Category World News

Mandalay, Bangkok – Rescue workers in Myanmar are struggling to save people trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings in the country’s second-largest city, Mandalay, following the powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake that toppled buildings, brought down bridges, destroyed roads and sent shockwaves felt across the region.

Every street in the city has collapsed buildings as a result of Friday’s quake. Distraught residents are waiting outside their damaged and flattened homes and businesses for rescue crews and any assistance from the government, which has yet to arrive.

Mandalay resident Sandar Win, 45, told Al Jazeera how her six-year-old son was trapped under falling debris and suffered a fractured pelvis.

Sandar Win said she brought her boy to Mandalay General Hospital but they were turned away as the facility was overcrowded with victims of the earthquake.

“So we had to go to a private hospital. He is now in the operating room,” Sandar Win said. “He is our only child. My heart is dying to see my son like this.”

Shops, restaurants and teashops are closed and there are crowds at Mandalay’s petrol stations, with people in need of fuel for electric generators as power is out in the city of more than 1.5 million.

Ambulances have been seen speeding in the direction of Pyin Oo Lwin, a town situated in the scenic hills about 64km (40 miles) east of Mandalay and popular with foreign tourists and visitors from other parts of Myanmar.

Wai Phyo, a rescue worker, said search and recovery teams were doing their best but were overwhelmed by the scale of destruction and the lack of “proper equipment”.

“There are many people still trapped under the debris. We hope to get them alive but the hope is not so bright,” Wai Phyo told Al Jazeera, adding that communications were also a problem as they barely had phone lines and access to the internet was almost impossible.

Myanmar’s military has sent troops to the affected areas, but “they are not helping,” Wai Phyo said.

“We don’t need them here,” he said, adding: “We need proper aid.”

The Reuters news agency also reported that rescue workers in Mandalay had to borrow machinery from private businesses to help shift debris, and some residents had taken to Facebook to appeal for donations of equipment to aid the rescue efforts.

Rescue operations in the city are now turning to recovery as the time window to save survivors closes, Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng reported from Mandalay.

“I was just speaking to the fire chief who is leading this operation about the revised figure of 1,000 fatalities across Myanmar and he simply said there are a thousand bodies in this city alone, which suggests those numbers are going to rise, and rise steeply,” Cheng said.

‘Working around the clock’

In Thailand’s capital Bangkok, rescue efforts are focused on a collapsed 30-storey building, which was under construction at the time the earthquake hit and where dozens of workers are believed to be under the ruins.

At least 10 people died in Bangkok on Friday despite the city being more than 1,000km (620 miles) from the epicentre in Myanmar.

“It’s hard to locate the missing,” said Atikom Watkoson, a rescue worker at the scene of what was to be a multistorey government building in Bangkok’s Chatuchak district.

The search has been complicated by the fact there is no clear indication where in the building the estimated 47 missing workers were when it collapsed on Friday, Atikom Watkoson told Al Jazeera.

But sign of survivors have been detected and heavy machinery has been brought in to help clear the mountain of debris from the site, he said.

Still, “there is a lot of work left to get through,” Atikom Watkoson added.

Across Bangkok, engineers and government officials are now inspecting the integrity of the city’s hundreds of skyscrapers, with residents of many high-rise buildings reporting cracks in walls and floors.

“It’s all high-rise buildings in Bangkok’s city centre,” said Sirin Hiranthanakasem, a resident in the capital who fled down 23 flights of stairs when the earthquake struck and is now staying in a hotel, too afraid to return to her apartment.

“If something was to collapse, we would not survive,” she said.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has also opened an online portal for people in the capital to report damage to buildings.

Despite the chaos resulting from the earthquake on Friday and the Bangkok authorities declaring the city a disaster zone, the Thai capital has quickly returned to normal with the city’s airports functioning and light rail system back up and running, with most shops and restaurants back in operation.

Still, Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minster Anutin Charnvirakul said all possible resources have been deployed to search for survivors at the site of the building collapse and recover the bodies of the deceased.

“We always have hope,” he told reporters of the possibility of finding workers alive.

Have you ever been convinced that you remember being a baby? A moment in a crib, or the taste of a first birthday cake?

Chances are, those memories aren’t real. Decades of research suggest that most people cannot recall personal experiences from the first few years of life.

However, even though we can’t remember being a baby, a new study has found new evidence that babies do take in the world around them and may also begin forming memories far earlier than once thought.

How did the study work and what did it find?

