By Christopher Shay -TIME

BURMA AND THE BOMB

It may seem counterintuitive, but Burma has a lot going for it. Blessed with abu
ndant natural resources, the nation is home to the last of the world's ancient t
eak forests; it produces tens of thousands of tons of jade every year; it's at t
he center of the global ruby trade; and most important, it has natural gas. Lots
of it. Burmese gas already powers half of Bangkok, and it will soon start flowi
ng to China, making billions of dollars of profit. For many though, it's where t
he money is being spent that's worrying.
Up until a few years ago, Burma's military government, cut off from trade with t
he West, led a "hand-to-mouth existence," says Sean Turnell, an economics profes
sor at Macquarie University in Australia. Now, thanks in no small part to its re
source-hungry neighbors, the pariah state has $6 billion in cash reserves, says
Turnell. As cash is flowing in, the military junta that has run the country sinc
e 1962 is spending lavishly. With about a third of the country in poverty, the j
unta could invest in health, education or job creation, but instead, new evidenc
e suggests Burma is spending billions on outlandish military projects, including
a secretive nuclear weapons program. Turnell says the junta is "absolutely para
noid about international interference in the country." (See pictures of Burma's
slowly shifting landscape.)
A documentary released last month by the Norway-based NGO Democratic Voice of Bu
rma (DVB) details the beginnings of a clandestine Burmese nuclear program. Thoug
h much of the documentary's evidence comes from a single defector living in hidi
ng, hundreds of color photographs appear to confirm the rumors that have been sw
irling for the past few years that Burma has been pursuing the bomb. The Burmese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls DVB's accusations "baseless," but Robert Kell
ey, a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and weapons scie
ntist at Los Alamos National Lab, concluded from the DVB evidence that the techn
ology in the photos "is only for nuclear weapons and not civilian use or nuclear
power."
The documentary's primary source, a former Burmese army major named Sai Thein Wi
n, is a Russian-trained missile expert â not a nuclear engineer â who says he was se
cond in command at a top-secret military factory that made parts for Burma's nuc
lear weapons program. The photographs Sai Thein Win supplied to DVB dovetail wit
h other evidence that suggests Burma is undertaking a massive nuclear project. D
ictator Watch, a U.S.-based opposition watchdog group, provided TIME with a list
of some 660 Burmese students studying engineering and military-related fields i
n Russia, more than 65 of whom are studying nuclear-related subjects. According
to Roland Watson of Dictator Watch, the list is just a batch from 2009; he claim
s he's heard from multiple independent sources that there are more than 3,000 Bu
rmese military researchers who have studied in Russia over the past decade. In t
he film, Sai Thein Win estimates that the number could be as high as 10,000. In
fact, Sai Thein Win says he was in the first group of Burmese students sent to R
ussia, in 2001, where he studied missile technology at the Moscow Engineering Ph
ysics Institute, once the primary training ground for Soviet nuclear weapons exp
erts. (See pictures of Burma's decades-long battle for democracy.)
Despite Burma's presumed investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in its al
leged nuclear weapons program, the country is still years away from any kind of
bomb. Kelley told TIME that Burma's apparent attempt to enrich uranium using las
er isotope separation â a complex and expensive method that has stumped many riche
r nations â was "kind of dumb." At this rate, it's going to be a long time before
Burma's leader, General Than Shwe, ushers Burma into the nuclear club â though tha
t may be news to Burma's top brass. The Irrawaddy, a Burmese newsmagazine in exi
le based in Thailand, reported that Than Shwe was furious at his officials after
 learning that Kelley's report for the DVB said a nuclear weapon "may be beyond
Burma's reach" at this time. Khin Maung Win, the deputy chief editor of the DVB,
told TIME that Than Shwe "has been lied to by his own people."

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Sanctions, Khin Maung Win says, have prevented Burma from freely acquiring much
of the technology it needs for its nuclear program. Though the DVB documentary s
uggests Burma has acquired some large-scale German- and Swiss-made tools, it als
o shows Sai Thein Win holding a prototype of a missile component, the part's rou
gh edges revealing Burma's lack of precision machinery. But for now, Turnell of
Macquarie University says the government has easy access to the money needed to
keep the nuclear project flush. At the moment, says Turnell, Burma makes roughly
$3 billion a year from its gas exports. When a new pipeline opens in 2013, Burm
a stands to make an additional $2 billion a year. "The regime is cashed up," he
says.
The Burmese junta isn't using its newfound wealth just to fund its alleged nucle
ar weapons program. It has built a new capital city, Naypyidaw, deep in the cent
er of the country, where the generals would be safe in the event of an amphibiou
s assault. North Korea is believed to be helping Burma construct an elaborate ne
twork of tunnels designed to protect Burma's military leadership from airborne a
ttack. It's a plan the DVB estimates has already cost some $3.5 billion. Last ye
ar, Burma bought at least 20 MiG-29 fighter planes from Russia, and late last mo
nth, the Irrawaddy reported that some 14 North Koreanâ made truck-mounted missile l
aunchers had been set up at military bases around the country. Why is Burma spen
ding so much on defense? "It's part of a crazy dream of Than Shwe that Burma sho
uld be a big and powerful empire," says Bertil Lintner, a Thailand-based journal
ist who has written books on Burma and North Korea.
Meanwhile, the people in Burma continue to suffer. In a 2000 World Health Organi
zation ranking, Burma had the second worst health system in the world, sandwiche
d between the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone. This shouldn't be a sur
prise, given that only 1.8% of Burma's total public expenditure is on health, al
so the second lowest in the world, according to the United Nations Development P
rogram. "This is not a modern, developmentally focused government like China or
Vietnam," Turnell says, adding that the country's irrational military spending "
is the great scandal. Its poor have so many needs." (See TIME's special on the b
attle for global health.)
If this sounds similar to another Asian pariah state, it should; Burma is trying
to follow the North Korean model, according to Khin Maung Win. Than Shwe report
edly admires Kim Jong Il for standing up to the international community, and eve
r since the countries formalized relations in 2007, the two states have deepened
their military connections, say DVB sources. Relations between the two countrie
s, however, have not always been so amicable. In 1983, North Korean operatives a
ttempted to assassinate the South Korean President in a Rangoon bomb attack that
killed 21, and Burma severed official diplomatic relations for more than two de
cades. Recently, though, the countries seem to have bonded as joint pariah state
s, with the junta's No. 3 general, Shwe Mann, visiting North Korea in 2008. Nowa
days, Khin Maung Win says there could be hundreds of North Korean military exper
ts at any given point in Burma acting as advisers to key parts of Burma's defens
e industry.
Right now, there is no evidence that the North Koreans are directly helping with
Burma's alleged nuclear weapons program, but analysts worry this might not alwa
ys be the case. Burma has cash, and North Korea needs it â desperately. Defectors
say Burma wants a bomb; U.S. intelligence says North Korea already tried helping
build a nuclear reactor for Syria before Israel bombed it. "A couple years ago,
I would've pooh-poohed the whole thing," says Turnell of Burma's nuclear weapon
s program. But now, he says, "The whole story is a perfect fit."