When Natural Disaster Strikes, the Junta Tightens Its Grip

“There’s no such thing as a natural disaster, and the disaster management community has said so many times,” Adelina Kamal, an Indonesia-based independent ASEAN analyst, said in April. Political corruption, extractivism, and systemic neglect are understood by climate scientists and geographers to deepen the risks for people marginalised along race, class and gender lines. Contributing to the deaths and harm to thousands, the politicisation of humanitarian aid in Myanmar in the wake of the devastating earthquakes this spring has deepened the wounds of the country’s drawn-out conflict.

A 7.7 magnitude “supershear” earthquake hit the country on March 28, devastating cities and communities around the Sagaing Fault line running through the heart of the country. A second earthquake at a magnitude of 6.4 quickly followed. While the epicentre was near the major cities of Mandalay and Sagaing, tremors ran far south along the Irrawaddy River. The earthquakes were felt over 600 kilometres out, toward the borders with China, India and Thailand. 

The first 72 hours after a disaster are considered the “golden” window for rescue. In the immediate aftermath, the junta requested international assistance. But as the clock ticked, the junta, or State Administrative Council, was accused of restricting humanitarian access to affected areas, particularly those under opposition control of ethnic armed organisations. An internal UN memo cited by Physicians for Human Rights has stated that “the junta is restricting access in areas outside its control, leaving them largely devoid of external assistance.” In Sagaing, a pharmaceutical import ban has prevented vital medicine from reaching people in need. Similar bans on medicine transport have been reported across the country. Medical and aid workers could not work safely even while responding to the crisis. According to Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, the junta also recently “opened fire on a convoy by the Red Cross Society of China” in Sagaing.

With every passing week, the death toll climbed. News reports flooded with gruesome details of thousands of people lying dead or waiting for rescue beneath the wreckage. By early May, over 3,800 people were known to have lost their lives, and over 5,000 people were injured. Over 55,000 homes were destroyed in March, exacerbating a decades-long internal displacement crisis. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that 6.3 million people affected by the earthquakes need humanitarian assistance. 

While the earthquake response has been criticised for lacking central coordination and transparency, the latest military obstruction is but another notch in a legacy of severing lifesaving assistance to civilians trapped in Myanmar’s conflict zones. “This is a catastrophe of militarised neglect that could have been prevented. Only when you remove the cancer that is the military dictatorship can you build proper disaster governance,” Kamal said. 

“There are blurred lines between neutrality, solidarity and complicity,” Kamal said, referring to a lack of humanitarian diplomacy in resistance-controlled areas to expand access beyond the junta’s restrictions. Without support, people have built up a tolerance to protracted crises she called “negative resilience.” 

“When you have the privilege of access, this is all the more reason to push beyond the boundaries to save lives,” she said. 

While the earthquake damaged or destroyed 193 hospitals and care centres, Myanmar’s medical system has been eroded by the junta’s systemic blacklisting, arrests and murders of medical workers. Médecins sans frontières (MSF) has reported immense psychological strain on earthquake survivors in the earthquake's aftermath. Conflict is so normal in affected communities that people confuse the tremors with nearby fighting. “To be honest, we first thought it was a mine or a bomb. We came here from the conflict zone; it sounded so familiar,” a mobile clinic patient told MSF. 

Rural communities, in particular, have long been neglected by state investment in primary health care and mental health services. The 2021 coup exacerbated a crumbling public health system. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners has called attention to the toll of cumulative trauma exposure in Myanmar and the need for funding and policy that is reflective of the collective nature of trauma in the country. “These previous traumatic experiences, and the consequences they have already burdened upon people in Burma, serve as a mirror of what is yet to come,” they wrote in 2022. 

But even as the country reeled from the earthquakes, conflict has been unrelenting. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights accused the junta of continuing military operations in the days following the earthquakes. On April 2, the Tatmadaw, or junta’s military forces, issued a month-long ceasefire. By early May, at least 243 new attacks, including 171 air strikes, were reported, claiming hundreds more lives. Of these, 171 air strikes have hit the Sagaing region and Karen and Karennistates. James Rodehaver, head of OHCHR’s Myanmar team, reported hand-held bombs and munitions dropped over communities by paragliders. All are reported amid the ceasefire.

The military announced an extension from May 6 to 31, except in response to armed groups, but any whisper of peace is tainted with cynicism. 

“Right now, there is a massive trust deficit,” Manny Maung, a researcher at Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Group and formerly with Human Rights Watch in Myanmar, said. “Why do we keep negotiating with the military as if it’s a legitimate partner, a trusted ally? They have proven time and time again that they are unreliable, that they lie, that they purposely target civilians and commit war crimes.”

Myanmar is under the rule of a majority Buddhist government that has imposed a regime of censorship and arbitrary imprisonment of dissenters and waged brutal military campaigns against ethnic and religious minorities across the country’s rural regions and borderlands. After decades of military rule, conflict again enflamed following the coup in February 2021. Opposition forces have sought to push out military control from their territories, as civil society movements have called for civilian rule under the National Unity Government. 

Over seven decades of armed conflict have created a complex landscape of governance and power concentration across Myanmar, with mixed and contested governance stitched across ethnic and religious identities. Armed actors are diverse, from ethnic organisations representing local government branches like the Karen National Liberation Army and Chin National Army to new militias and rebel factions that have formed since the 2021 coup. 

