Mission Aborted
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.”

Episoder(519)

Everything Will Be Okay

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Mined and Forgotten

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Episode #409: His military experience enabled a rapport with Myanmar’s armed actors, says Rory McCann, who recently served almost two years as the country Weapons Contamination Specialist for the ICRC...

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Episode #408: “There is no way to tell the story of Myanmar and where it’s headed if you are leaving out the Wa,” says Patrick Winn, a veteran Southeast Asia reporter and author of Narcotopia. His boo...

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Delusions of Grandeur

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Episode #407: One month after the coup, Captain Kyaw Kyaw defected from his post as a military pediatrician. After years of seeing the military brutalize the civilians they were supposed to protect, c...

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A Moral Reckoning

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Episode #406: “I didn’t come to study this subject deliberately with a focus on Buddhism,” says Justine Chambers, author of Pursuing Morality, a book that explores Buddhist moral life among the Plong ...

2 Okt 20252h 12min

The Silence of the Valkyries

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Episode #405: “Myanmar deserves better,” reflects Olle Thorell, a Swedish Member of Parliament whose nearly two-decade commitment to the nation is both political and personal. Elected to the Riksdag ...

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In The Crosshairs

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Episode #404: Before the coup, Pandora was a tour guide with little interest in politics. That changed in 2021, when the generals seized power and she found herself leading protests in her hometown of...

29 Sep 20251h 17min

A Deeper Renunciation

A Deeper Renunciation

Episode #403: Annai had always been attracted to spirituality. Growing up in a devout Catholic family in Barcelona, she preferred spending time in church while her friends only wanted to watch TV, an...

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