Every day, the Chinese rescue team can carry children and elderly people in fallen buildings, as the cameras are thanks to appreciative survivors from around the world. Russian medical teams are showing off their blink of an outdoor hospital, built in the air, due to the tendency of injured people.
Not particularly present in the aftermath of the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in the poor Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar: the US’ unique, skilled, well-equipped, rapid search and rescue team and disaster response crew.
According to the Myanmar government, at least 15 Asian and Western government rescuers reached hundreds of workers and landed crews that reached hundreds of workers, along with the initial pledge of financial aid reaching tens of millions of dollars. On arrival, cameras showed the Vietnamese team and marched square shoulders to rescue behind their country’s flag.
Myanmar’s military junta and civil war have raised challenges, but the US government has previously worked with local partners to work together to ensure successful aid for decades, including the deadly storms of 2008 and 2023.
The US government is running heavy equipment that can pull experience, capabilities, and rescue capabilities of other countries from the rooftop rub. However, in Myanmar after the latest tremor, the US stands out for having no known presence on the ground beyond the three-person assessment team sent out a few days after the earthquake.
“I was worried about what the human impact was” of President Donald Trump’s dismantling the US International Development Agency six years ago, said Leah Lindsay, senior humanitarian policy adviser at Oxfam, who scrambled to provide tents, blankets and other aid to survivors.
Now, Lindsay said, “We’re looking at it in real time. We’re looking at it in an increase in suffering and an increase in death.”
Descending from American policy for decades could be driving absenteeism
The world’s largest economy, the United States has long seen its strategic interests and alliances by its position as the world’s top humanitarian aid. Myanmar’s trembling is as close to no-show as the country has in recent memories of major accessible natural disasters.
Current and former senior officials and government officials say the disaster in Myanmar refers to some of the consequences of the decades of the Trump administration’s retreat from US policy for those in need on the ground and for us. That approach determined that Washington needed both the strong military hard power and the soft power of a robust aid development program to stop the enemy, acquire friends, retain friends, and pilot the event.
For the NATO gathering, European Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the proposal that the administration is affecting its government overseas by canceling thousands of aid and development contracts, including disasters. He told reporters that the complaints were aid groups and he accused him of benefiting from past US aid.
“We will do our best we can,” Rubio said Friday. “But there are other needs that we have to balance it out. We won’t leave.”
He pointed out, “Many other rich countries in the world. They should all play their role.”
The US International Development Agency was founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.
A leading Senate Democrat wrote Rubio this week to urge the expansion of US disaster aid to Myanmar. Separately, Delaware Sen. Chris Koons, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was watching a disaster news broadcast showing Chinese government teams at work.
“It’s heartbreaking to see the team leading the response instead of USAID. It was celebrated by the PRC team for saving those inside the kawara rub,” Coons said.
Through Elon Musk’s government efficiency team, the two-month Trump administration has frozen USAID funds, terminated thousands of contracts and fired a handful of staff around the world. It accuses of moving forward with waste and free causes. The trembling in Myanmar is the first major natural disaster since the work began.
The Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers say they will reassemble the reduced slates of aid and development programs under the State Department, adapting a narrower interpretation of work that serves the strategic and economic interests of the United States.
The first announcement of the help came a few days later
A few days after the Myanmar earthquake, the US announced its first support. It had dispatched a three-person evaluation team of non-experts from a local USAID office in Bangkok, Thailand. Coincidentally, like hundreds of other USAID staff around the world, the three received layoff notifications from the Trump administration on March 28 within hours of Quake, current and former USAID officials confirmed.
The administration also pledged $2 million in aid and announced an additional $7 million on Friday. But there are far more numbers to play.
This total of $9 million has been warned by approximately $2 billion payments for previously rendered services and goods owed to nonprofit humanitarian groups, other contractors, government and non-governmental foreign partners, aiding officials say. The Trump administration suddenly shut down USAID and closed the state’s foreign aid payments, including jobs already done on his inauguration on January 20th.
Combined with a rapidly terminated aid agreement and a freeze on USAID and state aid and development payments, US debt is forcing larger aid operations and businesses to reduce services and staff for those in need. Some small organizations have gone out of business. It was even before the earthquake in Myanmar.
Under court orders, the administration is slowly succeeding in those back payments.
In the meantime, nonprofit groups will have to use reserve funds that they normally use for sudden, unplanned disasters like Quake in Myanmar to pay bills that the US is paying for, said Lindsay, an Oxfam official.
Asked about the burden that non-governmental organizations (also known as aid groups) say that USAID unpaid bills are imposing on their jobs, the State Department said in an email: “The US government cannot comment on how NGOs control their funding.”
Usually, the US itself provided $10-$20 million in the early stages of its response to disasters like the earthquake in Myanmar, and later said it carried out disaster response and overall humanitarian issues with USAID in the Biden administration for long-term aid and reconstruction.
“Burma has a long history,” Charles said. “This is the environment the US government has been operating over the past decades,” he added.
Typically, the United States had between 20 and 25 professional disaster workers on the ground within just 24 hours, Charles said. If USAID flew with city rescue teams from California and Virginia, that number would have jumped to over 200. They are deploying as self-contained units with the ability to supply and supply clean water to dog handlers and teams, Charles said.
The Trump administration has saved contracts for California and Virginia rescue teams under pressure from lawmakers. However, their transport contracts are believed among the thousands of USAID contracts that the administration has cancelled. When the disaster struck, the US left no quick way to move search and rescue teams, Charles said.
The UK has pledged $13 million in aid, which coincides with private donations of up to $5 million, while China and others have pledged financial aid. At least 15 countries have sent dozens or hundreds of rescuers or aid workers, including Russia, China, India and the United Arab Emirates, according to Myanmar officials.
China shares close ties with its border with Myanmar. Chinese rescuers had their first success on Sunday, joining hands with locals less than 48 hours after the earthquake to attract an elderly man from a heavily damaged hospital in the capital.
By Wednesday, Chinese rescuers had drawn nine survivors, including pregnant women and children. In Mandalay, Chinese rescuers saved a 52-year-old man who was trapped for nearly 125 hours.
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Rising reported from Bangkok. Matthew Lee and Diddy Tan contributed from Washington, from London’s Jill Lawless.
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