A study published this month in Science by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities has revealed that babies as young as 12 months old can form memories via the hippocampus – a part of the brain that stores memories in adults, too.

To observe this, the researchers used a specially adapted brain scan for infants during a single session. It allowed them to watch how babies’ brains responded while they were awake and looking at images of faces and objects. Parents remained close to their babies, which helped keep them calm and alert.

In the study, 26 infants aged four to 25 months were shown a series of images. It was found that if a baby’s hippocampus was more active the first time they saw a particular image, they would look at the same image for longer when it reappeared a short time later, next to a new one – suggesting they recognised it.

“Our results suggest that babies’ brains have the capacity for forming memories – but how long-lasting these memories are is still an open question,” said Tristan Yates, a postdoctoral research scientist in the department of psychology at Columbia University and lead author of the study.

This is the first time scientists have directly observed how a memory begins to take shape in an awake baby’s brain. Previous research relied on indirect observations, such as watching whether babies reacted to something familiar. This time, however, researchers observed brain activity linked to specific memories as they form in real time.

Most past brain activity studies have been done while babies were asleep, which limited what researchers could learn about conscious memory-building.

What does this tell us about early life memories?

The findings suggest that episodic memory – the kind of memory that helps us remember specific events and the context in which they took place – begins to develop earlier than scientists previously believed.

Until recently, it was widely believed that this type of memory didn’t begin to form until well after a baby’s first birthday, typically around 18 to 24 months. Although the findings from the Science study were strongest in infants older than 12 months, the results were observed in much younger babies as well.

So, at what age do we start making memories?

It is now understood that babies begin forming limited types of memory when they are as young as two or three months. These include implicit memories (such as motor skills) and statistical learning, which helps infants detect patterns in language, faces and routines.

However, episodic memory, which allows us to recall specific events as well as where and when they occurred, takes longer to develop and requires the maturation of the hippocampus.

According to Cristina Maria Alberini, professor of neural science at New York University, the period in infancy when the hippocampus is developing its ability to form and store memories may be “critical”. This window could be important not only for memory but also has “great implications for mental health and memory or cognitive disorders”, she added.

Memories formed in early childhood do not typically last very long, it is believed, which might explain why we can’t remember them later in life. In an ongoing study at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany, 20-month-old toddlers were able to remember which toy was in which room for up to six months, while younger children retained the memory for only about one month.

Why can’t we remember anything from infancy?

Humans’ near-universal inability to recall personal experiences from before the age of about three is a phenomenon known as “infantile amnesia”.

For decades, scientists believed this happens simply because babies’ brains were too immature to store episodic memories.

But the Science study has shown that babies do indeed form memories. The mystery is why those memories become inaccessible as we grow older.

One explanation, scientists say, is that babies’ brains undergo rapid neurogenesis – the fast-paced creation of new neurons in the brain. This rapid growth might disrupt or “write over” existing memories. In animal studies, when scientists slowed this process in baby mice, the mice were able to retain memories much longer – similar to adult mice.

There is also a hypothesis that episodic memory requires language to describe them and a “sense of self” to relate to them. Since these skills don’t fully develop until around age three or four, the brain might not yet have the tools to organise and retrieve memories in the way adults do.

Some researchers also think the process of forgetting might serve a developmental purpose. By letting go of specific early experiences, the brain might be better able to focus on building general knowledge – to understand how the world works, for example – without being distracted by detailed memories which no longer serve a purpose.

Can some people remember events from infancy?

Some people claim they can remember being a baby, but there is no evidence that what they describe are genuine episodic memories.

According to the Yale and Columbia study, this belief typically stems from a psychological process called “source misattribution”.

People may remember information, such as that they cried during their first haircut, but not where that information came from. They might unconsciously attribute the memory to personal experience when it actually came from a photo, family stories or a parent’s retelling. Over time, the line between “real” and “reconstructed” has blurred.

Research shows that early family stories, frequent photo viewings or cultural emphasis on early development can all contribute to this phenomenon.

Yale is currently conducting a new study in which parents will film their babies regularly, either with their phones angled from the baby’s point of view or by using head-mounted cameras on toddlers. Later, as the children grow older, the researchers will show the children these old videos to see if they recognise the experiences, primarily by monitoring brain activity, to find out how long early memories can last, Yates told Al Jazeera.

Could early memories be recalled later in life?

There is debate about whether early life memories are completely erased or have simply become inaccessible and could eventually be recovered.

Yates said that while the latest study does not answer this question, preliminary evidence from other research at the Yale lab shows that early life memories can be recalled in early childhood, but not later childhood.

