Kerry Howley

David Steinberg’s chapter on Foreign Assistance in Burma: The State of Myanmar goes some way in explaining the current impasse. Rangoon may be thick with foreign NGOs, but convincing an independent Burma to accept humanitarian aid has never been easy:

Yet Burma was dependent on foreign assistance, which at various junctures was essential to the economic survival of the state. Aung San had said before independence that Burma should not become dependent on foreign support, and yet it was foreign support of all kinds that was needed: military, economic, training, and technical. But assistance had to be carefully couched. For example, the US foreign assistance program requires that the united states receive an official request for aid. Yet the Burmese would not make such a request. So a compromise was made under which the United States would write a letter inquiring whether the Burmese might be interested in such a program, and they would write back indicating that they might be interested, and this exchange of correspondence was deemed sufficient to satisfy the requirements of both sides.