Myanmar’s military leadership never fails to take advantage of human suffering to spin a narrative of legitimacy and political prowess. The devastating earthquake on March 28 that struck Central Myanmar was the latest in decades of natural disasters that have wreaked havoc across the country and decimated lives and property, almost invariably of the most vulnerable and already desperate communities. The death and destruction experienced by people in Sagaing, Mandalay, Inle Lake, Taungoo and many other places have been shocking. The death toll has climbed to over 3,600 people, with an estimated 17 million directly impacted, nine million terribly affected.
The response from the international community has been remarkable, with search teams from a dozen countries deploying some 2,000 emergency personnel to Naypyitaw, Mandalay and Sagaing, rescuing people trapped in collapsed buildings and retrieving the bodies of those killed. With unusual initial decisiveness, the State Administration Council (SAC) facilitated much of this, and has also received tons of humanitarian aid from multiple donors. Long-term donors such as the European Union and Australia have been extremely generous, as have many more across Asia.
Perhaps inevitably, divisions over the dispersal of aid and the legitimacy it bestowed rose soon after the earthquake. International donors, the United Nations and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are compelled to work through the central authorities, as they always have, and this was understandable given that many of the badly affected areas are in SAC-controlled urban centers rather than resistance-held territory. Calls for aid donations to circumvent the SAC are understandable for two main reasons. The first is that after four years of violent civil war and widespread military atrocities, there is no trust between the people and the military. The second is that the military will always try and take advantage of natural disasters to expand their legitimacy, take material advantage, and apply pressure on affected communities, as they have done since Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
Acrimony over which ‘authority’ donors work through is understandable. Yet given the gravity of the situation, there should be more widespread understanding that two systems, of ‘big aid’ and localized grassroots responses, both have their place. Calling for all UN agencies and INGOs to sever ties with the regime is unrealistic. But it is also dehumanizing to dismiss the role of grassroots responders and the undeniable strength of Myanmar communities to take care of themselves when given the resources and the respite from repression to do so. Instead of getting bogged down in debates over which system is better, accept that both have their merit and important functions to perform. And it is equally crucial to consider exactly what capital the military regime and the dictator Min Aung Hlaing will make of the earthquake recovery period.
Disaster Response Narratives
Already the SAC have attempted to control the narrative of the disaster by insisting the correct term is the ‘Mandalay Earthquake.’ The opposition National Unity Government (NUG) has termed it the ‘Sagaing Earthquake,’ which is arguably more appropriate given the epicenter was in fact in Sagaing.
Myanmar military propaganda is always top-heavy on generals in uniform visiting places, and Min Aung Hlaing and his deputy Vice Senior General Soe Win were out and about almost immediately after the earthquake. The widespread damage to Naypyitaw must have come as a real shock. But Min Aung Hlaing still found time to check in on his vanity project, the massive Maravijaya Buddha Image, which was reportedly undamaged by the quake. Soe Win looked uncomfortable floating through the wreckage of Inle Lake in southern Shan State.
The state propaganda machine is milking the international condolence messaging. Min Aung Hlaing couldn’t contain his usual excrement-eating grin as he spoke on the phone with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif in the days after the disaster. Russian dictator Vladmir Putin, whom Min Aung Hlaing recently declared during a chummy state visit to Moscow was a reincarnated warrior king born a rat 2,000 years ago, wrote “(p)lease, convey words of sincere sympathy and support to those who have suffered the loss of their loved ones, as well as wishes for a speedy recovery to all those affected by this natural calamity.” Putin obviously failed to discern at their recent ‘old-dictator-bro-fest’ in Moscow that Min Aung Hlaing is devoid of both sincerity and sympathy, which explains their friendship.
Xi Jinping of China also sent a note. Hun Sen from Cambodia too. The Sultan of Brunei, and leaders of Uzbekistan, Macau, Tajikistan, Thailand, Bangladesh and Laos sent very similarly worded condolences. Co-presidents of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega called the senior general “Brother Prime Minister”, which must have warmed the war criminal’s heart. Russell Mmiso Dlamini, prime minister of the Kingdom of Eswatini, sent “thoughts and prayers.” The Republic of Buryatia also sent a touching note, as did the Republic of the Seychelles. AA Travniko, the Governor of Novosibirsk Oblast, meanwhile expressed sympathy and pledged to assist in recovery.
