Spotlight: A Mission to Burma

In addition to representing the state of Virginia, U.S. Senator Jim Webb has penned novels featuring swashbuckling Americans seeking adventure in exotic backwaters. But even he might not have imagined a scenario in which a U.S. military aircraft flies him to the heavily fortified Burmese capital, Naypyidaw, to meet the country's reclusive military leader and secure the release of an American prisoner.

Burma may not be a charter member of the "axis of evil," but it surely deserves a dishonorable mention. Controlled by a clutch of generals since 1962, the country has devolved from Asia's breadbasket to an economic basket case, known for its brutal repression of ethnic minorities, imprisonment of human-rights activists and, most recently, rumored attempts to develop nuclear capabilities with the assistance of North Korea.

For years, the U.S. response to the junta's ironfisted rule has been an arsenal of economic sanctions. But Webb's confab with junta head General Than Shwe, though not an official visit, may signal a shift in U.S. policy. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that U.S. sanctions have done nothing to moderate the junta's behavior, in part because nations like China and India have poured investment into Burma. After his mission, Webb told reporters, "Isolation is only preventing [Burma] from developing economically and politically."

In addition to becoming the first top-level U.S. politician to meet with Than Shwe, Webb was allowed to see detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a privilege denied to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon when he visited last month. Webb's trip came just days after a military-backed court sentenced Suu Kyi to 18 months of house arrest. The democracy advocate, who has been locked up for 14 of the past 20 years, was punished in a bizarre case in which an American swam uninvited to her lakeside villa. The verdict virtually guarantees that Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won the 1990 elections that the junta ignored, will have to sit out the nationwide polls that the regime has promised for next year.

Some exiled Burmese dissidents have criticized Webb for lending legitimacy to the generals. But Webb did, at least, extract one concession from the junta. When the Senator's plane left Burma on Aug. 16, it carried an extra occupant: John Yettaw, the American sentenced to seven years' imprisonment with hard labor for his midnight swim to Suu Kyi's home. His saga--that of a middle-aged Mormon from Missouri who used homemade flippers to visit the world's most famous political prisoner--is stranger than any fiction, even that of Senator Jim Webb.

Trade

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

SOURCE: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK, 2008 ESTIMATES