UNITED NATIONS — In the hours after Tropical Cyclone Nargis ravaged Myanmar, U.N. officials tried to call the country's top leader to offer help. For several days, they got no answer and wondered whether Senior Gen. Than Shwe had gone into hiding, or even fled the storm-battered country.
Finally, the real reason became clear: Than Shwe didn't really want their help.
A combination of superstition, intimidation and isolation has kept him and a coterie of hard-nosed generals in power here for 16 years. The 75-year-old Than Shwe has presided with an iron fist over a military regime that has been more successful at nurturing its power than its people, purging rivals and putting down uprisings.
Usually, the senior general takes counsel only from his fortunetellers, whom he talks to first thing every morning, diplomats say.
The cyclone's winds changed the landscape of Myanmar, also known as Burma, and some now wonder whether a change in the government is also in store. Few think it will come quickly or easily.
Than Shwe's shuffling, bulldog appearance belies a formidable tactician canny enough to court regional powers as a balance to the perceived threats of the West, astute enough to sign cease-fires with 17 insurgent groups to prevent a common front, and cruel enough to brutally crack down on Buddhist monks leading peaceful protests last year.
The senior general regards himself as a modern king, the rightful heir of the ancient Burmese rulers and someone who should not be questioned, said Priscilla Clapp, the U.S. chief of mission in Myanmar 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."
Myanmar officials seem to have as little sway over Than Shwe as outside leaders do, 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 Myanmar citizens, he is even more of a mystery. Most people under his rule have never heard his voice -- only his words read by newscasters on state TV and radio. On the rare occasions he ventures out, he rides in armored Land Cruisers with dark, mirrored windows.
A week after the cyclone swept the Irrawaddy River delta, Than Shwe made his first appearance -- not to comfort the victims of the country's worst storm in living memory, but to vote on a referendum enshrining the government's power.