“I think the idea that at least some of our early life memories may exist in some form in our brains as adults is fascinating,” she said.

Studies of adult rodents have shown that early memories can be brought back through approaches such as optogenetics – activating the specific brain cells which are believed to store those memories. This works by identifying the brain cells involved in forming a memory, then later using light to reactivate those same cells, causing the animal to recall the memory.

Techniques such as optogenetics cannot yet be used in humans, but the study of rodents suggests that the process by which we retrieve memories is where the issue lies, rather than whether the memories exist at all, according to Paul Frankland, senior scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

“Perhaps there are natural conditions where these early life memories become more accessible,” he added.

Psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud believed that early childhood memories are not lost but buried deep in the unconscious, and that psychotherapy might help bring them to the surface by changing mental states.

According to analysts, new alliances in Sudan’s civil war could lead to regional conflict by inciting a neighboring South Sudan.

The biggest development was an alliance in February between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who established a government to rival Sudan’s current de facto leadership.

Since April 2023, the RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army in an effort to expand its operational area.

The armed SPLM-N, led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has fought the army of Sudan for decades and is in charge of the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, both of which border South Sudan.

Analysts said Sudan’s army is responding by backing South Sudanese militias to fight the SPLM-N and the RSF along their shared 2, 000km (1, 240-mile) border.

South Sudan is already at risk of resuming its civil war, which is already its own political crisis.

According to Alan Boswell, an expert on South Sudan and Sudan for the International Crisis Group, “if things start to deteriorate in South Sudan, it will be very difficult to tell the difference between the war in Sudan and the war in South Sudan.”

Strategic alliance

SPLM-N has received criticism for allying with the RSF, which is accused of murdering numerous UN and other observers.

Al-Hilu likely chose the alliance because he could no longer afford to be neutral, according to Kholood Khair, a Sudanese expert and founding director of the Confluence Advisory think tank.

“Abdel Aziz realised the RSF will soon be his neighbour]next to South Kordofan state] and he can’t fight both the army and the RSF at the same time”, she told Al Jazeera.

West Kordofan state, which borders South Kordofan on March 23, was taken by the RSF.

North and North Kordofan and the states of White Nile share border with South Kordofan. The latter serves as a major strategic point to reach central Sudan, including the country’s breadbasket state known as Gezira, which the RSF recently lost to the army.

Because it shares an international border with Ethiopia, the state of Blue Nile is also crucial.

According to Boswell, SPLM-N’s partnership gives the RSF a much bigger operational theater to smuggle supplies from South Sudan and Ethiopia and launch new attacks on the army and civilians in central and northern Sudan.

“The army wanted to push RSF west of the Nile]towards the western region of Darfur] by basically capturing all the bridges]in Khartoum]”, he told Al Jazeera.

However, he said, “If RSF can travel back and forth through South Sudan] from South Kordofan to Ethiopia and if it can do so through Blue Nile and into Ethiopia, that poses a significant threat and makes the army’s containment strategy that much more challenging.”

War by proxy

Prior to South Sudan becoming independent, Khartoum fought to undermine the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the main force fighting for the south’s liberation, during Sudan’s second north-south civil war from 1983 to 2005. In order to do so, it supported militias from the south.

The war ended with a peace agreement that gave southerners the right to vote in an independence referendum, and in 2011, South Sudan became the newest country in the world.

The South Sudanese ruling elite has fought the Sudanese army before, and SPLM-N is a result of this.

Hafez Mohamed, who is the Nuba tribespeople of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, claimed that while the government “normally relied on proxies to fight its wars,” the Nuba tribespeople of South Kordofan and Blue Nile fought alongside the SPLM during the civil war.

In 1987, the government began arming nomads and pastoralists referred to as “Arabs” to fight against sedentary farmers in the south who are seen as “non-Arabs”.

This divide-and-conquer strategy would serve as the army’s strategy for battling national uprisings for years to come, most notably the RSF, which was founded in the early 2000s.

In a bloodless military coup in 1989, President Omar al-Bashir expanded his role by creating the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), a tool for the then-National Islamic Front ruling party to politically and militarily mobilise young men.

The “Arab” PDF forces became notorious for setting entire villages on fire and carrying out summary killings.

The terrifying abuses frequently exacerbated the local competition for farmland, which was a result of decades of aggressive state-backed land policies that benefited the country’s elites and forced local communities to adopt industrial farming.

By association guilty.

