Insight Myanmar4 Apr 2025

Mission Aborted

Episode #330: “When President Bush called that morning and said, ‘Pull back [away from Myanmar],’ I just couldn't compose myself. I broke down in front of all the Marines, and so I had to run into the bathroom and I just cried and cried,” says Mie Mie Winn Byrd. “I knew we had all the capability to help them, to relieve suffering and provide aid, but there was nothing I could do.”

In a powerful and emotional reflection, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mie Mie Winn Byrd recounts her role in Operation Caring Response, a U.S. humanitarian relief mission following Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which killed over 135,000 and displaced millions. Born in Burma, Byrd brought vital regional expertise to the U.S. effort. Yet despite American readiness to help, Myanmar’s military regime blocked aid access, allowing only limited deliveries of critical supplies, which it then left to rot on—or disappear from—the tarmac.

Byrd draws clear and direct parallels between Cyclone Nargis and the recent earthquake in Myanmar, underscoring the military’s pattern of paranoia, cruelty and obstruction. Byrd calls the junta not a legitimate government, or even a legitimate army, but rather a Mafia-like, organized crime syndicate.

In contrast, she finds inspiration in Myanmar’s civil society and diaspora, whose grassroots response has saved lives despite immense hardship. She urges international donors to bypass the military and support trusted, local actors: “They open up their hearts, their purse, and [are] doing it again.”

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(613)

Price of Raw Power

Episode #598: Rare earth mining has drawn Kachin State into a global struggle over minerals essential to electronics, green technologies, automobiles, and defense, while communities near the mines bea...

31 Aug 1h 35min

No Direction Home

Episode #597: Victor Chan’s life began not with a spiritual calling but with motion. Born in Hong Kong and trained in physics, he left without a fixed destination and spent the early 1970s moving acro...

28 Aug 1h 39min

Return to Sender

Episode #596: “I needed to find another way... through research, writing, education, mentoring, community work,” says CS Kyaw, a Myanmar-born doctor turned development researcher now based in Australi...

27 Aug 1h 59min

At The Checkpoint

Episode #595: Salai Vanni Bawi, a Chin researcher focused on migration, refugees, and transnational repression, speaks about how the country’s crisis extends beyond its borders into a system that cont...

25 Aug 1h 7min

A Course in Progress

Episode #594: “We fumble through life a little bit, and we end up doing different kind of things.” Arthur Nichols uses this modest explanation for a life that has now been shaped by Vipassana for fift...

24 Aug 1h 19min

Most Favored Regime

Episode #593: “Why are values included in international trade?” Arianna Bondi’s research begins with that question, but Myanmar turns it into a problem of limits. A PhD candidate at McGill University ...

21 Aug 1h 30min

Meditating beyond the Benevolent Dictator

Episode #592: In this, the 7th installment of a series of discussions with Jonathan Crowley, a former longtime practitioner and assistant teacher in the Goenka Vipassana tradition, he reflects on his ...

20 Aug 1h 49min

Ground Control

Episode #591: “The war may end, but for years and years, landmines indiscriminately will kill and maim people, quite often children, as well as farm animals, long after the act of fighting has ended.”...

18 Aug 1h 59min