No one knows whether it was paranoia over an Iraq-style invasion, the advice of a grizzled soothsayer or the egomania of a military leader seeking to emulate the ancient kings.

But yesterday outsiders got their first glimpse of Burma’s bizarre project to build a brand new capital city in the middle of a malarial jungle, hundreds of miles from golden-spired Rangoon.

The ruling junta’s decision to build the new capital, Naypyitaw, was taken in 2003 but it became public knowledge only 18 months ago, when thousands of government employees were ordered to pack up and move.

Foreign journalists were allowed in for the first time yesterday, ostensibly to attend the Armed Forces Day parade but in reality to gawk at this new example of Burma’s splendid isolation. Halfway along the road to Mandalay, Naypyitaw is a bone-jangling eight-hour drive from Rangoon.

Just outside the city, the potholed track gives way to a spanking-new, eight-lane motorway, running through the hundreds of square miles of jungle cleared for the city. Inside, it resembles nothing so much as a building site, with clusters of pastel-coloured blocks of flats for government employees, and miles of tarmac roads leading nowhere. What no journalist was allowed to see were the huge slave labour camps reported by exiled activists to exist outside the city, housing the tribespeople rounded up by the Army to work on the roads.

The civil servants that staff the new capital had little choice in their fate either. Many refused to bring their families, not least because of the endemic malaria. Now here, many complain of the lack of restaurants and shops — or anything other than the ministries, hotels for official visitors and the fortress that serves as a base for General Than Shwe, the supreme military leader. It is all a far cry from Rangoon.

Burma’s rulers insist that the new location is more central, but the paucity of transport links makes Naypyitaw feel much farther away. And its isolation makes it easy for the Government to decide who can and cannot live there, creating a city of model citizens reminiscent of Pyongyang. Foreigners and outsiders are forbidden.

Some have suggested that the regime is paranoid about the prospect of an American invasion. But perhaps the most popular theory is that the move was the advice of a soothsayer, recalling that General Ne Win, the country’s first military dictator, once changed the direction of traffic, simply because his fortune teller told him to.

Others believe that General Than Shwe is trying to secure his place in history by following in the footsteps of Burma’s ancient kings, who would change capital regularly to establish their own distinct dynasty. After all, the new city’s name means Seat of Kings

Capital gains

Canberra Walter and Marion Griffin designed Australia’s new capital after winning a 1911 competition. The city replaced Melbourne in 1927

Brasilia Built in 1956 in an area of near desert in centre of Brazil

Abuja General Murtala Mohammed created Nigeria’s new capital in 1976 to escape the squalor of Lagos

Washington DC designed in 1791 on mosquito-infested swamp and tobacco fields, its location a compromise between Northern and Southern states

Islamabad Built in the 1960s alongside ancient Rawlpindi to reflect Pakistan’s past and present

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