Myanmar's long isolation and its internal instability could complicate the global humanitarian response to the earthquake that hit Friday, despite rare pleas for external support from the country's military-dominated government.
“We need and hope for humanitarian assistance to the international community,” said General Zaw Min Tun, a military spokesman. “We will work with them to ensure optimal care for our victims.”
Myanmar was cut off by the United States and many other Western countries in 2021 after the military seized power in a coup and imposed brutal crackdowns. Even before the coup, the country has been under various sanctions for decades, and more recently over systemic violence against Rohingya minorities.
Western sanctions include carve-outs for humanitarian assistance, and the United Nations said on Friday it was mobilizing aid for those in need. However, in countries destroyed by civil war, there remains a major logistical hurdle to getting help from those who need it most.
Michael Martin, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the safety and safety of international aid workers reaching affected areas is one issue.
There is also the risk that the military will prevent aid workers from reaching rebels. Alternatively, Dr. Martin, a former Myanmar lead analyst for Congressional Research Services, risks slowing down the provision of aid, including repackaging the troops to make them appear to be from the troops rather than from the troops. The military can also prevent relief workers from obtaining visas and delaying processing times, he added.
And while many international aid organizations have been established on the principle that the provision of aid should not actually be political, that is not always possible. The military may “seek more support to areas nominally under their control than areas under their control of opposition forces,” Dr. Martin said.
When a 7.8 magniture earthquake struck the northwest region of Syria two years ago, under the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad, almost international aid quickly reached the region. The government restricted what went to areas held by the opposition parties, so some survivors had to dig tile rubs by hand.
In Myanmar, the military has been repressively dominated for most of the time since 1962. And even during a limited period of liberalization, the military continued to be a great political power. For that long, the country has restricted contact with the outside world.
Stephen Delcon, a professor of economics at the Brabatnik Government School at Oxford University, said another issue is transferring funds to Myanmar through licensed banks run by officials and other channels, as well as logistics that put supply in the appropriate areas.
“Providing humanitarian aid will be very, very complicated,” Dr. Delcon said. “Humanitarian operations are fundamentally logistics operations and require cooperation from many people.”
Another problem is raising the necessary funds, he said. Given Myanmar's isolation from the west, it is unlikely that there will be a large international line of western Nzars, he said.
Dr. Martin also said it is not clear how useful the US government will be given given the hostility to the Trump administration's foreign aid program and the massive cuts to the US International Development Agency.
