Myanmar after the Earthquake

The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck central Myanmar on 28 March, followed minutes later by one almost as big, was the strongest in over a century. It sent multistorey buildings across Mandalay and nearby towns crashing to the ground, and caused devastation as far away as Bangkok, six hundred miles to the south. More than three thousand people have been confirmed dead in Myanmar, and unknown numbers are still missing. In Bangkok, rescuers continue to pull people from the rubble of a collapsed skyscraper.

The Sagaing Fault runs north-south through the lowland centre of the country, beneath the cities of Mandalay, Bago and Naypyidaw. The fortress-like capital was built as the ruling junta’s headquarters in the 2000s. It’s from there that General Min Aung Hlaing, who took power in a coup in 2021, has prosecuted a four-year war against the population.

The few images to have emerged from Naypyidaw since the quake show heavy damage to buildings, including military-run ministries. Some see it as portentous. ‘We have a saying that a massive earthquake like this is nature’s way of punishing a cruel and corrupt ruler,’ one woman told the New York Times. ‘After killing so many people, Min Aung Hlaing is now facing the judgment of nature. Even the bones of those he murdered are trembling.’

Over four years of war, thousands – possibly tens of thousands – of people have been killed by the military. More than three million are now displaced. Close to twenty million are in need of humanitarian assistance. Fighting began in mid-2021 after the military launched a crackdown on anti-coup protesters. Civilian groups took up arms, in some cases joining forces with ethnic minority rebel armies to attack junta positions across the country. As the military lost territory, it intensified its use of violence: medics have been arrested and killed in their hundreds; critical aid has been prevented from reaching displaced populations; there have been more than eight thousand airstrikes. The combined effects of bombardment and blockade mean that, according to the UN, the west of the country is on the brink of famine.

More than a million of those displaced since 2021 are in Sagaing Division, where the epicentre of the earthquake was. Sagaing has been the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war: according to a recent count, the junta has bombed the region 1300 times over four years, destroying tens of thousands of civilian buildings and driving the populations of entire towns into makeshift camps where they struggle for food and medicine. Just before the earthquake the UN warned that the region ‘has seen a surge in civilian casualties’ as fighting escalates, and food security and sanitation for war-affected populations is worsening. Hours after the quake, Min Aung Hlaing – who has pledged to ‘annihilate until the end’ all resistance – ordered a bombing raid on an area of northwestern Sagaing, as well as others in the east and west of the country.

Among the first countries to send rescue teams to Myanmar were China and Russia, who are also two of the principal suppliers of weaponry to the military. Others were slower to respond. The Trump administration’s USAID shutdown has effectively grounded the Disaster Assistance Response Team, one of the world’s best-equipped earthquake response units. More generally, though, there has been growing wariness among governments and NGOs since 2021, if not before, over the use of formal channels to get aid into Myanmar, since they are controlled by a regime that uses the denial of aid as a military tactic, and is engineering famine in regions where it can’t outgun resistance forces.

When Cyclone Nargis struck the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008, the ruling State Peace and Development Council, wary of seeming incapable, at first shunned offers of international assistance. Aid that did eventually make it in was either confiscated by junta personnel or used as a bargaining chip: affected communities would only receive food and medicine if they voted in favour of the newly drafted constitution. Some 140,000 people perished in the cyclone and 2.8 million were left homeless. Now, as before, reports are emerging of soldiers blocking local rescue teams from accessing earthquake-stricken communities in Sagaing, and even firing on aid convoys. In the words of a letter signed by local and international civil society groups over the weekend:

The junta’s callous contempt for human life, even in the face of widespread earthquake devastation, underscores its unsuitability to oversee aid – and more importantly, its willingness to manipulate any humanitarian response.

Because of the absence of a beneficent state, Myanmar has emerged as a test case for the effectiveness of alternative, localised modes of humanitarian provision: cross-border aid, for instance, or aid disbursed by rebel armies or civil society groups who use digital platforms to receive international funds. Over sixty years of on-off dictatorial rule, non-state networks have had to find ways to fill the gap left by a neglectful and punitive central authority. With the advent of alternative international money transfer tools, they have been able to route donations quickly and directly to where they are needed. In the early days of the nationwide work stoppage that followed the 2021 coup, mutual aid groups formed by exiled or diasporic Myanmar nationals raised substantial sums by emphasising to donors that they could bypass military controls on the movement of money. The point has been made again in recent appeals.

Those groups were among the first sifting the rubble. Immediately after the earthquake, the US Geological Survey forecast between 10,000 and 100,000 deaths. It’s a wide window – but no one knows how many more lives will be taken by the military.