥檚 Jungle School of Medicine is a short walk downstream. There, a volunteer American doctor, who ran a hospital in Pakistan, and his staff of volunteer physicians teach medics how to perform amputations, treat gunshot wounds, and cure malaria and diarrhea. Below that a whitewater river rages. The kids鈥� pet pygmy pig-tailed macaque, Wesley, is usually nearby.

Emerging from a bamboo lean-to, I watched as Scott and his recruits hammered out sets of push-ups, crunches, and pull-ups. When it came time for a training run in the hills, Scott set the pace. One by one, the recruits buckled as the trail went vertical, until there was only a single man on his heels.

Khaing Main Thenee, 24, a Buddhist monk from the port city of Sittwe, in Rakhine, marched against the junta in 2007 in what became known as the Saffron Revolution. When the inevitable crackdown came, Thenee and his fellow monks were beaten and teargassed. 鈥淲e tried to express our desire for freedom peacefully,鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd they beat us like dogs.鈥� He shed his robes, joined the Arakan Liberation Party, and was sent here for training. Less than half his commander鈥檚 age, Thenee should have been able to fly by Scott, but he, too, faded during the final push.

Throughout the day, Rangers in training sat in tin-roofed classrooms listening to instruction from a volunteer鈥攁 retired Air Force colonel with 20 years of F-15 flight experience鈥攐r learned self-defense techniques in a nearby clearing from a former Marine who鈥檇 done 13 tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other Western volunteers included a former Amazon employee, a finance guru, a logistics expert, and two recent college grads, who handled administrative tasks and preparations for the FBR鈥檚 upcoming mission.

While I was at White Monkey, the Karen National Union was in active discussions with the Myanmar government about a cease-fire agreement. The government, Scott explained to me, wanted to foster peace through the development of infrastructure, like roads and dams, the idea being that tapping into Karen鈥檚 natural resources will provide prosperity and peace for all. But Scott and other Karen leaders, whom he鈥檚 formed close relationships with over the years, believe that if not for the Myanmar government鈥檚 military oppression, the Karen could approach multinational corporations or the World Bank to launch their own development projects, prospering without Myanmar鈥檚 help.

Later that night, he gathered his veteran Rangers and Western volunteers in the barnlike map room for an update on a meeting he鈥檇 attended on the Thai border the day before with exiled KNU leadership. 鈥淎t the same time the army is attacking the Kachin, and in some places the Karen, they鈥檝e asked for a cease-fire,鈥� Scott told us. 鈥淪o the KNU asked us to come and pray and think about what to do. I said the cease-fire is up to you, not up to the FBR. We will stand with your group regardless of your decision.

鈥淏ut this war is not about development,鈥� he continued, becoming more animated. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about political freedom. God made us all free, but they won鈥檛 let you be free.鈥� A gust of wind scattered loose fliers from the makeshift conference table to the floor. Scott smiled and said, 鈥淪o let鈥檚 pray and be open to negotiation, but let鈥檚 stand by God鈥檚 principles.鈥�

This couching of religious messaging within humanitarian assistance rankles even FBR allies. Earlier that day, I had learned that Scott planned to perform a double river baptism the next morning. While he does baptize those who ask for it, and though God is referenced frequently at camp, he makes it clear that he is not a conversion missionary and that all religions are welcome in the FBR. About 20 percent of Karen has been Christian since British missionaries arrived in the 18th century, but it remains mostly Buddhist. Still, the Buddhist Rangers I met weren鈥檛 bothered by FBR鈥檚 godly bent. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 matter at all,鈥� said Thenee, the former Buddhist monk. 鈥淥ur main purpose is the same, that we work together to help the people.鈥�

Others are less convinced. 鈥淚t is a problem to try and persuade the people with humanitarian assistance to become a Christian,鈥� said Mahn Mahn, chief of the Karen State Backpack Health Worker Team, which brings medical care to displaced people. 鈥淧ersonally, I believe in Christ, but religion and politics should be separate.鈥�

Each evening, the Western volunteers, all devout Christians, convened for dinner with Scott and his family. Over meals of charred beef, limp noodles, and Day-Glo-colored cookies stored in ant-and-roach-killer tins, the conversation ranged from Noah鈥檚 Ark (myth or fact?) to homosexuality (is it a lifestyle choice?) to the true meaning of 鈥淭hou shalt not kill.鈥� 鈥淭he Hebrew translation reads: 鈥楾hou shalt not murder,鈥欌�� Scott said.

When I wandered over to his office later that night, he took a more philosophical approach to the Scripture. 鈥淲hether you believe in God or not, we鈥檝e all got freedom to do good or evil,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen people choose to do evil, either as individuals or as systems, and there becomes this pattern, especially when they say their intent is to destroy people, I think then you鈥檝e got to stand.鈥�

A satellite phone rang. On the other end was an FBR team member in Kachin. The team were hiding out among thousands of internally displaced people, documenting the destruction of 20 villages and other war crimes by Myanmar soldiers. Scott unfurled a map and busily copied down coordinates.

AFTER A WEEK AT White Monkey, it was time to begin the trek to Tha Da Der, where FBR Rangers would set up a medical clinic and perform reconnaissance on a Myanmar Army outpost three miles away. In July 2010, villagers in Tha Da Der had endured a brutal assault when nearly 200 invading Myanmar soldiers slaughtered livestock, pilfered rice stores, stole valuables, and torched the village.

We鈥檇 be joined in Tha Da Der by veteran diplomat Charles Petrie, a French-born former chief of the U.N. mission in Myanmar who was kicked out of the country in 2007 for publicly siding with the monks during the Saffron Revolution. Recently, he had been in discussions with Myanmar鈥檚 former minister of railways, U Aung Min, who President Sein had brought into his cabinet and put in charge of negotiating peace in the states.

As we set off, Scott told me about one of his most dangerous missions, in 2004, when he was leading more than 200 IDPs out of the jungle and his FBR team was fired on for 30 minutes. 鈥淎n RPG landed 10 yards away, which should kill you, but it hit the slope and impacted out,鈥� he said. Five months later, in northern Karen, his FBR team were cornered by the SPDC while taking a break near a stream. They sprinted off as the army lit up the trees. Two members of his squad returned fire, resulting in five enemy wounded and one dead. He and his Rangers escaped unharmed.

鈥淐ontact is rare, and we train our guys that if the army sees you, run, and the first couple of shots will probably miss,鈥� he said, as Wesley, the family macaque, hitched a ride on his shoulder.

