China, Russia and India have sent emergency teams and supplies to earthquake-hitting Myanmar. This is true of Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
The United States, the richest country in the world and once the most generous provider of foreign aid, has sent nothing.
Even if President Trump had demolished the US international development agency, he said American help was on his way to Myanmar, where a 7.7 magnitude earthquake ripped apart the country’s dense population centers on Friday. According to the Myanmar military government, more than 1,700 people have been killed, more bodies have been revealed in Kawarub village, and death victims are expected to climb sharply as rescuers reach faraway villages.
However, the three-person USAID assessment team is not expected to arrive until Wednesday, people with knowledge of the deployment effort said. The overall response in America is slower than normal, said those who worked on previous disaster relief efforts and those who have worked on aid to Myanmar.
China’s search and rescue team, with dogs trained to smell locked people, is already on the ground in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city and one of the places most deeply affected by trembling. China has pledged $14 million to help Myanmar earthquake relief, dispatching 126 rescuers and six dogs, and medical kits, drones and earthquake detectors.
From 2022 until the beginning of this year, Michael Schiffer, assistant administrator for the USAID Bureau in Asia, said: “If we don’t show up and China appears, it sends a pretty strong message.”
On Sunday, the US embassy in Myanmar announced on its website that the US will provide up to $2 million in aid, distributed through Myanmar-based humanitarian groups. However, much of the system needed to concentrate American aid in Myanmar has been crushed.
On Friday, they received agency-wide layoff emails as some Washington employees were preparing to respond to the earthquake. Career diplomats working for USAID and other employees have been pretending to be layoffs for several weeks. Trump’s political appointees in Washington had fired most of the contractors who already worked for the agency.
Employees who received the layoff notification were told they should go home that afternoon. Some were coordinating with aid missions in Bangkok and Manila to handle Asian disaster responses.
Two Washington employees were hoping to move to Yangon and Bangkok in Myanmar this winter. However, their locations were cut off. If not, two employees would have been on the ground to organize an emergency response to the earthquake.
After the disaster Friday, the US Embassy in Yangon sent cables to USAID headquarters in Washington to assess aid needs and begin the process of assisting the door. And the next day, USAID’s Trump administration political appointee Tim Maceberger called to discuss the plan with national security agency officials.
But Maceberger said that despite the response, no one should expect the agency’s capabilities to be past capabilities, according to a person with direct knowledge of the call.
A USAID spokesman did not reply to requests for comment.
Agents typically have access to food and emergency supplies in their warehouses in Dubai and Subangjaya, Malaysia. But the big problem now is that after being almost completely demolished, goods can be obtained from those locations in Myanmar. The product includes medical kits that can serve 30,000 health care needs over three months.
Apart from career diplomats, the departmental rank of the agency for humanitarian assistance includes specialist contractors in crisis who live all over the world and can quickly deploy what is called disaster relief response teams. Many of these contractors have been fired, and the infrastructure that supports them in Washington and other offices (for example, those who can book flights and manage payments) have been crippled by the past two months of cuts.
Agents are usually wary of Virginia and Southern California certified search and rescue teams about possible deployments into disaster zones, but those teams’ transportation contracts have been reduced, one former aid agency employee said.
USAID’s annual allocation in Myanmar was around $320 million last year. Of that, about $170 million was for humanitarian work, while the rest was for development initiatives such as democracy construction and health. While only millions of dollars worth of projects remain operational, some of these programs, such as those for mothers and children’s health, have not received funding despite the fact that the initiative has been said to have not been shut down.
Before the cuts, the annual cost of total US foreign aid was less than 1% of the federal budget.
At a press conference in Jamaica last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US would continue its foreign aid work, despite a significant drop. He said the aim was to provide assistance, “it is strategically aligned with our foreign policy priorities and our nation’s priorities where we are with our partners.”
On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said the crisis team is ready to roll out in Myanmar.
The US’s ability to provide life-saving assistance has been hampered by budget cuts as well as obstacles in Myanmar itself. Since gaining power in 2021, Myanmar’s military junta has shut down the country due to Western influence. Myanmar is currently caught up in a civil war, and the slow coalition of opposition parties holds control of more than half of the country’s territory.
The United States and other Western countries have sanctions on the brutal human rights records of the junta, and General Min Aung Fröning, the military chief who coordinated the coup, opposed the West and thanked China and Russia for their ideological and economic support.
Nevertheless, hours after the earthquake struck, General Min Ang Fröning said he welcomed external disaster relief assistance, not just countries with friendly ties with the junta.
Myanmar experts say they are concerned that some of the aid passing through the junta could be decoupled to the military. The Myanmar military is lacking and lacking in morale as it fights resistance in many ways.
In Mandalay, residents said they were upset to see soldiers relaxing around the site of the collapsed building. Some played video games on their phones, while locals used their hands to pry bricks from the tiled rub.
Still, Chinese and Russian search and rescue teams, equipped in orange and blue uniforms, were digging into the remains of Mandalay on Sunday, with Belgian teams heading north.
A significant portion of USAID’s funding was dedicated to regions of the country that were not under administration control. American aid was spent on health care and schooling for those who were internally displaced. It supports local administrations seeking to form mini-governments in conflict zones. And it sought to provide emergency relief to civilians who were abused by military attacks.
The Jets of the Myanmar Army, a base of resistance against Junta, carried out two rounds of airstrikes in Nwel Khwe village, adding fear to the lives of residents, hours after the earthquake destroyed the buildings there.
“It’s as if they want to ensure that Min Aung Frening dies from his attack, if not from an earthquake,” said one villager Koung Kyo.
But Aung Kau said he doesn’t expect Americans or other foreigners to be able to mitigate the situation. Sagain has been suffering for four years, and thousands of people have died to fight the junta. He said foreign aid is likely to benefit the junta, not those who need it most.
“In the end, we only have ourselves,” he said. “We’ve been resisting for four years now, but it’s clear that no matter what, we have to find our own path.”
Stephanie Noren reported,
