Almost 40 years after being born with a malforted spine and missing of limbs – most likely because her father was exposed to Orange agent, a poisonous chemical used by the US Army during the Vietnam War – Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diem finally received assistance in the United state
A project funded by USAID held her training for graphic design in 2022 and helped her do her job. Even when the company closed a few months ago, there was hope: the same program for victims of the Orange agent was supposed to provide a new computer or a small loan.
I was the first to tell her that support might never come; That President Trump frozen the financing of USAIDs planned Fire almost everyone Associated with a humanitarian agency.
“There is no point,” Mrs. Diem told me, her little body twisted into a wheelchair, under the crucifixion on the wall. “The agent Orange came from the US – it was used here and that makes us victims,” she said. “Little support for people like us means a lot to us, but at the same time it is the responsibility of now.”
Just as Mr. Trump and Elon Musk bowel USAID, this can now be added to the list of effects: two months before the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, with already planned ceremonies, they demolished the main American exit to make changes, shaking, shaking, shaking The foundation of the partnership was supposed to be a bulk against China.
As many as three million Vietnamese is affected by an agent Orange, including more than 150,000 children born with serious development problems.
Speaking to the painful inheritance of war use of chemicals as a defoliant, along with other issues related to US military involvement in Vietnam, she has now offered the opportunity to merge the past and present, soft strength and hard force, in the service of courtship in the rise regional power.
That has been stopped now. Bulldozers who cleaned pollution at the former American air base in southern Vietnam – which both countries could eventually use – they were silent. About 1,000 workers in Central Vietnam were sent home.
And with the suspension of help to the victims of the Orange Agent, along with the efforts to find and identify the Vietnamese The war is missing deadMr. Trump has basically stopped 30 years of progress in the gathering of former enemies, including two soldiers who still feel if they will trust each other.
While Vietnam leaders carefully walked with Trump’s administration, hoping to avoid his criminal tariffs, they have regretted the loss War Heritage Programs. They viewed the work for a long time as a prerequisite for almost everything else.
American officials who have spent all their lives building bilateral bonds are particularly angry, signing open letters complaints and condemnation what they see as a clearly wrong move.
“One thing I know about Vietnamese is that they want to know that they can depend on us; that we will not lose interest and deviate,” said Tim Rieser, former foreign policy assistant by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrats in Vermont who has conducted legislative efforts on war problems Heritage before retirement in 2023. “And that’s what Trump Trump is doing.”
US military commanders see Vietnam, with their strategic position, as vital to maintain stability in Asia, especially since China has become more aggressive around the ships and islands from the Vietnamese coast.
The US Navy wars have made Several visits to the ports For Vietnam since 2018, more is expected. And in the support of the Pentagon Pentagon to help the Alliance construction tools, half of the financing that USAID manages to Orange Cleaning agent comes from the Ministry of Defense.
Maybe some of this will survive. According to the official account He calls on February 7th between the Minister of Defense of Pete Hegseth and the Minister of Defense Vietnam, General Phan Van Giang, Mr. Hegsetha “underwent support for the Straight effort in cooperation with the inherited war problems.”
On Thursday, the federal judge ordered Trump’s administration to temporarily raise the freezing of USAID funding, setting up a deadline for evidence of compliance.
But from Monday in Vietnam, stopping work was still in effect. Even if the financing is returned, in a year intended for marking recovery from the darkness of the cruel war, the fundamental damage has already been done in ways to feel – for partners and victims in both countries – like a knife pushed into old wounds.
From enemies to partner
Combat veterans were original reconciliation. Initially, they united at the detachment level, to resolve the Battalion of the Field of UnsPloded Practice. But after Washington and Hanoi boarded, bigger problems were solved, starting with the airport to Nang, a former US military base near the old division line between north and southern Vietnam.
It was the central part of the vegetation cleansing campaign with the orange agent, named after a colored barrel railway and the infamous in that it contained a 2.3.7.8-tetrachloricoplary-p-dioxin-one of the most dangerous substances ever created.
At the beginning, no one knew if a poisoned land of the airport could be done safe. The projected rehabilitation costs have tripled. But after seven years and more than $ 115 million in the US, it was clean. So clean that Mr Trump landed there with Air Force One in 2018.
The Bien Hoa Air base, about 20 miles outside Ho Chi Minh, a former Saigon, is a harder challenge: a 10-year $ 450 million project that included treatment of enough polluted land to fill 200 pools of Olympic size. The United States has contributed to more than $ 160 million so far, out of a $ 300 million bite under the management of USAIDs.
Tetra Tech, an American engineering company that USAID hired for a part of the project, did not respond to the E -State that asked about his status.
When I visited a traffic neighborhood last week around the base, a Vietnamese military officer confirmed that the cleaning had been stopped, creating anxiety in the city. Many homes nearby were in the perimeter of the base, until its trail condensed.
Dinh Thi Lan, 56, told me that in 1991 it was one of the first to move to the street to cross the base and a polluted lake. During seasonal floods, she said, the fish will sometimes drive away.
“I ate fish,” she said. “I’m worried.”
Behind her, in the back room, I could see a photo of bright eyes with thick hair, above candles on a dark wood table.
“My husband,” she told me. “He died of stomach cancer in 2009. He had 39.”
Searching for influence
During the war, Dong Naja Province, with Bien Hoa on its southeast edge, became a logistical center for the North Vietnam soldiers as they were about to take Saigon.
Previously, the US army tried to remove the peak landscape of food and blanket.
The pilots usually flew 150 feet from the ground. Sprayed 56 percent of dong nas nearly 1.8 million gallons Orange agent – more than in any other province in Vietnam.
Truthong Thi Nguyet, 75, joined the guerrilla ranks in Dong Nai in 16. After the war, she founded one of the first Vietnamese rehabilitation centers for people with disabilities caused by the agent Orange, who banned the United States in 1971.
In remote villages, she found dozens of boys and girls with missing or irregular limbs, deaf, cerebral palsy, cognitive damage, and sometimes sometimes All of the above. One morning she discovered a poor family so flooded that they put their hard -to -disrupted daughter in a cage outside.
“I never thought I would tell anyone this story,” Mrs. Nguyet said as I visited her house in Dinh Quan. “It was so painful, and I was so angry.”
“I tried to raise some money and convince my family to build a small room in the house,” she added. “After a while, with some financial support, they succeeded.”
Most financing of the Rehabilitation Center comes from the Vietnam Government. But the door sign states that USAID secured equipment at the age of 2020: a few tables and a metal bed; Toy room with a climbing wall and a pool of plastic candy color balls.
Since 1991, AD, According to a state departmentThe US government contributed about $ 155 million to improve the life of people with disabilities in areas affected by Orange agent and the rest of the explosives.
The USAID program, which was used by Mrs. Diem, a graphic designer, is limited to the scope. Last year, only 45 victims of Orange agent in Dong Nai (out of 9,000) received loans without interest of just under $ 800. Some bought scooters and others invested in goats, said Nguyen Van Thinh, 47, a club leader with 260 disabled members.
Mrs. Diem was among the 11 women who were approved for smaller loans this year as part of the “social involvement” program. Her commitment and crumbs are indisputable. After high school, she went to college away from home, convincing friends and foreigners to take her to class or bathroom. She graduated in information technology.
Now, all she wants is a computer to do her design – her support was promised her by the United States, which contaminated her country and bordered her body.
“I want to feel connected to the world,” she told me. “I want to be less burden.”