Min Aung Hlaing’s crooked old friend, Yohei Sasakawa, Special Envoy of the Government of Japan for National Reconciliation in Myanmar and Chairman of the Nippon Foundation, showed up in person to visit the SAC chief after some period of estrangement since the coup, pledging US$3 million and personally donating “50 backpacks comprising 14 relief items, 60 rescue helmets and one carton of gloves.” Quite a rack of associates the SAC has.
But the nadir of despicable disregard for quake victims was Min Aung Hlaing’s decision to visit Bangkok for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) summit on April 3-4. Even as emergency teams from scores of countries where flying in to seek survivors under the wreckage, the SAC leader was meeting with the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Nepal, lapping up the attention and the sympathy.
Relations with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have also been prominent, and while disaster relief efforts must be seen in light of a laudable drive to help the people of Myanmar, they must also be viewed in the context of four years of stonewalling over the Five Point Consensus (5PC) and ASEAN’s efforts to address the conflict and humanitarian crisis resulting from the 2021 coup d’etat. Basking in the glow of all this international attention, the SAC is likely considering that the earthquake may have brought the regime some thoroughly undeserving credibility.
Ceasefire Narratives
Closely tied to the disaster relief narrative is the SAC’s announcement of a ‘ceasefire’ from April 2 to 22. The ostensible reasons for the declaration are to facilitate earthquake relief and recovery. But other factors could include fallout from an SAC military checkpoint firing on a Chinese aid convoy passing through Nawngkhio in northern Shan State on April 1, which didn’t present the Myanmar military in a positive, let alone competent, light. Or the junta was backed into a corner after the NUG declared a two-week ceasefire on March 30, and the Brotherhood Alliance announced on April 2 that they would “not initiate offensive operations – except in cases of self-defense – and hereby declare a unilateral humanitarian pause for one month to ensure that post-earthquake rescue operations can be conducted swiftly and effectively.”
The SAC statement said; “(d)uring the declared period of the temporary ceasefire, ethnic armed organizations and other armed groups are urged not to disrupt or attack communication routes used by the general public, cause harm or destruction to the lives and property of the people, attack and disrupt security personnel and their camps, disrupt military headquarters, recruit or mobilize forces that could undermine peace, engage in preparations or territorial expansion. It is also announced that if such actions are carried out, [Sit Tat] will take necessary response measures as part of protecting the public.” Note the threatening tone and preemptive blame-gaming, standard language for all of the previous ‘ceasefire’ announcements.
International requests for a ceasefire were rising. Singaporean Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan called for one after the ASEAN Foreign Ministers online meeting two days after the quake. Scandal-laden UN General Secretary Special Envoy Julie Bishop said in a statement she “condemns any form of violence and calls on all parties to the conflict to immediately cease hostilities and focus their efforts on the protection of civilians, including aid workers, and the delivery of life-saving assistance…(a) pathway to reconciliation requires an end to violence and unfettered access for the UN and its partners to address humanitarian needs, especially among the most vulnerable and marginalized.”
But how receptive really is the SAC to all of these calls?
Bishop visited Naypyitaw on April 9, meeting with SAC Foreign Minister Than Swe in a tent outside his damaged ministry building. It could hardly be a coincidence that state media ran an opinion piece on the same day, titled “Don’t Let Them Interfere” by Kyaw Myint Tun (Paris), pillorying the UN, the secretary general, the envoy, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) – none of them mentioned by name – and deriding them as “self-absorbed people”, which introduces an evocative new acronym into Myanmar’s lexicon: SAP. The UN released a video of Bishop walking through a badly damaged quake affected area, and her message said “(w)e need to continue to urge for a ceasefire, to stop the killing, stop the conflict so that the humanitarian workers, the search and rescue workers and those who are helping with the rebuild and the reconstruction of Myanmar have the space to operate safely and securely.”
Any perception of the SAC ceasefires as positive deserves undiluted scorn. The SAC’s declaration of a ceasefire is devoid of all meaning and has been for years. The danger is that soft-headed commentators, diplomats or mediation merchants may think these announcements could generate some process of peacebuilding. Silly proposals may emerge, of a ‘starting point’, ‘disaster peacebuilding’, and the utter delusions that somehow ‘deft diplomacy’ may lead to a workable ceasefire process. Most crucially, as past ceasefires have all shown, the will of the people is absent, and these processes have always been between men with guns, facilitated by foreigners with a military-leaning bent.
