In October 2017, senior representatives and military officers from the six member states of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) – Thailand, India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal – met in New Delhi for the forum’s first multinational disaster management exercise. It comprised three components – a table top exercise, field training exercises on earthquakes and floods, and an after action review.
Four years later, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, BIMSTEC service chiefs, met in Pune in western India for the grouping’s third humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) exercise. Titled PANEX-21, it began with what the regional forum called a “Multi-Agency Exercise (MAE) to exercise the Disaster Management (DM) structures in handling the dual challenges of earthquake and flood.”
In May 2022, the BIMSTEC Expert Group on Disaster Management Cooperation met virtually and agreed to develop a “Plan of Action to improve Preparedness and Coordination for responding to Natural Disasters in the Bay of Bengal Region.”
Then, in October 2024, it organized an HADR workshop in collaboration with two think tanks in Bangkok.
Just six months later, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake ripped through central Myanmar. It was the most severe seismic event to hit the country’s mainland in nearly eight decades. So far, more than 3,400 people have been confirmed dead, and many more are buried under the rubble. Entire towns and city blocks in Sagaing and Mandalay Regions are flattened. The U.S. Geological Survey’s predictive modelling has thrown up a terrifying estimated death count – between 10,000 and 100,000.
But, BIMSTEC – as a regional collective – is conspicuously missing on the ground. Despite all its multination, multiagency, and expert group exercises, meetings, and pledges, the regional forum is yet to send a joint HADR team to Myanmar. Instead, it just convened for an extravagant summit right next door in Bangkok, complete with a dinner hosted by the Thai prime minister at the Grand Ballroom in the Shangri-La Hotel. Not only that, BIMSTEC also used the summit to give the podium back to Min Aung Hlaing, the tainted chief of the beleaguered military junta in Myanmar.
During the summit, BIMSTEC adopted a five-point joint statement on the earthquake, but its position was painfully indeterminate. Member states pledged to merely “work through its established mechanisms to support relief and recovery efforts” without offering any specific pathway. Oddly, it called for “collaboration through the BIMSTEC Centre for Weather and Climate to provide critical weather information and enhance early warning systems in the region.” One wonders what a body tasked with monitoring extreme weather events and climate-linked phenomena can do for earthquake prevention or recovery.
Instead, BIMSTEC could have mobilized efforts to strengthen Myanmar’s seismic and hydrological monitoring capacities, which, according to experts, have taken a serious hit due to the 2021 military coup and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is likely that the earthquake has caused structural damage to dams in Myanmar. BIMSTEC can intervene to mitigate such second order effects and prevent another catastrophe. No such proposals emerged.
There was also no reference to widespread reports of the junta blocking aid and conducting airstrikes in the quake-affected zones in central Myanmar.
Also striking in its absence was the lack of monetary commitment by the forum’s member states for emergency relief and reconstruction. Even the Quad – made up of India, the United States, Australia, and Japan – came together to announce a combined commitment of $20 million for relief efforts.
So far, four BIMSTEC member states – India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Nepal – have individually sent their own humanitarian aid, search and rescue, and medical units to Myanmar. Among them, India has sent the biggest tranche of aid and relief material, and the largest rescue team. Thailand has dispatched search-and-rescue personnel under an air force command. Bangladesh has sent a medical unit under the army’s command. Nepal has done the same.
But BIMSTEC has not yet been able to put together a multination force. Regional disaster management exercises, such as PANEX, are specifically designed to imbue a sense of jointness and facilitate inoperability among different national forces so that a coordinated response mechanism can be activated during emergencies. India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has the structure and capability to lead a joint regional HADR force. In fact, in 2020, as part of BIMSTEC’s second HADR exercise, held in eastern India’s Odisha state, the NDRF led a Joint Field Training Exercise for flood rescue response.
But nothing of that sort has emerged yet following a real disaster. No joint regional team was seen on the ground when Cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar in 2023, killing more than 100 and leaving some 1.5 million in urgent need of humanitarian aid. BIMSTEC was also absent when flash floods, following on the heels of Typhoon Yagi, hit large parts of central and southern Myanmar in mid-2024, killing around 300 people, wounding 100 and affecting 1 million others across 70 townships.
While individual member states are helping Myanmar, some of it comes across as competitive geopolitical posturing – such as India pitching its massive relief operation, titled Operation Brahma, as part of the Narendra Modi government’s push to project itself as the region’s “first responder.” The idea is to showcase that India will always hit the ground first during an emergency in its neighborhood. There is nothing wrong or out-of-place in such an approach, especially if it ends up saving lives during the initial critical period. However, a “first responder” strategy should not eat into the space for regional HADR collaboration, which could, if leveraged well, facilitate much broader relief efforts.
The latest earthquake in Myanmar presents an opportunity for BIMSTEC to test the lessons learned from its three joint HADR exercises on the ground. Ideally, a coordinated response should have emerged in the search-and-rescue phase, which is fast winding down. But, there is still time for the forum to convene a regional team for the relief and reconstruction phases.
Most importantly, instead of dabbling in obscure diplomacy, BIMSTEC must use its collective leverage to push the Myanmar junta to give full access to relief and rescue teams into all affected areas, allow humanitarian aid to reach all zones, and immediately stop its airstrikes.