It didn鈥檛 take Scott long to put some distance between us on the trail. Thankfully, his wife, Susan, was soon at my side, as I stared nervously at a buckling bamboo bridge loosely lashed 20 feet above jagged boulders and Class IV rapids. 鈥淵ou can always crawl across,鈥� she said.

Susan, who grew up a devout Christian in Walla Walla, Washington, had been studying to be a teacher when she met Scott in 1992. Their first date was ice climbing up Washington鈥檚 Mount Shuxton. 鈥淗e gave permission to the adventurer in me,鈥� she said. They were married in 1993 and spent their honeymoon trekking through Shan State. 鈥淚 remember being in the back of a truck with rebel soldiers, getting jabbed in the ribs with guns and wondering, What are we doing here?鈥�

Susan鈥檚 darkest hour arrived in 2005, when their son was just a month old, and their eldest daughter, five at the time, caught typhus. Her temperature soared to 104, and she was evacuated from White Monkey Camp. 鈥淎s we were crossing the river,鈥� Susan recalled, 鈥渟he perked up and said, 鈥榃hen I get better, I鈥檓 going swimming!鈥欌�� Two days later their daughter was fine, but their son had pneumonia. Still, she has embraced the lifestyle and finds FBR鈥檚 work fulfilling. She developed its Good Life Club program to help children affected by the conflict in Myanmar. 鈥淥ut here, the highs are higher and the lows are lower,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 different than the Starbucks life, but that鈥檚 the gift of it.鈥�

To ease the stress of constantly moving, Susan makes every camp a haven of domesticity. When we finally arrived at Tha Da Der, she went straight to the house they鈥檇 be staying in and began unpacking crayons and coloring books, setting out favorite snacks, and building a fire.

Our first morning in the village was a Sunday, and Scott and his family were due in church, a brand-new wooden building on a hill. 鈥淭his time last year, it was all scorched earth,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he army had burned their church and all the houses to the ground.鈥�

Later, I met with Saw Nay Moo Thaw, 45, the former local director of the Karen department of education and a longtime freedom fighter and FBR ally. He showed me the new bamboo school, where nearly 200 children huddled in open-air classrooms. High on a far wall, there was a small battery linked to a rooftop solar panel鈥擳ha Da Der鈥檚 only current of electricity. 鈥淔BR give us this after the burning,鈥� he said, 鈥渟o the children can study at night.鈥�

In the rice fields, Ranger medics had set up a tented clinic, and about 80 people had arrived from the surrounding villages for care. I could hear the sounds of an American gospel song being sung nearby by 150 Karen kids, a handful of Rangers, and Susan:

Do I love my Jesus
Deep down in my heart
Do I know my Jesus
Deep down in my heart
Yes, I love my Jesus
Deep down in my heart

THE NEXT MORNING, AT 5 a.m., 19 men gathered for a reconnaissance mission to the Myanmar Army outpost, among them Thenee, a handful of KNLA rebel soldiers, and their general Baw Kyaw. For two hours, we hiked through mine fields to within a quarter-mile of the army camp.

Scott and I leaned against a tree pocked with bullet holes and took turns peering through a Swarovski scope onto a cut in the jungle where a single Myanmar soldier stood next to a fire, making rice. His post, powered by a flexible solar panel, was fronted by the region鈥檚 only road. Although we were well within rifle and mortar range, the scene was oddly serene, even as seven more soldiers emerged from their tents. 鈥淭hey probably have only 20 or 30 guys down there,鈥� Scott said. 鈥淏ut in 2007, we saw 400 soldiers, 70 trucks, and nearly 60 prisoners chained together.鈥�

Thenee snapped photos with a Lumix camera. 鈥淚n two weeks, it will look very different,鈥� Scott whispered. According to Rangers in the field, there were two bulldozers just days away. 鈥淭hey want to widen the road, which could mean more soldiers and more attacks.鈥�

Kneeling in the bush with his Rangers, surrounded by land mines, Scott was in his element. He and the general whipped out their GPS devices and examined topo maps, plotting like longtime comrades as they mapped out the rest of the FBR鈥檚 Karen relief mission.

It鈥檚 not unreasonable to look at Scott and wonder what exactly drives him to risk his family鈥檚 well-being for a battle that, by all rights, is not his to fight. Some believe that, because of his relationships with rebel leaders and his desire for freedom in the ethnic provinces, he may actually be perpetuating the conflict.

鈥淔or a long time, groups like KNU and KNLA had no other real support,鈥� Petrie told me. 鈥淏ut the challenge is how do you transform a solidarity movement that is assisting in resistance to become more proactive in the peace process?鈥�

As for Scott鈥檚 motivation, he admitted that he鈥檚 partly driven by the physical adventure of his work and by seeing justice in Myanmar. But he says it鈥檚 more than that. 鈥淲hat we鈥檙e doing out here is bigger than democracy or freedom,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about love. If I鈥檓 bleeding out on a trail, wondering why I did this to my family, I鈥檒l have peace knowing that I carried out God鈥檚 love to help people.鈥�

In the 10 months since I left Myanmar, the rebels have embraced more peace鈥攇overnment cease-fire agreements have been signed with Shan, Karen, and Kayah rebels. After initial resistance to the proposed cease-fire, even Scott entertained the possibility of a new era. In March, he had a chance meeting with Aung Min, the leader of Myanmar鈥檚 cease-fire delegation, who opened the door for the FBR to communicate with Myanmar government officials, which Scott is following up on. The two also prayed together. 鈥淚 felt God鈥檚 love with us,鈥� Scott wrote in an FBR report.

Yet the prospect of peace remains cloudy. There are gun battles almost daily between the Kachin Independence Organization and the Myanmar Army, and there鈥檚 been a buildup of troops in Karen, as well as incidents of forced labor. Despite the cease-fire in Shan, FBR teams report renewed fighting there recently.

鈥淚 worry that what鈥檚 happening is a change of mind, not a change of heart,鈥� Scott said when I reached him by phone in September, as he was making plans for this year鈥檚 White Monkey training camp. 鈥淵ou tell me you want peace and then bring more people in my front yard instead of getting out? That doesn鈥檛 show sincerity.鈥� U.S. lawmakers, who in August renewed sanctions against Myanmar for another year, appear to agree.

When I was in Myanmar, during our hike back to Tha Da Der after the recon mission, I asked Scott if he thought Karen State would ever see peace. 鈥淚 truly believe that if you join your will with his, God can use you to achieve the things he cares about, which are truth, justice, freedom, and love,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen this war is over and Burma is free, the ethnic resistance won鈥檛 be able to say it was weapons that got us there, it will be through God. And I鈥檒l be able to say, 鈥楾hank you, God, for that ride.鈥欌�澨�

Adam Skolnick () is a freelance writer in Los Angeles.

