A neighbour of mine in Yangon has a theory about why soldiers were kept off the streets in the immediate aftermath of cyclone Nargis. He thinks the government, fully aware of the anger that people might be feeling about the lack of warning about the storm, didn't want the army and civilians working together to clear the streets, lest some of the ire felt by the people rub off on young, impressionable soldiers.

But the army apparently didn't want to be upstaged by Buddhist monks either. The day after the cyclone, monks from a monastery in Kyeemyindaing township went out to help people remove trees. Soldiers who had been stationed outside the monastery since last September's anti-junta protests told them to go back inside. The monks, determined to help the people in their neighbourhood, told the soldiers they would have to shoot them to stop them. In this instance, perhaps in the absence of directives from superiors, the soldiers lowered their guns and let them work.

The lack of meaningful cooperation between monks and soldiers was apparent elsewhere. Near the east gate of Shwedagon Pagoda a friend of mine saw a group of army recruits working to dismember a tree that had crashed to the ground near a guard post. Directly across the street some monks were removing a tree that had fallen in front of a small monastery. The groups worked entirely independently, neither offering to help the other, neither even acknowledging the other's existence. It was as if they were operating in two completely different worlds.

The interaction between monks and soldiers in Myanmar is, of course, more complicated than this scene suggests. Many families have some sons who are monks, and some who are soldiers. Most Buddhist men spend at least some time in a monastery when they are young, so nearly every soldiers has donned the robes of novicehood at one time or another.

Overshadowing this reality is the junta itself, which insists on seeing the people of the country as the enemy – not as a group of people to protect, but as a seething mass of bodies to repress or cajole into submission (thus censorship and propaganda). Common soldiers, mostly from poor families, fall into this category as well. There were many stories last September about young soldiers who refused to fire on protestors until their commanding officers threatened to shoot them on the spot for disobeying orders.

By mid-week following the cyclone, there were several military work crews removing debris from the streets of Yangon – still not as many as one would hope from an army of more than 400,000, but they could be seen working in some areas of the city.

On Banyar Dala Street in Mingalar Taung Nyunt township the appearance of the army to clear trees from in front of the local bus stop was even greeted by cheers and laughter by neighbourhood residents, who emerged from their houses to exchange tea and cigarettes with the young soldiers. Now if only they would start exchanging some ideas about how to get rid of a government that has proven itself to be worse than useless in the face of disaster, maybe some real progress would be made in Myanmar.