The regime has gone through various phases... which left a country endowed with abundant natural resources in a state of utter ruin, and, later, a more Latin American-type system in which the economy is partly owned by government... In four and a half decades, the junta has made only one mistake — to allow relatively free elections in 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won them by a landslide. The junta disregarded the result and, learning from its mistake, never allowed the daughter of the nation’s independence hero... to live in freedom again. As long as Myanmar’s next-door neighbours — especially China, Thailand and India — were kept happy... and as long as there was no danger that civil unrest could spill over the various borders, the generals had carte blanche from the rest of Southeast Asia to do as they pleased.

No government... is immune from natural disaster... But a government that is not accountable to anyone and does not allow any form of decentralised structure to function... is a recipe for what amounts to mass murder in the event of a natural calamity... The Myanmar government’s conduct in the last few weeks may soon rank among the worst tragedies in living memory caused by people obsessed with power.

Excerpted from ‘The Unforgiven’ by Alvaro Vargas Llosa in The New Republic