The post The Jesus-Kissed, War-Fringed, Love-Swirled Rangers appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

In early December, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Burmese Presiden Thein Sein in the country’s capital of Naypyidaw. No senior American leader had travelled to the country in 50 years, but after decades of military rule the Myanmar government has instituted a series of liberalizing reforms since allowing elections in March. 鈥淭oday,鈥� Clinton said, 鈥渢he United States is prepared to respond to reforms with measured steps to lessen its isolation and improve the lives of citizens.鈥�

News reports of liberalization have largely ignored a humanitarian crisis in northern Burma: even as the Burmese government has released hundreds of political prisoners,听 the Burmese army has waged war and committed atrocities against ethnic Kachin civilians.

The Burmese who live in southern Burma are one of 136 recognized ethnicities in the country. Ethnic Burmese comprise roughly half the population and control half of Burma鈥檚 territory. In the rest of the country, though, unrecognized and semi-autonomous indigenous groups are in power.

Foremost among these groups are the Kachin. They control all of northern Burma, an area the size of Maine that is wedged between India and China. The Kachin number close to one million, speak their own language, and are overwhelmingly Christian. Their territory was ceded to Burma following World War II, and for 22 years the Kachin Independence Army fought a bloody guerrilla war against the Burmese government. A ceasefire signed in 1994 fell apart on June 9, and fighting resumed.

I spoke with Ryan Libre, an award-winning American photojournalist based in Thailand, on December 1. Ryan has covered the Kachin for four years and is now finishing work on a documentary about their struggle. A preview can be seen at . He is currently based in the town of Laiza, close to the fighting, and spoke with me on a cell phone that was connected to a Chinese cell tower across the border.

What鈥檚 the level of disruption in Kachin right now?
Huge. The Burmese have lost hundreds of people. The KIA has lost fewer, but their hospitals are overflowing. There are . All the bridges that connect this part of the country have been blown up.

Are you aware human-rights abuses committed by either side?
There are many of Burmese听soldiers听raping and killing Kachin girls and women. I met one farmer in the refugee camp听whose听wife was raped and killed. I鈥檝e seen images of villages听burned听down.

When did the fighting start up?
June 9. I came three days later. Everyone was worried and excited. There was no sleep. People were working around the clock. It was war fever. All the kids in town were dressed up in KIA uniforms.

What triggered it?
Officially,听the Burmese Army was sent into a dam construction area and the fighting started accidentally. But I think it was planned in advance by the Burmese government,听to clear the KIA out of North Shan state, where the Chinese oil pipeline will pass.

Is there still active fighting?
Yes. Every day there are at least small battles, and often large ones. It鈥檚 front-line jungle fighting. The KIA has small outposts on strategic hills, and there are daily attempts by the Burmese army to take them over. There鈥檚 lots of big artillery from the Burmese side, because that鈥檚 an area where they have a big advantage over the KIA.

In your opinion, the Burmese are the aggressors?
Yes. I was at a peace talk where the Burmese said, 鈥淟et鈥檚 stop fighting,鈥� and the KIA said, 鈥淲ell, that鈥檚 easy, just stop sending your troops into our territory.鈥� But the Burmese keep pushing more and more into land that is Kachin territory, according to the terms of the ceasefire agreement that was signed in 1994.

How did the situation start?
At the end of World War II, the British had a mandate to leave the colonies in this area. The big question was whether Kachin State would be an independent country, which it was before the British came. When the British were pulling out, Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi鈥檚 father, approached the Kachin and said let鈥檚 make one country that will be much stronger than either individually. It was heavily debated. Most Kachins were not in favor of it, but their leader ended up signing it.

In 1947, Aung San was assassinated after signing the agreement but before he finished writing the first Burmese constitution. When the constitution was finished, it had none of the rights that the Kachin had agreed to. The KIO/KIA formed in 1961.

Do the Kachin want to become an independent country now?
Even though they鈥檙e called the Kachin Independence Army, very few want full independence. They want the level of autonomy that was promised to them. A level that would be like a U.S. state. They want to be part of an actual union, but they want control over their own education鈥攖hey want to be able to teach their history鈥攁nd their natural resources and land.

And they have resources to work with?
A lot. They have essentially all of the world鈥檚 high-quality jade. They have rare earth minerals. But the really big thing now is hydropower, which Burma, India, and China all want and need. Kachin is right at the base of the Himalayas with deep canyons that are glacial-fed and ideal for hydropower.

But didn鈥檛 the government just stop China from moving forward with the Myitsone Dam?
I have been told that it was put on hold for a while ago anyway, for financial reasons. I don鈥檛 think it is because the government suddenly decided to start listening to its people.

Will Hillary Clinton be meeting with anyone from the KIO?
Definitely not.

What is your focus right now?
Lately I鈥檝e been staying at the refugee camp, which is not getting any international or United Nations aid.

Why are you staying in the camp?
A lot of what I want to do with photography is to go beyond that one-hour trip to the camps. When you actually spend the night somewhere, and wake up in the morning with the refugees, it changes everything. I鈥檓 excited to see what kind of photos and videos come out of that.

How did you first get involved with the Kachin?
I met a Kachin activist in Thailand. I called her Burmese, and she said, 鈥楬ey, I鈥檓 not Burmese, I鈥檓 Kachin.鈥� I tried to do research about the Kachin and found nothing. Literally nothing. The most current articles about the Kachin were ten, fifteen years old. A few months later I met another Kachin who was part of the KIO. He invited me to visit. Then I got a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to come for a month. The story was amazing and under reported.

And you鈥檙e hoping to change that with your documentary?
Yes. It鈥檚 called 鈥淧ortraits of Independence.鈥� I鈥檓 hoping to get a shortened version of it out to film festivals in February. I would never have thought to do video, but just before coming here I鈥檇 bought a Nikon D90, which had built-in video. So I thought, okay, I鈥檒l take some video after I have a shot framed. When I saw it played back鈥攅specially the interviews, people telling their own stories鈥擨 realized the power of that medium. So I started devoting more of my time to video. I鈥檓 really excited about it. I can tell a lot of the story in a way that the mass media is never going to come close to. I鈥檝e been shooting for four years and have tons of very good footage. It鈥檚 just a matter of sitting down with an editor and putting it together. It鈥檚 going to be a huge effort. It鈥檚 pretty difficult for someone to wrap their head around what鈥檚 happening in Kachin. I hope the website and documentary help.