The first line of the SAC statement should rein in any sinister optimism: “[Sit Tat] has issued statements for ceasefire 22 times from 21 December 2018 to 31 December 2023.” Throw in the Chinese ‘brokered’ Haigeng Agreement between the SAC and Brotherhood Alliance in January 2024, which was broken multiple times by the Myanmar military, and these several years of ‘ceasefires’ have a pedigree of pointlessness. Ceasefires are meaningless when they come from Min Aung Hlaing. Why would a post-earthquake period be any different, especially when the main conflict areas throughout the hinterlands were not badly affected by the quake?
The SAC also conducted a three-day ‘Peace Talk 2025’ meeting of the National Solidarity and Peacemaking Negotiation Committee (NSPNC), which also includes representatives of the SAC-aligned signatories of the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) and members of registered political parties. This was simply a repeat of past gatherings of the same people discussing the same issues with little divergence from the script, let alone innovative policy formulation rooted in the real world.
The sincerity of any ceasefire is captured by the unrelenting kinetic violence the SAC has maintained since the earthquake. DVB has tallied 138 strikes, from jets and helicopters, drones, and paramotors, and artillery barrages, between March 28 and April 9, that have killed an estimated 73 people and and injured 106. Just three days after the earthquake, multiple air strikes in Mohnyin, Kachin State killed an estimated 36 recruits at a training camp of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). The Arakan Army (AA) claimed that 60 ‘drop bombs’ (drone strikes) and 50 artillery shells were directed at a village near Sittwe on April 5. The AA claims that between April 3-5, strikes from drones, artillery and naval ships hit multiple civilian areas in Sittwe and Kyaukphyu.
And the ceasefire hasn’t slowed long-term revolutionary forces’ campaigns against Myanmar army bases and towns. In recent days, Chin forces finally overran the SAC-controlled town of Falam after a nearly five-month long siege, and an alliance of the KIA, PDFs, and the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF) seized control of Indaw in northern Sagaing Region after nearly eight months fighting. On April 2, just as the Brotherhood Alliance announced a truce, the AA overran the Nyaungyo strategic base in west Bago, as it continues its months-long drive into Magwe, Bago, and the Irrawaddy Delta.
It is curious then that Titon Mitra, the Myanmar head of the UN Development Program (UNDP), who has been present in Mandalay and Sagaing since the disaster, told reporters in Geneva in recent days that “(w)e’re not necessarily seeing a complete cessation of hostilities…(but)… a very, very significant slowdown and we hope that does translate into a cessation of hostile facilities across the board.” All evidence is to the contrary. Yet it is important to understand why a senior UN official is uttering such obvious misrepresentations of the conflict situation, and how this will shape international narratives towards ceasefires.
Reformist Narratives
Any perception of the SAC being chastened by the earthquake and reformulating its pre-existing narratives of ‘reforms’ must be guided by the evidence, not the optics of optimism. The reformist drive of the SAC predated the earthquake. In almost all of his recent speeches, Min Aung Hlaing has been promoting an unconvincing narrative of 2025 being a year of economic change, planned elections, and efforts to achieve peace and stability.
One week before the earthquake, the SAC Ministry of Information’s so-called Myanmar Narrative Think Tank hosted the forum ‘Challenges and the Opportunities Myanmar Will Have in the Multipolar World Beyond 2025’, with think tank and policy wonks from India, Russia, Thailand, China and Japan. State media explained that “(t)he forum [aims] to raise international awareness about the current situation of the country together with political changes, [foster] collaboration towards Myanmar with understanding and empathy, counter the baseless accusations to promote the country’s image.”
Talk of elections in December (or January) have taken some misshapen form over the past several weeks, as Min Aung Hlaing includes the dates in almost all major speeches now. The Union Election Commission (UEC) announced on April 8 that the deadline for political party registration would be May 9. After years of speculation and empty promises, and a flawed ‘nationwide’ census in late-2024, the regime may indeed be moving to stage some semblance of elections in several months, in the territory it can actually claim after losing so much ground to the armed revolutionary forces.
Major challenges for Myanmar moving forward include how intersecting narratives will shape international engagement on earthquake recovery, the response to multiple humanitarian emergencies, uncertainty over elections and promised reforms, regional engagement, and the future of ceasefires and course of the conflict. The one certainty is that Min Aung Hlaing will capitalize on the suffering of Myanmar’s society.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues on Myanmar
