The Sept. 27 Bangor Daily News carried a front-page story on one of the many tragic days in the long-suffering history of Myanmar, when the military attacked and detained demonstrating monks and their supporters in a brutal suffocation of popular voice. At that moment the world’s attention was riveted on this unknown Southeast Asian country, as the international community continues to work to formulate a reaction. President Bush presented the U.S. response in his address to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, when he announced the recent tightening of sanctions – and went on to promise “to continue to support the efforts of humanitarian groups working to alleviate suffering” in Myanmar.

Myanmar’s population is about 52 million people, gnawed daily by worry, fear, and increasingly, by hunger. The primary worry for most families is how, each day, the family will be fed. Per capita income remains one of the lowest in the region, one in three children are malnourished and infant mortality rates are high. Add to this stresses like a generalized HIV-AIDS epidemic and rapidly rising cost of living, and we understand why the population feels they are plummeting ever faster towards disaster.

Sparked by a sharp increase in gas prices, the latest uprising was fueled by decades of fighting a losing battle against poverty and lack of any prospects for improvement. The response of the West, though heartening in its vigor, is discomfortingly familiar – increase sanctions, draft resolutions of condemnation. Yet the complexity of the situation in Myanmar demands close scrutiny and a thoroughly considered response.

The international community has coined a new concept of “smart” sanctions, targeted to inflict minimal collateral damage. If this is what the U.S. intends to achieve with the recent asset and visa freezes on 37 of the military top brass and business cohorts, then it stands a chance of making the desired impact. But broad stroke sanctions aimed at bringing the Myanmar economy to a standstill, as some advocate, will most decidedly backfire on the poor.

Although 75 percent of the population is rural, the agricultural sector cannot support the growing population. Faced with the lack of opportunities that a manufacturing or service sector might provide, the growing ranks of unemployed and underemployed have few options but to seek work in neighboring countries (usually illegally) or join the onslaught on Myanmar’s dwindling natural resources, extracting gems, gold, timber and other forest products, and natural gas.

This is where the twisted logic of broad stroke sanctions ends in a knot. The less able to support families, the more desperate people become, and the more likely to rise up in the streets – ending, in September 2007 as in September 1988, in one bloodbath after another. And, while Myanmar’s poor are driven to join in the extraction of natural resources, these resources themselves rapidly disappear, leading to an unsustainable future for the country.

The UN Special Envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, is on the right track. Now on a tour of the nations neighboring Myanmar – the only ones with any influence – he is pressing for a solution that is rooted in Asia. Reaching out with a carrot as well as a stick, he has begun to talk of incentives that might include increased humanitarian assistance, and even investment, as a reward for steps toward positive change.

Most immediately, we must not allow a degradation of humanitarian assistance. On the contrary, we must push to increase aid to the people of Myanmar. Myanmar has one of the highest tuberculosis infection rates in the world, and the fourth largest HIV positive population in Asia; malaria remains the greatest killers of adults. Children suffer – and die – from diarrhea and acute respiratory illnesses. Prevention and treatment can effectively be delivered – and is, by a smattering of aid agencies – yet levels of funding remain unscrupulously low. And the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria withdrew $87 million of precious assistance in 2006, its withdrawal signaling once again the triumph of politically-correct highmindedness over the reality of deep suffering and fatalities due to these diseases in Myanmar.

Due to a reluctance to engage with the generals, the international community has been withholding life-saving assistance from millions of powerless people. Ranking near the bottom of the list for both per capita income and per capita aid assistance, Myanmar has arguably suffered no greater neglect than any other poor nation in the world. To compare within the region, in 2005, neighboring (and authoritarian) Laos received 16 times more assistance per person than Myanmar, and authoritarian Vietnam seven times more.

That the regime itself spends far more on defense than on health, education and welfare is downright wrong, but so far sanctions and condemnations have not made them take their responsibilities for social welfare seriously. Of course, institutional inefficiencies and the political deadlock must be solved in the long run for the effectiveness of aid to be sustained. But in the short term, we must not abandon the poor of Myanmar. Let’s hold Bush to his promise to support humanitarian efforts, and appeal to the other governments and aid agencies to do so as well.

Karin Eberhardt is a rural development consultant who has been providing humanitarian assistance in Myanmar for the last eight years. She lives part-time in Liberty.