The post Burma’s Dark Side appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

There never was a man on the ferry to Pakokku, and he didn’t say what he said. I didn’t meet Western diplomats from three nations. Not for coffee. Not for drinks. Not in the official residence, with rain and palm fronds pelting down, just hours before the storm hit.

I didn’t talk with the country’s most distinguished astrologer or its worst comedians. Nobody from any NGOs helped me, either. If I had tea with a prominent intellectual or lunch with a noted businessman, nothing happened. I was just in Burma鈥攕orry, I mean Myanmar鈥攖o play golf and look at the ruins.

The boy monks never cried and begged me to conceal their names. At the monastery in Pakokku, they never told me anything at all.

I wasn’t there when the storm hit. There was no cyclone. I didn’t see anything.

The Impact of Cyclone Nargis

But of course it did hit. I flew out on the last plane out of Burma, on the evening of May 1. On May 2, at 6:30 p.m., Cyclone Nargis came ashore near Labutta, in the southwestern corner of this poor and unlucky country, at speeds of up to 121 miles per hour. Howling in from the Bay of Bengal, the winds shoved a 12-foot wall of storm surge up the delta of the Irrawaddy River. Perhaps 134,000 people died in this initial rampage up the low and braided coastal channels. By dawn, the storm center was in Rangoon, blowing 81 miles per hour, taking more roofs than lives. Then it dissipated inland, leaving some 2.4 million survivors in ruinous condition, without shelter or food or safe drinking water. In some areas, up to 95 percent of homes were destroyed.

In the weeks after the storm, as the waterways went putrid with the bodies of people and some 200,000 water buffalo and cattle, as flooded rice fields were poisoned by salt water, the paralytic failure of the Burmese military government to do anything for the victims of Cyclone Nargis became an international scandal. For weeks the junta’s generals turned away aid from U.S. and French ships waiting offshore, harassed journalists, stonewalled the UN, started and stopped relief efforts, confiscated food donations, finally admitted some international workers, and then denounced them, saying that the Burmese needed no “chocolate bars” from foreigners. Meanwhile, the 40 percent of children in the Irrawaddy Delta who were already malnourished faced months of starvation.

The Burmese were never warned that a cyclone was coming. I was. On the last afternoon of my trip, I waded through knee-deep storm floods to visit one of those Western diplomats you hear from, anonymously, in reports about Burma. We met in her official residence; she was barefoot, in shorts and a red Hawaiian shirt. As we talked, a windy new order was already rattling the patio doors. Palm fronds were spinning through the air like knives. It had been raining for two days. The water was above the grass.

My departure was in five hours. As I left, I asked the same question I’d been asking everybody: Why was there a monsoon in the dry season? I thought it never rained this early.

No. She’d been notified by her own government and CNN. I, like the vast majority in this country of 53 million, was totally clueless.

I put on my poncho and rolled up my pants, and another diplomat led me down the driveway to the security gate. The Burmese embassy guards pressed a button and then went back to eyeing the sky. Out front, the avenue was flooded, cars throwing up cascades.

“It’s good you are leaving,” this diplomat said as dirty water flushed over his Tevas.

So I got out. I didn’t see the center of Cyclone Nargis, which was closing in on the coast. But before the storm, I saw the center of something else: the bigger, slower, even deadlier disaster that long ago started washing over Burma. I saw how its rulers鈥攖hrough their fear, ignorance, and greed鈥攚ould end up converting the natural disaster coming down on our heads into a shameful man-made catastrophe, an epic of incompetence and indifference. Let’s call what I saw by its name: evil.

Why ‘Myanmar’ and Not ‘Burma’

Like an Asian Havana, Rangoon is filled with rounded and rusting cars older than I am, and billboards denouncing foreigners. It is a low, humid dump, more Shanghai than Shanghai, stained with mold, clouded overhead by knots of electrical wires, and stuttering and sputtering from the private generators crowded everywhere. (The electric grid can black out half a dozen times a day.) Bicycle rickshaws are loaded up like SUVs, monks and palm readers rule the streets, and laborers sweat all day for pennies. Authenticity is in oversupply here. It’s Asia before the microchip.

I spent my first morning, April 17, at the nation’s most important temple, Shwedagon, a 320-foot-high gold-leafed pagoda that dates back more than a thousand years. It was packed with Buddhist pilgrims for the Thingyan festival, held during the hottest, driest time of year, when people appease the Naga water spirits by shooting squirt guns and launching water balloons in all directions. It was a holiday, and the weeks ahead looked soporific. The forecast was for scorching, humid days with a bit of isolated rain, or what the government newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, called “generally fair.” The only event on the horizon was a vote on May 10, what Human Rights Watch called a “sham referendum” to enshrine military rule. The New Light urged everyone to vote yes.

Amid thousands at Shwedagon that morning, I saw just one other foreigner. Thailand received almost 14 million visitors in 2006; Burma had just under 300,000. There is a nominal boycott on tourism here, but the real problem is the lack of infrastructure, the limited beaches, and the high costs that scare off many backpackers. The most frequent visitors, other Asians and European retirees, make a circuit through the “Land of Gold,” as Burma is known, from Shwedagon to the ruins of Bagan, a complex of ancient shrines and pagodas grander than Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. They pass through the palaces of Mandalay, the last royal capital, and then head into hill country to take in lakes, forests, and minority ethnic cultures鈥擟hins and Kachins, Karens and Karennis鈥攚hose homelands touch on the frontiers of India, China, and Thailand. This Burma is as fetching as it is poor, a backward land that is therefore picturesque and old-fashioned, amid a barefoot poverty that remains nevertheless communal and dignified.

I was equipped with a two-week ticket and a tourist visa that allowed me to slip into this rivulet of foreigners circling through Burma. But I had a very different itinerary, through a different country. I was headed north, to the mysterious new capital, Naypyidaw, a place unmentioned by Lonely Planet. In 2006, the junta鈥攍ed by General Than Shwe and his 47 cabinet members and “chiefs of state”鈥� announced that all the government ministries of Rangoon were decamping to a location 250 miles north, where a city had been built, from scratch, in the middle of nothing, without warning. I wanted to see the generals’ lair.