“Some of these non-state armed groups are our legitimate partners. They have the will of the people, they have the support of the people, they are delivering services to the people”, Maung said in April. “If you feel uncomfortable working with local partners, don’t do it. If you feel uncomfortable working in Myanmar, don’t do it.”

In Rakhine State, the Arakan Army (AA) has secured control of most of the western region bordering the Andaman Sea. The ethnic armed organisation has support among Rakhine ethnic majority communities, and analysts have speculated about secession with the group’s consolidation of power over the majority of the state. But they have also been accused of war crimes, including recently admitting to executing Tatmadaw prisoners. The AA’s near-absolute power has been contested by smaller militias like the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, whose own brutal tactics belie a profound alienation of minority groups from political and military powers vying for control over the coastal state. 

Humanitarian experts working in Myanmar are calling on the sector to reckon with complicity in normalising the junta through an unwillingness to work with all local actors. Some of them are armed groups that tightly control movement and activity in contested areas. Others are grassroots civilian organisations and mutual aid networks. 

“There are hundreds of non-state actors in Myanmar, many of them local community-based organisations who are themselves victims of the military’s abuses,” Maung later told FairPlanet. “The UN continues to engage with the military junta, meeting in photo ops and maintaining dialogue with the senior officials responsible for abuses against the population. The people of Myanmar feel that the UN has done little to support or help advance their democratic wishes.” 

Introduced in 2016, the Humanitarian Grand Bargain commits member states to contribute 25 per cent of international aid funding to local actors by 2026. But when theory hits the ground, local organisations are still struggling to meet donor requirements,  and international organisations aren’t accessing regions outside of junta control. Mutual aid groups work in secrecy to avoid persecution and maintain the safety of affected communities. Humanitarian best practices adapted to Myanmar's local context are also undisclosed for security.

Members of a humanitarian aid network working in Myanmar, who wished to remain unnamed, described trust fraying due to the decades of human rights violations committed by the military and the atrocities committed following the coup. A representative told FairPlanet that humanitarian organisations have to sign a memorandum of understanding to continue operating in the country. This contract obligates them to work exclusively with the military. 

“The earthquake was not just a natural disaster; it is used as another weapon to consolidate power,” the representative said, describing the junta’s access restrictions as a show of force. “The relief goods donated by the international community are distributed only by authority and their associates, who have no prior experience delivering humanitarian aid.”

They explained that attempting to deliver aid to restricted areas without working with local groups is futile. But Myanmar’s context of protracted armed conflict adds further complexity when armed groups representing local political authorities are also implicated in crimes against humanity. 

Last summer, the United League of Arakan coordinated humanitarian aid delivery as international aid operations dwindled in Rakhine State amid escalating conflict. Its military branch, the Arakan Army, is the dominant armed group opposing the junta in the region where the Tatmadaw has waged genocide against Muslim Rohingya people since 2016. The army has also been accused of human rights violations in Rakhine, including slaughtering civilians, arson and conscription, which it has repeatedly denied and attributed to the Tatmadaw or rebel groups.

“Many parts of the affected areas are controlled by new actors, who are being trusted by local communities,” the organisation’s spokesperson told FairPlanet. “Many new actors are trying their utmost to tackle the issue of human rights violations and documenting violated cases and contributing to the [Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar] to be applied when the transitional justice process takes place to respond to the legacies of massive and serious human rights violations.”

In northeastern Kachin State, aid was routinely obstructed after a ceasefire with the military broke down in 2011. Stretching into the Himalayas, the region is primarily controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and its Kachin Independence Army. Thousands of people have been displaced amid fighting. But even during Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government preceding the coup, the human rights non-profit Fortify Rights reported that between 2017 and 2018, aid organisations themselves “all but stopped submitting requests to the civilian government to access displaced populations in KIA-controlled territory, regarding attempts as futile.” The military was blocking access, labelling the KIO a “terrorist” group under the Unlawful Associations Act and enabling the arrests of people in contact with the Kachin Independence Army. 

Humanitarian experts working in Myanmar are questioning why international aid organisations are willing to work with the junta despite the decades of human rights violations but not with a plethora of local actors. Wherever humanitarian aid is politicised, civilians bear the burden.

There are fears that the earthquake recovery period will be used to normalise the junta further. The repercussions of past exploited crises are still being felt today. Such was the case with the devastating Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. Not only was humanitarian aid to the Irrawaddy Delta blocked by the military, but the aftermath was used to push forward a controversial constitutional referendum that transferred some power to civilian institutions but ultimately retained military authority over the country. Aid workers disregarded the decree at the time, bringing supplies and providing medical aid to the region anyway - and saving lives. The military obstructed aid delivery during the devastating Cyclone Mocha that levelled villages across Rakhine in 2023. MSF wrote that denying access to affected areas, restricting the ability to scale up emergency response, and the military taking over distribution from aid organisations were “gradually becoming the new normal in Rakhine.” 

This new normal is becoming more deeply entrenched, demanding a cruel resilience from people who have been repeatedly deserted in times of greatest need.  

“I’m afraid that whatever offers are made in rebuilding Myanmar and the areas affected by the earthquake will be used as peace dividends or incentives to push the resistance movement into rushing the peace negotiations,” Kamal said, stressing the failures of past peace agreements. “Talk to the ethnic groups who entered into these agreements and then found themselves violated. Learn from them.”

Image by Saw Wunna.