After the Myanmar earthquake, where is the army? Foreign policy

Internet restrictions and narrow media controls initially limited footage of the destruction caused by a huge earthquake in central Myanmar last month.

In one of the first disposable videos, it was captured in the Mandalay area, a girl is buried even her neck in the rubble. Men in Sarongs, barefoot or wear the face, dig their hands, raise concrete pieces and try to change a huge stone beam. The woman cries while one of the transferred holds a bottle of water on her lips.

Since the army seized power in a coup more than four years ago, Myanmar has retreated on almost all standards of development. Its economy is in a crisis, as the currency has lost about half its value since February 2021. Hundreds of thousands of civil service employees have gone out of their jobs after the coup; Health care and education in the country is in a state of chaos. JUNTA has coordinated public services managed by other groups, and electricity is legalized.

After the army killed hundreds of demonstrators in the wake of the direct coup, the forces supporting democracy joined the old ethnic armed organizations to fight the military council, and the country fell in the civil war. On this background, foreign countries and international relief agencies began to mobilize after the earthquake to provide aid that is very needed and is involved in a rhetorical battlefield.

The army in Myanmar has a history of settlement and the politicization of aid; As a result, many activists called for avoiding working with the entire system. For help, “You cannot pass through the Military Council. They will not help the regions where it takes more – especially in areas where they are not under the control of Junta,” said Yangi Lee, a former human rights close to the United Nations in Myanmar, to the BBC this month.

Instead, civil society groups in Myanmar recommended the transfer of aid through community groups, ethnic armed organizations, and the government of national unity (NG), a parallel administration appointed by elected legislators in the coup. Some groups have falsely claimed that most of the affected areas were in an area controlled by the resistance.

Although the opposition groups have seized the lands of the military regime, most of the earthquakes were destroyed in three urban centers under the control of JUNTA: Mandalay, the nearby Sagaing town, and the capital of Naypyidaw. Ethnic armed groups are located in the border in Myanmar, and the pro -democracy militias operating under rural pockets in central Myanmar, which have not suffered severe damage to earthquakes.

Most of NUG leadership is also located in the border areas or abroad, and the parallel administration was struggling to exercise control of various nominal militias under its leadership. Any assistant that has been sent to NG is disbursed to civil society groups operating in the regime area.

Moreover, some rights defenders indicated that the regime is still obligated to provide relief.

“Despite the well -established doubts that the army may not be ready to deliver and facilitate aid in a crisis … and despite the fact that we and others have documented military attacks in the aftermath of the earthquake, we cannot also let them from the hook by insisting on insisting on fulfilling their obligations with assistance,” said Joe Freeman, a researcher at Meanmater.

The army certainly has a busy record – indifferent, and always prioritizes its political goals at the expense of those who aim to serve. In 2008, after Hurricane Nargis destroyed the Southern Coast of Myanmar, the former military regime refused to allow US navy ships to empty aid with the death of tens of thousands of people, for fear that this would be an excuse for the invasion.

In the past two years, after Hurricane Mocha and Yaji, rights and relief groups, accused the current system of prohibiting aid from reaching the border areas under the control of the rebels in the states of Rakhine and Kaya. This would have been aimed at preventing rebel forces from leading double use commodities, such as food and medicine-but also as a form of collective punishment against civilians who are considered to support resistance.

The regime called for external support immediately after the March earthquake, which made its opponents suspicious, who suggested that the army would use the natural catastrophe to gain international legitimacy. The leader of the Military Council and Commander -in -Chief of the leader Min Aung Hulang benefited from the moment he met with leaders in Thailand during a regional conference, and many of them published pictures with the mention of the year of the earthquake.

But concerns about political legitimacy are largely exaggerated: the army has mostly ruled Myanmar since 1962, although it is unlucky at the local level and is an international isolated for long periods of time. Its strength comes through strength. In 2021, the pro-democracy movement was often limited to symbolic victories-but since then, the country's crisis has evolved into an armed uprising that led to the expulsion of the regime from large impurities from Myanmar.

Despite the reports that highlight some isolated accidents, the sources on the ground said that there are no large assistance blocks, especially compared to the situation during other disasters, such as the hurricane mocha. (Foreign policy agreed not to name any relief workers or their organizations for security reasons and allow them to speak freely.)

The sources also confirmed that the aid is making its way to the city of Sagaing, via a river and bridge of Mandalay. The notification of the border, Myanmar indicates that rumors about the aid that was initially neglected had been impeded from going to SAGAING. By the time they realized that aid was allowed, a decisive window was closed: People died under the rubble.

The head of a local medical organization said that there were no real restrictions on the aid movement by the army. “We are expanding our activities every day,” he said. “I have to say that they are not hindering at the present time … There is no use in trying to make it look worse than it is already.”

He said that his organization simply ignored an order on April 5 to register with JUNTA officials and requested travel permits, while other organizations that complied with the bureaucracy. The organization works in a NGO control area, but he said that his team “does not see great damage” there.

An auxiliary worker with an international organization said that after the earthquake, the army was more evident in its absence, as local rescue teams lead the response. “The army is not on the ground at all … except for the Islamic community, where there are hundreds of bodies that are dug, I saw the presence of the army in the corner,” he said.

It is possible that the army's non -typical response is because it is in a state of chaos after the Naybyidaw earthquake and less concerned about the aid supplies that reach the rebels because the lands they control it were poorly affected. This provides an opportunity for relief organizations to help people in need-and should be taken, because the pre-army ever may not be allowed for a long time.

Another source said that members of the supporting militias seemed to be acting as local authorities in a state of JUNTA officials. Military supporters formed these militias after the coup, in response to the deployment of forces supporting democracy in central Myanmar, and played a major role in rebellions there.

Richard Horusi, Myanmar's Great Adviser to the International Crisis Group, said that the relative absence of the army's response reflects both its decreasing ability to government and its priorities. “The communities are left to a motivation for themselves, as they were always. But I think this is a moment of weakness to the regime – failure to respond to disasters is very clear, and their areas of control have been affected inappropriately,” Horsi said.

Both sides of the conflict have launched attacks since the earthquake, despite the temporary ceasefire. In recent days, the armed rebel groups have seized the city of Indo, 200 miles north of the epic, and the town of Valm, near the borders of Myanmar with India.

As elsewhere, the army resorted to air attacks in the face of land losses, including civil targets; Women and children were among the dead in the bombing near Woody this month. Horsi said that the earthquake's response is another indication of “rotting within the system and its management, which was already clear for some time in the battlefield.”

Those who demand help to convert to Nug when it is little illogical themselves are themselves in politicizing aid. But these problems will continue as long as the military holds power in Myanmar. It resists every procedure that it takes strongly by people – at times with costs for themselves. Since the coup of 2021, almost every aspect of life has become a battlefield: public services, delivery of aid, political legitimacy.

From the panic that sometimes arises in the active circles during these agent wars, one may forget that the army loses where it matters more: the actual battlefield.

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