ARLINGTON, Va. — U.S. military officials continued Thursday to make plans for large-scale relief operation to aid cyclone-stricken Myanmar, but the refusal of the ruling military junta there to accept more than token assistance had one official concerned about possible unrest or even widespread riots.
Joint Task Force Caring Response, as the U.S. military has dubbed the humanitarian relief operation, has established its logistics headquarters at Utapao Thai Royal Navy Air Base, Thailand.
C-130 transports belonging to the 374th Airlift Wing from Yokota Air Base, Japan, are forward-deployed to Utapao in support of the operation.
One official said he is concerned that Burma’s citizens might begin to riot if they are made to suffer unassisted for too long.
"I think what we’re going to start seeing is people will rise up," he said. He said that there are some reports from witnesses on the ground that in some areas, "people are starting to get pissed off," although it is not widespread, and "there are no reports of the military getting violent" in retaliation.
"At some point, you’d have to say, how much suffering are you going to allow?" he said.
But the U.S. military has not done any planning for that point, the official said, saying that the best course is to hope diplomacy and third-country intervention will help the junta change its mind and allow more assistance in.
As of Thursday, 13 flights had made it into the country, including five that flew in Thursday, according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
First on the priority list is bottled water, Whitman said.
Clean water is the supply most desperately needed, according to the few aid international workers allowed on the ground by the junta, according to a senior military official.
The military transports have also ferried in blankets, mosquito netting, powdered milk, biscuits, ready-to-eat packets of fish and chicken, and hygiene kits with toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, razors and other essentials, Whitman said.
Task Force officials are working on plans for more supply flights to come in Friday, but have not yet received permission from the junta to bring the aircraft in, Whitman said.
Although Tropical Cyclone Nagris hit May 2, U.S. offers to supply aid to Myanmar were largely stymied until Monday, when Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, flew into Myanmar’s Yangon International Airport on the first U.S. military flight that was allowed to land there.
Keating’s presence helped alleviate suspicions by the junta that the U.S. military wanted to use the storm as an excuse to get "boots on the ground," the official said.
For now, the Myanmar government — which is taking control of all supplies delivered at the airfield — appears to be stacking many of the goods on the airfield itself, the official said, which means the goods aren’t getting to people who need them.
The official said that there were also some indications that the Myanmar military is taking labels off the U.S.-delivered goods and putting their own, but shrugged it off as immaterial in the big picture.
"We’re trying to save lives here," he said.
What really bothered him, he said, was the refusal of Myanmar’s government to allow the U.S. to assist when people are dying. The United Nations has said that as many as 2.5 million people have been severely affected by Nargis.
"Nobody has the capacity to do what our military does," the official said.
The U.S military is working to identify locations in Thailand to use as a forward operating base if and when the junta allows them to begin delivering a steadier stream of supplies, the official said.
On Wednesday, the task force had settled on an abandoned airstrip at Mae Sot, approximately 150 miles east of Yangon, as the location for the forward operating base. But on Thursday morning, a military official said that the plan had been discarded because of "security reasons."
The task force is evaluating alternate locations, the official said.
The logistics base is Utapao, but the task force itself is headquartered at Khorat Royal Thai Air Base, about 157 miles northeast of Bangkok. The task force is commanded by Lt. Gen. John Goodman, commander of Marine Forces Pacific.
