In the hours after Cyclone Nargis ravaged Burma, UN officials tried to call the country's top leader to offer help. They got no answer.
After a few more days without contact, they wondered whether Senior Gen. Than Shwe had gone into hiding or even fled the storm-battered country. But after frantic meetings with Burma's UN ambassador, the real reason became clear: Than Shwe was reluctant to accept help from outsiders.
Usually, the senior general takes advice only from his fortunetellers — whom he consults first thing every morning, diplomats say.
A combination of superstition, intimidation and isolation has kept Than Shwe and a coterie of generals in power here for 16 years. The ruling general has presided over a military regime that has mainly been successful at nurturing its power, purging rivals and putting down uprisings.
The cyclone winds changed the landscape of Burma, and some now wonder whether it will end up leading to change in the government as well. Few think change will come quickly or easily.
The 75-year-old leader's shuffling, bulldog appearance belies a formidable tactician canny enough to court regional powers to balance the threats of the West, astute enough to sign cease-fires with 17 insurgent groups to prevent a common front and ruthless enough to crack down on Buddhist monks who were leading peaceful protests last September.
Than Shwe regards himself as a modern king, the rightful heir of ancient Burmese rulers and one who should not be questioned, said Priscilla Clapp, the U.S. chief of mission in Burma from 1999 to 2002.
"Whenever he left the country, foreign diplomats had to go to the airport and line up on one side of the red carpet," she said. "He expects everyone to bow down to him."
Burmese officials seem to have as little sway over Than Shwe as outside leaders, Clapp said. "Even people close to him, even some of the generals under his patronage, say they don't really know him," she said.
To ordinary Burmese citizens, he is even more of a mystery. Most people under his rule have never heard Than Shwe's voice—just his words read by news broadcasters on state television and radio. On the rare occasions he ventures out, he rides in armored vehicles with dark mirrored windows.
Shaky transition
A week after Cyclone Nargis swept the Irrawaddy River delta, the senior general made his first appearance, not to comfort the victims of the worst storm in the country's living memory but to vote on a referendum enshrining the government's power.
But instead of reassuring people that he was in control, the television footage of him shakily walking to the ballot box with an aide at his elbow reinforced rumors that he is seriously ailing, said exiled Burmese activists.
That image also captured the core reasons behind Than Shwe's compulsive grip on power. With several of the top rulers in failing health and in the midst of a constitutional redistribution of power, the junta is in a fragile generational and structural transition, which makes the leadership extremely wary about any challenge or change from outside or below.
When the former prime minister, Khin Nyunt, seemed too willing to negotiate with the opposition in 2004, diplomats and United Nations officials said, Than Shwe jailed him for 44 years and removed 3,000 affiliated officials.
Several hundred monks and protesters are still in jail from last fall's protests, including one person spotted on a video handing water to the monks, according to an internal UN report.
The person who seems to ruffle the general and his compatriots the most is opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. After her National League for Democracy party won the 1990 election, the junta rejected the results and she was jailed. She has been in prison or detention for 12 of the past 18 years, and the new constitution specifically bars her from public office.
In a meeting between former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Than Shwe at a 2005 summit in Jakarta, when Annan mentioned her name, "the generals and staff all closed their notebooks, stood in unison and walked out the door," said Steve Stedman, then the assistant secretary general, who was in the meeting.
"It was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen and left me thinking that these people really are out of touch with the rest of the world," Stedman said.
The senior general, however, does pay close attention to the stars. His astrologers predicted a disaster would befall Rangoon. So in November 2005, he moved the government north to a mountain hamlet now known as Naypyidaw, "abode of the kings." Safe in the hills from the cyclone that just ravaged Rangoon and the southern delta region, the general may feel all the more invincible.
Rule of fear
"Don't underestimate him," said Leon de Riedmatten, who worked in Rangoon for seven years for the Red Cross and later as a mediator. "The people around him are all terrified."
The generals' rule of fear means they are out of touch with what is happening in their country, a phenomenon that has led to poor policymaking and a population already living on the edge of crisis before the cyclone hit, according to Charles Petrie, former UN resident coordinator in Burma.
In an internal report, Petrie wrote that the junta rules by "mutually strategic ignorance"—civil servants are afraid to report the truth about harsh living conditions, and the decision-makers don't want to hear it anyway. That has led to an official picture of a thriving, productive country that is far from the reality of a faltering nation with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line and ill-prepared for disaster.
U.S.-led sanctions against Burma have left Western governments groping in a black hole to try to assess the regime's state of mind. With no personal contact, the West can do little but speculate about the regime's motives.
At the same time, many diplomats and analysts accept that Burma's generals have cleverly played its neighbors off against one another in a competition for the country's potentially lucrative oil and natural gas resources. The generals have tapped the eagerness of investors from India, Thailand, Singapore as well as China to ensure that they are not without partners, nor beholden to any one.
The regime's response to the calamity has disenchanted its usual allies outside Burma and also those inside its own military, who may nudge leaders to open up.
Clapp, the former U.S. chargé in Burma, said that Than Shwe may be an absolute ruler but the government is not monolithic.
"I don't think the government can be toppled," she said. "[But] I think it will morph into something over time, a negotiated transition with the military."