It is the military that has trapped this nation in a regressive time sink. A kleptocratic clique of officers presides over 428,000 green-clad soldiers, the second-largest army in Southeast Asia after Vietnam’s. The Tatmadaw, as the army is known, is a cult, really. It was founded by Burma’s independence leader, General Aung San, who fought the British, danced with the Japanese, and was murdered in a hail of bullets by his own officers in 1947, just months before British colonial rule ended, leaving behind a two-year-old daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi. A military coup in 1962 led to decades of isolation and xenophobia; since 1992, the dictatorship has been in the hands of General Shwe, a reclusive, frog-faced 75-year-old with a chest full of medals and an astrologer at his right hand.

The junta has tried to erase history. In 1989 they changed the capital’s name to Yangon and the country’s to the Union of Myanmar, though I’ve found that most people continue to say Burma, either because it implies opposition or it’s quicker. They rebranded themselves as the State Peace and Development Council. Burma’s clocks run half an hour out of step with its neighbors, there are eight days in the week, and, according to The New Light, we’re living in both 2008 and the year 1370 of an ancient Burmese dynasty.

Meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi grew up, went to Oxford, married, and returned permanently to Burma in 1988. Now 63, she is an apostle of nonviolence and democracy, known within her country simply as “the Lady.” In 1990, her pro-democracy party won the only free elections in Burmese history; she won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts, but the junta locked her inside her elegant lakeside house in Rangoon. After 18 years of intermittent imprisonment and release, she is still there鈥攐n May 27, the junta extended her house arrest for another year.

Sometimes it feels like all of Burma has been locked in with her. A censorship board controls radio, books, magazines, and television, cellular phones cost $2,500, and the Internet is simply turned off during a crisis. Even in calm times, most e-mail accounts are blocked by a firewall (although bright kids in cybercaf茅s proxy-tunnel to servers in Germany). The day before Cyclone Nargis struck, as the storm began to nip at Rangoon’s roofs, starlets paraded across the screen of my hotel room’s TV set, lip-syncing pro-government ballads.

There is only room for good news in this official Burma. Even disaster reports from a cyclone barely reach the ears of top leaders. “In Burmese culture, you don’t tell each other truth if it will hurt,” Ma Thanegi, a noted Rangoon painter and former assistant to Aung San Suu Kyi, told me. “That is the worst part of our culture. No argument if it hurts feelings. Objective criticism does not exist. Any criticism must be based on hatred or jealousy.”

Thanegi did a year in jail herself for opposing the government. As recently as 2004, Than Shwe conducted a messy purge of the military ranks, arresting hundreds of his own men. Even the country’s cadre of perhaps 400,000 Theravada Buddhist monks is not immune. Last September, during what became known as the Saffron Revolution, thousands of them led pro-democracy protests across Burma, beginning in the town of Pakokku. By the time the military snuffed out the unrest, on September 27, in Rangoon, at least 31 people had died. I was headed to Pakokku, too.

Myanmar’s Generals and Astrology

Back in the days of the British Raj, Burma was considered such a hardship post鈥攕o hot, so remote, so difficult, and so lawless鈥攖hat Rudyard Kipling called it “unlike any land you know about.” Even George Orwell, who spent five years here as a colonial policeman in the 1920s, found it tough enough for his liking. Some intellectuals here see their crazy government prophesied in Orwell’s later books, Animal Farm and 1984. But his 1934 novel, Burmese Days, offers a more direct portrait鈥攁 deeply superstitious society in which the strong prey on the weak, and conspiracies are made with witchcraft, magic amulets, and knives in the back.

Astrology is Burma, Ma Thanegi told me. People look for a shortcut, a way to predict their Buddhist karma before it comes back to them. “It’s cheaper than a shrink or a marriage counselor,” she said. “We don’t have any neurotic people thanks to astrologers. If you are failing in your profession or your life, it’s not your fault. It’s because of your stars.”

The generals have taken this national obsession to new heights. U Ne Win, the dictator who completely isolated the country from 1962 to 1988, issued currency in unusual denominations鈥�45 and 90鈥攖hat added up to his lucky number. In 1970, the story goes, an astrologer said he would be killed from the right, so he decreed an overnight shift from left-hand to right-hand driving on Burmese roads. Than Shwe has continued this prudence, dispatching whole caravans of bureaucrats, and even hundreds of animals from Rangoon’s zoo, to the new capital at auspicious moments. One convoy of 11 battalions and 11 ministries, I was told, left for Naypyidaw in 1,100 trucks at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

I wondered how my own karma was going to play out. My visa application specifically threatened “legal measures” for snoops who “interfere in the internal affairs” of the country. In addition to Naypyidaw and Pakokku, my dicey agenda included jumping the fence to see Aung San Suu Kyi鈥攕omething I figured I’d do on my last day in Burma, just before beating a hasty retreat out of the country. So one muggy morning I joined a queue of upper-class Rangoon women outside the office of San-Zarni Bo, said to be one of the best fortune tellers in the land. As his sign read:

MODERN PROGNOSTICATOR SAN-ZARNI BO
B.SC (CHEM)
1ST. DEGREE (SORBONNE PARIS)

He proved to be a brown, bald, and commanding man, with a milky right eye hinting at second sight. As soon as I handed over $30, an assistant inked my hands and pressed them onto gray paper. San-Zarni Bo spent several minutes in a frenzied silence, applying a tape measure, compass, and ruler to the palm prints, making rapid calculations, and filling out charts. Finally, he looked up and delivered a 30-minute monologue in English that boiled down to this: My lucky dates are 1, 3, 9, 10, 17, 19, 21, 27, and 30, and my auspicious letters are A, M, S, T, and J. Any day of the month in that list is auspicious for me; any placename beginning with those letters is good, too. The past five months, he told me, had been full of “annoyances and disturbances.” In two years, I would get married.

“Any questions?” he said.

A few. I was already married, and I had a nine-month-old baby boy at home; you don’t get a better five months than that. But I told him only that I was planning something for my last day here. Something dangerous. Was May 1 an auspicious day? “Yes,” he said. “The first is a good day for you. Go ahead.”

Blessings secured, I set about plotting my immediate itinerary. During the hottest part of the afternoon, I went to the Savoy Hotel, an outrageously expensive relic of British rule, where I ran into another Western diplomat. He suggested the ros茅 (“made by two Germans up in Shan state”), and I asked about a rumor that all embassies would be moved up to Naypyidaw, far from the bars and markets of Rangoon. He didn’t believe it.

