Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, March 31, 2025

Two powerful earthquakes jolted and devastated Myanmar, aka Burma, causing widespread death, destruction and dislocation for a country already reeling from the effects of ongoing civil conflict.

The 7.7 Scale quakes created stunning devastation in central Myanmar as well as into neighboring Thailand killing 1,700 people and damaging the storied city of Mandalay.

Ominously the earthquake came a day after Myanmar’s ruler Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, a man accused of war crimes, delivered a defiant speech in the capital city to mark Armed Forces Day.

But the reverberations from the earthquakes go well beyond the natural tragedy; Political aftershocks are likely to jolt the Southeast Asian country which has been gripped by long standing ethnic conflict as well as the widening rebellion against a Beijing-backed military regime which seized power four years ago.

Burma’s self-appointed ruler Gen. Min Aung Hsiang

Not surprisingly, the Myanmar military has continued carrying out airstrikes on suspected rebel positions not far from the epicenter of the natural disaster in Mandalay. Using mostly Chinese and Russian jets, the military hits vulnerable towns amid the chaos.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur for Myanmar Tom Andrews told the BBC that it was “nothing short of incredible” that the military was continuing to “drop bombs when you are trying to rescue people” after the earthquake.

Burma sits on a tectonic and political fault line, both geologically and geopolitically. The earthquake prone country rests astride  the convergence of four tectonic plates, the Eurasian plate, the Indian plate, the Sunda plate and the Burma plate all of which are in movement.

Equally the former British colony has faced the assertive power of neighboring China that had long meddled in Myanmar politics. From 1962 until 2011, the country was run by a string of Beijing-backed military regimes. Only with the advent of the democratic but flawed government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2016 did Myanmar regain a civilian government, again to be overthrown by the current military rulers who seized power in February 2021.

Like the aforementioned tectonic plates, there are four primary crises inside predominantly Buddhist Burma.

First the long running ethnic conflicts with the Shan and Karen communities, both Christian and long in rebellion to any central government.

Second the brutal ethnic cleansing against the Muslim Rohingya people starting with massive expulsions of 700,000 people into neighboring Bangladesh in 2017.

Third; the civil resistance and widening rebellion of ethnic Burmese Buddhists against the regime.

Fourth; China’s hidden hand in Myanmar backing corrupt and ruthless military regimes.

China’s Belt and Road  (BRI) hosts significant components in Burma with building a railway, pipeline and port to the south on the Bay of Bengal. Nonetheless Beijing understands its client regime may be slipping in power and may choose to deal with the myriad of Myanmar’s ethnic militias to keep control.

The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor offers the shortest route for China to the Indian Ocean ending at the deep sea port of Kyaukphyu.  Nonetheless despite grandiose plans, construction results have been shoddy and incomplete.

Prior to the earthquake, military analysts stated that the Myanmar military only controls about a quarter of the Texas-sized country.

Now there’s an acute humanitarian disaster. The umbrella of United Nations relief agencies as well as neighboring states have sprung into action.

The UN’s resident humanitarian coordinator stated, “The earthquake struck at a time which Myanmar is already reeling from an alarming humanitarian crisis, largely driven by persistent conflict and recurrent disasters.”

Significantly Myanmar’s self-appointed ruler, Gen. Min Aung Hsiang, chief of the powerful Tatmandaw the shadowy military/security state, has called for international assistance to help in the aftermath of the quake.

While this is logical, a previous military regime back in 2008, had resisted and blocked international assistance to the stricken country in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis which caused widespread flooding and killed at least 138,000 people!

At the time the UN was literally begging to help; I recall former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon making impassioned pleas to assist a country which callously looked the other way until it was  too late.

Myanmar’s socialist rulers traditionally played the card of “self-reliance” to the outside world causing deeper anguish and suffering for their own population.

Now humanitarian assistance is flowing in from neighbors like Thailand, India and China as well as from the United States, Japan, Australia and Europe.  Agonizingly slow reconstruction amid conflict, where infrastructure and hospitals must be repaired from the quake’s chaos appears the next step.

But when aid starts arriving it should be focused on helping the stricken population, not handed directly to reinforce the corrupt military government.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

  Burma jolted by earthquake, One day after CCP-backed ruler’s defiant speech

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