Inside Than Shwe's jungle fortress
[Our correspondent inside Burma recently visited Naypyidaw, the military dictatorship's bizarre new capital. A shorter version of this article appears in today's newspaper.]
Kenneth Denby
Naypyidaw, Burma
Even before you have arrived in the remarkable city of Naypyidaw, it is obvious that this is a place like no other in Burma. It’s not just the isolation, in a reclaimed jungle 200 miles from the sea; it’s not the ban on foreigners, which is circumvented easily enough. The most extraordinary thing about the world’s newest capital is the road leading into it.
Ten lanes wide, cut flat and straight through hills and forests, it is the grandest and fastest stretch of road in a country where potholed tracks qualify as major highways. Occasionally, a cement lorry rumbles by on its way to one of the city’s many building sites. From time to time, a rickety open-backed minibus drives past. But otherwise, the traffic on this mighty autobahn consists of sputtering motorbikes, horse-drawn carts, and lines of women carrying heavily laden baskets on their heads
This is Naypyidaw, the “Place of the Kings”, the most mysterious and bizarre capital city in the world. Its broad roads, grandiose public buildings and shopping centres are meant as a model of the advanced Asian city – but many of them stand empty and unused. Unknown millions have been lavished on its construction, in a country where most people live on less than a dollar a day.
Its inaccessible location is intended to protect the hated military junta of Senior General Than Shwe – but many believe that the government’s increased isolation is hastening its downfall. Naypyidaw is the Burmese dictatorship in microcosm, a monument to the generals’ ambition, xenophobia, paranoia, and simple barmy incompetence. Earlier this month, I became the first western journalist to visit the capital since the junta’s bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy protests last month.
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