When it was first sprung on the world, Naypyidaw was closed to outsiders. In 2006, American biologist Alan Rabinowitz became one of the first foreigners to visit, on a Wildlife Conservation Society mission to coordinate a tiger reserve in Hukawng Valley. (The generals love tigers more than they dislike foreigners.) Rabinowitz told me I’d never get on the plane to Naypyidaw without special permission, but that the capital did have a “hotel zone.” Meanwhile, I’d heard vague reports of vast golf courses, and read a blog by a Canadian who’d made it in by bus, although he’d been followed and made to stay in the hotel zone. In 2007, foreign press had been flown to Naypyidaw for Armed Forces Day celebrations, always closely minded, but few other journalists had ever gone. Now the diplomat was suggesting I could just get on a plane and go. “You’ll never get into the civil-admin part, or the military part, though,” he predicted.

The locals were dismissive of the place. The generals had moved to Naypyidaw “because of the stars,” a Rangoon gem trader told me with a wry smile. “They spend all our money on this new capital. It is very nice. So nice.”

He was being sarcastic. Naypyidaw was a barren place, he said. “Worst place in Burma. Terrible weather. They can change everything there but the weather.”

How The Secret Capital Came to Be

Building a new capital in the middle of nowhere is actually a fairly normal idea. Brasilia and Washington, D.C., were laid out that way; Kazakhstan is finishing Astana now. But Naypyidaw is anything but normal.

Getting there was the easy part. A Rangoon travel agent looked at me funny but sold me a plane ticket, and no one asked any questions when I boarded a late-afternoon Air Mandalay flight full of colonels and businessmen. At the small Naypyidaw airport, I glommed on to some surprised Thai businessmen, sharing a taxi to their hotel. The hotel zone consisted of a handful of sprawling luxury-bungalow compounds along the airport road, near nothing. All night, I kept jumping out of bed, startled. The geckos on the walls made a sound just like keys tapping on glass.

In the morning, I took the Naypyidaw visitor’s tour鈥攎eaning I hired a taxi. No tourists come here, and the few Burmese businessmen who have to visit the capital leave as fast as they can. Among foreigners, only diplomats and people like Alan Rabinowitz have a reason to go. Almost nothing was as rumor had it. In 2007, The Economist posited a “remote mountain fastness”; Time and The Washington Post described a “jungle.” Instead daylight revealed a flat plain covered with rice paddies. Only half finished, Naypyidaw was a brown, barren, and superheated Lego city, a cross between Pyongyang and a gated community outside Phoenix. Rebar poked out everywhere, and women carried firewood on their heads past just-finished office parks. Spread across miles of empty landscape, it was a field of pre-ruins, a folly as ambitious in its way as the pagodas at Bagan.

There was no traffic. I saw one restaurant in the entire city. There were no crowds, no history, no neighborhoods, and so few schools and shops that many bureaucrats have left their families behind in Rangoon. (Even some top leaders have quietly moved back to Rangoon or to the cooler British hill station near Mandalay, Pyin-U-Lwin.) The population鈥攚hich the junta claims numbers a million鈥攊s almost all government workers, sorted by their ministries into housing blocks and carried to work each morning together in the backs of army trucks.

Naypyidaw is really an open-air prison, where functionaries twirl their fingers at make-work jobs and generals loot the budget. Although U.S. and EU economic sanctions have driven out many international companies, Chevron still does business here, and Naypyidaw is buzzing with deals on oil, natural gas, gems, timber, and hydropower鈥攄eals made largely with Burma’s needy neighbors, China, India, and Thailand. In my hotel, the Thai businessmen had been discussing drilling technology. No wonder: Many of the lights in Bangkok are powered by natural gas from Burma, and according to The New York Times, the Thais pour $1.2 billion into Burmese accounts each year. As yet another Western diplomat explained it, the revenues from oil and gas exports are paid in dollars, which the junta converts to Burmese kyat at an official rate of six to the dollar. In Rangoon, I was routinely getting 1,100 kyat to the dollar. So where did the other 99 percent of the oil and gas billions go? Take a guess. After a while my driver turned around and looked at me pointedly. “Want see?” he said.

He didn’t wait for an answer, veering down a broad avenue through rolling country. This was the civil-admin section, the zone that the Savoy diplomat had claimed I would never enter. One by one came the gleaming ministries, mile after mile of countryside dotted with occasional buildings, all new, all labeled, with color-coded roofs. The Ministry of Progress of Border Areas (black roof) is in charge of the military’s endless war on the tribal people. The Ministry of Health (blue) oversees the worst health system in Southeast Asia. The Ministry of Home Affairs (pink) is in charge of catching journalists on tourist visas.

The one thing they did have in Naypyidaw was emergency services. In the middle of wilderness, I saw a brand-new fire station. Miles away, amid more emptiness, a police station, bearing the Orwellian slogan MAY WE HELP YOU? One of the tallest buildings in Naypyidaw is an eight-bay firehouse with a watchtower. With its strong concrete and inland location, Naypyidaw never felt the cyclone’s winds. Three hundred miles down in the Irrawaddy Delta, however, where damage was worst, the generals had not bothered to build rescue squads or sheltering police stations. No, we will not help you. When Nargis hit, the military put its head in the sand.

Notes from the Field: Naypyidaw

It is said the generals live in a bubble when they’re outside Naypyidaw, and a bunker when they’re in. I found the bunker. “Want see?” my driver asked again. I nodded, and he detoured far into the east of the city. He showed me a simple gate in the middle of trees, which led to an invisible nightclub for the Tatmadaw. On a roundabout, there was a closed exit that led to the “top man restaurant,” the cabbie said. A gate, glowing with red warning lights, led to a park and playground for the junta’s families. What looked like a partial stadium turned out to be a multistory driving range. Where Rangoon had blackouts, Naypyidaw had penguins, living on ice, their habitats cooled by 24-hour power.

Finally we came to a vast intersection cordoned with razor wire and watched by police. “Than Shwe house,” my guide said, pointing discreetly. There was an eight-lane road of white concrete, leading thousands of feet down to a triumphal arch and, beyond that, the houses of Dictator No. 1 and the other cronies.

“No photo!” the driver screamed, too late.

But you don’t need a camera to get a peek at the weird world of the junta: On YouTube, just type in “wedding of Than Shwe’s daughter.” As the resulting video shows, the generals are not in isolation. “There are hundreds of rich people around them, flattering them,” said Ma Thanegi, the painter. “A nouveau riche, kitschy society, unbelievably luxurious and conformist.”

Than Shwe may have “lots of old-man diseases,” as the barefoot diplomat had told me, but he plays golf, and I hit Naypyidaw’s City Golf Course, hoping to crash his foursome. No such luck: A manager standing beneath a portrait of Than Shwe said they wouldn’t let me play ($20), I wasn’t a member ($20), there weren’t any caddies ($20), and I had to buy a City Golf Course shirt in red ($6).