After South Sudan seceded, the Nuba felt left behind in Sudan.

The Nuba in Blue Nile and South Kordofan would engage in ambiguous “popular consultations” with the central government to address the conflict’s root causes, according to the peace treaty that brought an end to the civil war.

Due to Khartoum and the Nuba fighters’ lack of political will, the consultations never materialized.

The former was looking to consolidate control over what remained of Sudan through force. According to a report from Small Arms Survey from March 2013, the latter, who later became known as the SPLM-N, continued their rebellion with the exception of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s limited political and logistical support.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s army chief, believes Kiir is secretly supporting the RSF and SPLM-N alliance because of these historical ties, according to Boswell.

“Kiir has always been close with SPLM-N”, he told Al Jazeera. And it holds South Sudan [of the]armed forces] accountable for everything SPLM-N does, according to the statement.

Kiir may even be surprised that his old comrades have inked a partnership with the RSF. The RSF was sent by the army to fight al-Hilu’s fighters in the Nuba Mountains in 2015.

The RSF, however, suffered a humiliating defeat largely because it was more accustomed to fighting in the sprawling desert of Darfur than in the lush Nuba Mountains’ uplands.

The origins of the RSF date back to the first Darfur war in 2003, in which “Arab” tribal militias were recruited by the army to crush a mainly “non-Arab” rebellion against state neglect and lack of representation in the central government.

The “Janjaweed,” which means “Devils on Horseback,” were the “Arab” militias, who committed numerous atrocities, including systematic rape and summary killings, earning them the name “Janjaweed.”

Al-Bashir reorganized the Janjaweed into the RSF in 2013 to support his regime and combat insurgencies across the nation, not just in Darfur.

Little did he know that the RSF would rebel against the army years later.

Re-establish the divide and rule?

To counteract the new partnership, the army now appears to be activating other old proxies in South Sudan.

South Sudan is loosely split politically between militia and regular forces loyal to Kiir and an array of militias nominally aligned with Vice President Riek Machar.

The largest ethnic group in South Sudan, the Dinka, is represented by Kiir, whereas the second-largest tribe, the Nuer, is represented by Kiir.

Their rivalry dates back to the civil war before independence, when Machar accepted Khartoum’s government’s assistance in an effort to overthrow its then-leader John Garang.

In July 2005, seven months after the war came to an end, Garang died in a helicopter crash. The SPLM was quickly under the control of Kiir, who was his deputy.

A Machar and Kiir power struggle erupted into a civil war in South Sudan in 2013, two years after the country’s independence.

Most Nuer forces loosely aligned with Machar coalesced into the SPLM-In Opposition (SPLM-IO) to differentiate themselves from Kiir’s SPLM.

Before a flimsy power-sharing agreement was signed five years later, the violence claimed the lives of about 400 000 people.

While violence in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, calmed down after the peace deal, atrocities continued in the peripheries due to the government’s practices of appointing corrupt governors, coopting local militias and extracting resources, according to Joshua Craze, an independent expert on South Sudan and Sudan.

He cited clashes between some SPLM-IO commanders and the RSF this month as evidence that Sudan’s current conflict has been extending into South Sudan’s conflict-ridden peripheries. Along the shared border with South Kordofan, which borders Unity and Upper Nile, the RSF and SPLM-N are present.

Some of the clashes with the RSF reportedly took place with an SPLM-IO armed group in Upper Nile. Sudan’s Blue Nile state is said to have experienced more fighting.

By supporting some SPLM-IO commanders, the Sudanese army essentially wants to obstruct RSF’s movements along the [South Sudan-Sudan border],” Craze told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera sent written questions to Sudanese army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah asking if the army was providing logistical and material support to SPLM-IO factions. By the time of publication, he had not responded.

integrated conflict

On Thursday, Kiir sent his security forces to place Machar under house arrest, a move that now pushes South Sudan closer to the brink of an all-out civil war, according to the UN.

Kiir claims that Machar is a supporter of the Nuer community militias, which engaged in combat this month with government forces.

Craze claimed that Machar does not have any control over these militias and that they are responding to their region’s arbitrary and oppressive government.

“What we are facing is very disturbing and dangerous. South Sudan is completely fragmented, according to Craze.

According to Boswell, many young South Sudanese men may end up fighting as mercenaries in Sudan if this prediction is accurate, noting that army-backed organizations like the RSF are already recruiting South Sudanese and “recruitment could pick up.”

He warned that if South Sudan slips back into civil war, the RSF would likely benefit.