Trump's USAID cuts hobble earthquake response in Myanmar

Boston Globe

30-03-2025

But a three-person USAID assessment team is not expected to arrive until Wednesday, people with knowledge of the deployment efforts said. The overall US response has been slower than under normal circumstances, people who have worked on earlier disaster relief efforts as well as on aid to Myanmar said.
Chinese search-and-rescue teams, complete with dogs trained to sniff out trapped people, are already on the ground in Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city and one of the places most deeply affected by the quake. China has pledged $14 million for Myanmar quake relief, sending 126 rescue workers and six dogs, along with medical kits, drones, and earthquake detectors.
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'Being charitable and being seen as charitable serves American foreign policy,' said Michael Schiffer, the assistant administrator of the USAID bureau for Asia from 2022 until earlier this year. 'If we don't show up and China shows up, that sends a pretty strong message.'
On Sunday, the US Embassy in Myanmar announced on its website that the United States would provide up to $2 million in aid, dispersed through humanitarian groups based in Myanmar. But many of the systems needed to funnel US aid to Myanmar have been shattered.
On Friday, as some employees in Washington in USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance were preparing a response to the earthquake, they received agency-wide layoff emails. Career diplomats working for USAID and other employees had been bracing for layoffs for weeks; Trump political appointees in Washington had already fired most of the contractors working for the agency.
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The employees who received layoff notices were told they should go home that afternoon. Some had been coordinating with aid missions in Bangkok and Manila, the Philippines, which handle disaster response in Asia.
Two of the employees in Washington had expected to move this winter to Yangon, in Myanmar, and to Bangkok to work as humanitarian assistance advisers out of the US missions there. But those positions were cut. Had they not been, the two employees would have been on the ground to organize urgent responses to the earthquake.
After the disaster hit Friday, the US Embassy in Yangon sent a cable to USAID headquarters in Washington to start the process of evaluating aid needs and getting help out the door. And the next day, a Trump administration political appointee in USAID, Tim Meisburger, held a call with officials from national security agencies to discuss a plan.
But Meisburger said that although there would be a response, no one should expect the agency's capabilities to be what they were in the past, said a person with direct knowledge of the call.
A USAID spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
The agency typically has access to food and emergency supplies in warehouses in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Subang Jaya, Malaysia. But the big question now is how quickly, after being almost fully dismantled, it can get goods from those places into Myanmar. The goods include medical kits that can each serve the health care needs of 30,000 people for over three months.
Apart from career diplomats, the ranks of the agency's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance have included crisis specialist contractors who live around the world and can deploy quickly in what are called Disaster Assistance Response Teams. Many of those contractors have been fired, and the infrastructure to support them in Washington and other offices — people who can book flights and manage payments, for instance — was crippled by cuts over the past two months.
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The agency would also usually put certified search-and-rescue teams in Virginia and Southern California on alert for possible deployment to the disaster zone, but transportation contracts for those teams have been cut, said one former aid agency employee.
At a news conference in Jamaica last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would continue foreign aid work, though in drastically reduced form. He said the aim was to provide aid 'that is strategically aligned with our foreign policy priorities and the priorities of our host countries and our nation states that we're partners with.'
On Friday, Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, said that crisis teams stood ready to deploy to Myanmar.
The United States' ability to provide lifesaving aid has been hampered not just by budget cuts but by obstacles in Myanmar itself. Since grabbing power in 2021, Myanmar's military junta has closed off the country from Western influences. Myanmar is now embroiled in civil war, with a loose coalition of opposition forces having wrested control of more than half of the country's territory.
The United States and other Western nations have responded to the junta's brutal human rights record with sanctions, and the military chief who orchestrated the coup, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, has railed against the West, thanking China and Russia for ideological and economic support.
Nevertheless, in the hours after the earthquake struck, Min Aung Hlaing said he welcomed outside disaster relief aid — and not just from countries with friendly relations with the military regime.
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Myanmar experts say they are concerned that some of the aid that goes through the junta could be diverted to the armed forces. The Myanmar military is underfunded and short on morale as it fights resistance forces on many fronts.
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