I balked at the shirt. Five days ago, The New Light of Myanmar contained pictures of regime cronies playing golf in Naypyidaw. A general named Thiha Thura Tin Aung Myint Oo (identified as “Secretary-1”) had inaugurated a tournament on April 16. In the photos, which I held up, Secretary-1 was not wearing an official shirt.

I had to buy the shirt. Equipped with a hugely optimistic two balls, I grabbed a caddy and hit the links as the temperature reached 104 degrees. The nice thing about being dictator is that nobody denies you a mulligan. My first pair of tee shots went a total of ten yards, so I took a third, like Than Shwe would. On the second hole I had a couple of good drives and two-putted; on the third I sliced into the barbed wire and lost the ball. On five, I hit a sweet drive of 175 yards (“Three hundred!” my caddy insisted). Six, which looked onto a construction site, saw my best drive yet, but I three-putted. On seven, I discovered that the official shirt had dyed my belly a sweaty pink. On eight, I took a penalty rather than play my ball off a mound of snake holes. On nine, I hit into a water hazard, twice, which the caddy forgot while scoring me a decent 50. A lie. Here was the general’s ideal country, a back nine of yes-men to carry the bags and ask no questions.

A Journey to Pakokku

M is auspicious for me, so on April 23 I flew out of Naypyidaw to Mandalay, the last royal capital. For two days, there were heavy rains here, which plunged the city into darkness and left the Burmese grinning: rain, in the dry season! But when I hired a taxi and drove southwest, across the paddy-flat plains of central Burma’s “dry zone,” the fields were powdery again with dust. The temperature climbed over 100 and then kept rising during a long day of rumbling down increasingly desperate roads, impoverished children chasing after the car.

I was headed for the town of Pakokku, the place where the Saffron Revolution had begun. The Burmese were once allotted two gallons of gasoline a day, at subsidized prices. Last August, the junta鈥攈aving sold Burma’s own hydrocarbons abroad鈥攅liminated the subsidy. The cost of bus rides, running a generator, even eating a bowl of rice, jumped as much as 500 percent. The unrest, which started as a protest about the price of gas and exploded into nationwide demonstrations, was sparked at one monastery, in Pakokku.

The town is on the west bank of the great Irrawaddy, which cleaves and defines Burma. To get there, I had to catch a riverboat at Bagan, where thousands of ancient temples squat on the river’s east bank. There are more than 4,000 Buddhist structures here, built between the 11th and 13th centuries; more than 2,000 still stand, from tiny shrines to 18-story numbers rivaling the tallest of the Maya pyramids at Tikal.

In the off-season of an off-country, with the temperature hovering somewhere near 110 degrees, even the trinket vendors had retired. There were a few Spaniards and Germans about, but at one of the world’s greatest archaeological sites, I had a temple鈥攁 dozen temples鈥攖o myself at sunset. If the government were less charmingly North Korean, less reeking of Cambodia in 1978, Bagan and Burma could mean a great deal to the world.

Early the next morning, I boarded the slim, crowded ferry to Pakokku. The passengers included market women, giggling students, and an English-speaking professional, who at first talked freely about the Saffron Revolution and what he’d seen. Eventually he realized that I was a journalist and recoiled.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t get involved in politics.” He stared into the dirty bilgewater for the rest of the trip.

No one was waiting on the dock to arrest me. I visited Pakokku’s garish pagoda, filled with glass tiles, gold paint, and real birds flitting past murals of bodhi trees. I hired a rickshaw and went to the particular monastery where the Saffron Revolution began. There, the giggling young monks gave me lumps of palm sugar and showed me their teak longhouse, with its dusty library full of tripitaka scriptures and colonial-era British encyclopedias and a Bengal tiger pelt on their teacher’s throne.

But now there was no teacher. Roughly 150 of the monastery’s older monks had been “sent home”鈥攁 form of house arrest鈥攂y the junta in the wake of the rebellion. The unrest started on September 5, when several hundred monks began a march for the poor, chanting, “Release from suffering,” their way of asking for lower gas prices. On the town’s only bridge, their moral force met the junta’s plain old force: warning shots, beatings, and arrests. That kind of repression is normal for Burma, but then the army, people in Pakokku told me, tied up one of the monks and left him, bound in the street, for a whole day, roasting in the sun.

You do not humiliate monks in Burma. The next day, when a government delegation came to the monastery to apologize, a mob burned their squad car and then smashed up the business of the town’s biggest snitch. Inside a week, word of the beating of several monks had spread, and tens of thousands of his colleagues took to the streets. Almost every town in Burma saw demonstrations, led by the red-robed clerics and followed by angry students and just about everyone else. But in Rangoon it ended. On September 27, at the Sule Pagoda, a miraculous gilded landmark that sits inside a traffic circle, the army lashed back, shooting into crowds. Officially, 31 died over the course of the unrest, but human-rights groups say it was hundreds. The revolution was put back in a bottle, for now at least.

Not that anyone told me any of this in Pakokku. Later during that burning afternoon, at the well in their monastery courtyard, the monks never warned me that we were under surveillance or said that they were just young initiates, left behind, afraid.

They never cried and asked me to forget their words, their names, and their faces.

The Onset of Cyclone Nargis

The whole way back down to Bagan, the wind was blowing so hard that the boatman wrapped his head in a checked longyi, a kind of sarong, against the stinging sand. The Irrawaddy was enormous even in the dry season, light brown and dotted with overloaded sailing canoes. We sputtered through back channels lined with reeds, eroding sandbanks, and impoverished hamlets on stilts. These shacks were mostly made of bamboo and woven grass and stood only a couple of feet off the ground. The cyclone would only brush through this area, but downriver it would hit with full force on more than a million people living like this鈥攆ishing with nets or lines, crabbing, and cutting down the mangroves that would normally protect them from a storm surge. Cyclone Nargis would smash their houses and boats to pulp, like Hurricane Katrina hitting a New Orleans made of cardboard. The storm surge flooded about 30 percent of Burma’s best rice paddies with salt water and rotting bodies. In a disaster, the timeless qualities of Burma turned out to have 16th-century consequences.

It started to rain hard on the approach to Rangoon, my Yangon Airways flight pitching violently up and down. The Burmese being fatalists, the pilot skidded us right in. Before I reached the hotel, the rain had doubled in weight. It was April 30.

