With international relief efforts barely touching down in cyclone-devastated Myanmar, campus experts say the disaster in that Southeast Asian country is both a natural and man-made one.

Kyaw Tha Paw U, of Burmese heritage and a professor of atmospheric science at UC Davis, has relatives living in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

Paw U is concerned about family there — it has been hard to reach all of them by phone since May 3 when Cyclone Nargis killed or left missing an estimated 120,000 people. As many as 1 million are reported homeless.

"My family here is worried about them," said Paw U, who did learn that one relative had the roof of her house blow off during the windstorm; she is safe.

He says the conditions are rough where his relatives live near Rangoon in the interior, and much worse farther out toward the coastline. Where there is electricity, it may only come on for three hours a day, and only then can water pumping be used to produce drinking water, though that may not even be safe, he said.

And it may only get worse — a nightmare of disease, starvation and oppression looms.

"The situation is dire," said Paw U. "More rain is to come as the monsoons are in transition to the full monsoon season, so those without shelter and roofs are very worried."

Add to this the spectre of massive food shortages in the future.

"Burma is a major rice-producing nation," said Paw U, who studies biometereology and is the editor-in-chief of the journal Agricultural and Forest Metereology. "Now much of that capacity will be reduced for at least several years. Fresh rice and other grain seeds will be needed to restart many areas where stocks were lost. The already mostly stagnant development there has been set back years, and may take a very long time to recover.

"The people are already poor and hungry," he noted.

And the people are not getting much help from the ruling powers, he said. The military dictatorship there has "mainly their own personal interests, wealth and power in mind at all times," and this is reflected in its refusal to allow international aid and personnel into the country.

"Most of us still call the country Burma, as we consider 'Myanmar' to be a military ruse," Paw U said.

He has heard recent reports of people losing their jobs if they voted against the Myanmar junta, which in 2007 made international headlines when it reacted harshly against a Buddhist monk protest, known as the Saffron Revolution for the color of the monk robes.

Benjamin Lawrance, a UC Davis assistant professor of history who has studied colonialism and human rights, said Myanmar's colonial past gives clues as to the regime's wariness about foreigners and outsiders.

From 1886 until 1948, Burma was colonized as part of the British Empire. Geographically, it is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, and India on the northwest.

'Well-grounded suspicion'

Consequently, Burma has had plenty of experiences with outside — often manipulating — influences, Lawrance said.

"There is a well-grounded suspicion of Western and former colonial powers because the imperialist activities in their recent past demonstrated how they rarely made decisions in the best interest of their former colonies," he said.

There is another more selfish reason, perhaps. Myanmar's rulers may not want outsiders in to help with the cyclone recovery because it would reveal to the world how the elite are benefitting at the expense of the poor.

"In undemocratic regimes," Lawrance said, "wealth and influence is often distributed in a neo-patrimonial system ... and nepotism is widespread."

And so, the nation-fortress girds itself against the global community, and the world is left to wonder exactly what is going on there.

Paw U has heard stories about the misuse of power and information in the wake of the cyclone.

"There were reports of the military personnel disappearing a day before the cyclone, not returning until more than a day afterwards, and only offering very limited help."

As for the little aid that has gotten in, he was told that many of those boxes were re-labeled to appear as if they came from Myanmar's military, and not international aid agencies.

However, Paw U says, the Burmese are not simply isolationist. Indeed, the rulers are quite willing to reach out when they want to make lucrative natural resource deals with foreign countries and companies, and they often travel abroad for the best medical treatment.

"The aid issue is mainly a problem with a greedy, power-hungry military dictatorship which does not care much about its own people, not a cultural issue of isolationism," said Paw U, who talks of Burma's progressive traditions.

In fact, Burma historically was one of the most gender-equal cultures in the world, long before many Western societies, he said.

"For hundreds of years, women had full property and economic rights whether married or not, and women were prominent in many roles," he said. "I believe this is changing quite a bit, as the military is mainly a male-dominated structure."

The military regime, after the killer cyclone, went ahead with plans to hold a May 10 referendum aimed at solidifying the ruling junta's hold on power.

For Paw U, even visiting Myanmar — which he has not done for 30 years now — would be a sign of support for the government there. He was born in the U.S. to Burmese parents who worked as academics and for the United Nations.

"That the military leaders, many not very well educated and superstitious, would order the shooting of monks, shows that their greed and authoritarianism far outweighs even their fear of repercussions in a religious belief sense," said Paw U.