That afternoon, in a crushing and continuous downpour, the downtown business district was the first to go. Indian and Chinese shops backfilled with water. Intersections became lakes, sewers spilled over, trash spun in the wakes of cars. Then the side streets began to back up. The huge generators on the sidewalks snuffed out, one by one.

The next morning, May 1, a taxi took me to an interview with a final Western diplomat. She’d just returned from Mandalay and had a patch of sunburn on her nose. Over coffee in an old colonial hotel, she confessed to being in love with the country, the desperate strength of the people, the dignity of an ancient culture undiluted by mass tourism, unbroken by repression. But the frightened and clumsy regime was getting more brutal by the month. The most recent development, she said, was the appearance of organized pro-government mobs, called Swan Arr Shin, or “Capable Strongmen,” who had attacked followers of the Lady. People had been arrested for blogging about politics, forwarding e-mail attachments of antigovernment posters, and even writing a Valentine’s Day poem that included the words “crazy with power.”

She hadn’t heard anything about the baffling weather鈥攊t used to rain this way “in the old days,” her Burmese staff had told her.

Leaving the hotel, I made the mistake of heading for the post office. Moving north as the rain came pelting down, I hitched up my trousers and joined a ragged column of wet Burmese wading along. At General Aung San Road, there was only a river. Rolling up my pants was useless鈥攅ven with a poncho I was streaming wet. Out in the avenue, poked by umbrellas, dodging pushed rickshaws and the SUVs of the rich, feeling my way knee-deep in rushing brown water for the broken asphalt underneath, I gave up and turned around. I went back, to a drier part of town, hunted for a taxi, and began leaving Burma.

When I asked the driver why it was raining so hard, he said the Thingyan water festival must have been “auspicious.” We were getting our forecasts from the wrong sources. We passed the forlorn zoo, many of its animals deported to Naypyidaw, and the empty ministry buildings whose people had gone the same way. There was a tree blown down in Pyay Road and cars stalled in the floods. On the balcony of my hotel, I watched the rain bucket down, harder than ever, and the wind smash a thousand palm trees together on the fringes of Inya Lake.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s house-prison was over there, hidden. I’d studied Google Earth views, to see if there was a way to get around the lakeshore to see the Lady; I’d walked the edges of the frozen area around her house, staring up at high walls, topped with both barbed wire and razor wire. Jumping the wall here was the dangerous thing the astrologer had green-lighted for May 1. But the Lady remained out of reach.

There were reports later that she’d lost part of her roof in the storm but, without a choice, had simply ridden Cyclone Nargis out. Sometimes there is nothing to do but survive.

The Aftermath of Cyclone Nargis

There’s a joke that Mandalay comedy troupe the Moustache Brothers tell about the tsunami of 2004. For once, Burma was spared, and the joke is about why. Three corrupt Burmese generals die and for their crimes are reborn as lowly fish. When they see the deadly wave coming, they tell it to turn back from Burma: “We already ruined it.”

Two weeks after Cyclone Nargis, I got an e-mail from the sunburned diplomat. “Somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000” had died, she wrote. She’d spent 15 days trying to organize relief efforts. There were more than 200,000 survivors at that point still in dire need of aid, and maybe 1.5 million more were affected鈥攏umbers that would swell to more than 2 million. Plagues were coming.

In another country, like Thailand, there would have been deaths as well. But there would also have been roads, bridges, emergency services, houses of cement, a measure of accountability, and information about the coming storm. In Burma, the generals guaranteed that there was virtually none of that.

Burmese citizens who tried to distribute aid had their cars impounded; refugees waiting for help along the few roads were scolded by the army for daring to beg. It took UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon two weeks to get any Burmese leader on the phone. Weeks into the disaster, the junta finally allowed him to visit Naypyidaw; he returned with clenched teeth to announce “progress.” Aid flights did eventually begin to flow in large numbers鈥攖he U.S. delivered water containers for some 187,000 people and plastic sheeting for almost two million, purification equipment and medical supplies, ten Zodiacs for navigating the delta, and 75,000 mosquito nets. But at first, most aid went no farther than the Rangoon region, and NGOs claimed that the military stole some of the best supplies for itself. Many people were forced to go back to their destroyed villages with only a piece of that American plastic sheeting and a stick to hold up their new “tent.” The government told people to be “self-reliant” and eat frogs.

The people I met in Burma all survived, it seems. The barefoot diplomat talked to newspapers worldwide under her own name. The Moustache Brothers tried to hold a fundraising concert for victims but were rebuffed for their cracks about the generals; another comedian, called Zarganar, was arrested for distributing aid. Ma Thanegi e-mailed that even the generals could not keep the crescendo of bad news at bay.

She underestimated them. After weeks of hiding, Than Shwe finally appeared, once, to stroll through a “show camp” for refugees near Rangoon, where he announced that relief efforts were now over.

The Burmese merely suffered. An NGO contact wrote that the generals have “holes where their hearts should be” and described a Rangoon taxi driver angrily demanding an invasion by “Britain or Germany,” since the UN would do nothing. A Burmese contact said that Britain and the United States should arm the ethnic insurgents in remote corners of Burma so they could blast the generals out of power. French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, a founder of Doctors Without Borders, briefly called for a forced entry to deliver relief supplies, but realpolitik soon asserted itself and the U.S. and French warships sailed away. For their own reasons, China and the nations of Southeast Asia insisted on “non-interference” in Burma’s internal affairs. The junta went ahead with the May 10 election in most parts of the country, evicting refugees from schools and temples to create polling stations. And as I write, a month after Cyclone Nargis, the generals have announced the one statistic they care about: Exactly 92.48 percent of Burma’s cowed and beaten voters chose to keep the iron fist.

The cyclone should have blown down this house of Tarot cards. Maybe it still will. The only effective internal relief force in Burma was the monks, who led truck convoys into the delta and sheltered, fed, and consoled the victims of Nargis at village temples all over the devastated area, claiming their unambiguous position as the real leadership of Burma. Another attempt at a Saffron Revolution, a louder, angrier, and more desperate uprising, seems inevitable in time.

For today, the generals are getting away with it, again. As Alan Rabinowitz told me before the storm, “They couldn’t care less what the U.S. or the West does or doesn’t do.”

In that sense, San-Zarni Bo was right. I got out of Hell on the first of May. It must have been my lucky day.

The post The Generals in Their Labyrinth appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Before Cyclone Nargis hit and killed at least 78,000 people, contributing editor Patrick Symmes got out of the country with these elegant snapshots.

The post Burma appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.