USAID Cuts Hurt Agent Orange Cleanup   03/19 06:21

   

   HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- At a former American air base in southern Vietnam, 
work abruptly stopped last month on efforts to clean up tons of soil 
contaminated with deadly dioxin from the military's Agent Orange defoliant.

   The Trump administration's broad cuts to USAID also halted efforts to clear 
unexploded American munitions and landmines, a rehabilitation program for war 
victims, and work on a museum exhibit detailing U.S. efforts to remediate the 
damage of the Vietnam War.

   In addition to exposing thousands of people to health hazards, the cuts risk 
jeopardizing hard-won diplomatic gains with Vietnam, which is strategically 
increasingly important as the U.S. looks for support in its efforts to counter 
a growingly aggressive China.

   "It doesn't help at all," said Chuck Searcy, an American Vietnam War veteran 
who has dedicated his time to humanitarian programs in the country for the last 
three decades. "It is just another example of what a lot of critics want to 
remind us of: You can't depend on the Americans. It is not a good message."

   Funding for the Agent Orange cleanup at Bien Hoa Air Base was unfrozen about 
a week after it was stopped, but it's unclear whether funds are fully flowing 
or how they'll be disbursed, with no USAID employees left to administer 
operations, said Tim Rieser, a senior adviser to Sen. Peter Welch, who drafted 
a letter to administration officials signed by Welch and more than a dozen 
other Democratic senators urging the continued funding of the programs.

   Other programs remain cut.

   "They have reversed a number of these arbitrary decisions, but we're far 
from out of the woods and we don't know how this is going to end," Rieser said.

   From foes to friends

   The interruptions to aid comes as the U.S. and Vietnam prepare to mark the 
50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the 30th anniversary of the 
normalization of relations between Washington and Hanoi.

   It was a slow road back from the war, which lasted some 20 years and saw 
more than 58,000 Americans, and many times that number of Vietnamese, killed 
before it finally ended in 1975.

   Starting in the 1990s, the U.S. began helping its former enemy address 
wartime legacies like Agent Orange, a herbicide dropped from planes during the 
war to clear jungle brush, and which was later found to cause a wide range of 
health problems, including cancer and birth defects.

   The two countries have since been increasing defense and security 
cooperation as China has become increasingly assertive in the region. In 2023, 
Vietnam elevated relations with the U.S. to a comprehensive strategic 
partnership, the highest level of cooperation and the same as Russia and China.

   Trump cuts foreign aid, citing waste

   On Inauguration Day, Trump issued an executive order directing a freeze of 
foreign assistance funding and a review of all U.S. aid and development work 
abroad, charging that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a 
liberal agenda.

   But Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Feb. 7 "underscored the 
department's support for ongoing efforts to collaborate on the legacy of war 
issues," in his introductory call with his Vietnamese counterpart, according to 
the Defense Department.

   Twenty days later, the administration ordered all but a fraction of the U.S. 
Agency for International Development, or USAID, staffers off the job and 
terminated at least 83% of its contracts and cut programs globally, including 
in Vietnam.

   Rieser, who was retired Sen. Patrick Leahy's foreign policy aide when the 
Vermont Democrat secured the original funding for Vietnam War remediation 
projects, said the idea that money was being wasted is "factually wrong."

   "Our foreign aid advances our own national interests, and if the Trump 
administration doesn't understand that it's hard to know what to say," he said.

   Agent Orange cleanup funding resumed, but project's future is uncertain

   A U.S. project to clean up from the former Da Nang Air Base was successfully 
completed in 2018, giving rise to the Bien Hoa cleanup effort outside of Ho Chi 
Minh City, formerly known as Saigon.

   The contamination at Bien Hoa, the busiest airport in the world during the 
war, was nearly four times greater than in Da Nang, with some 500,000 cubic 
meters (650,000 cubic yards) of dioxin-contaminated soil and sediment.

   As of 2024, the province in which Bien Hoa is located had more than 8,600 
people still suffering from Agent Orange-related health issues, according to 
local authorities.

   Work began in 2020 on a 10-year project funded by USAID and the Department 
of Defense, with an estimated cost of $430 million overall. Soil with low 
levels of dioxin contamination were to be unearthed and taken to secure 
landfills, while highly contaminated soil was to be taken to short-term storage 
for treatment.

   Workers have already excavated more than 100,000 cubic meters of 
dioxin-contaminated soil, with 13 hectares treated. Ground was to be broken 
next month on the construction of a system to treat the most severely 
contaminated soil.

   "You have to wonder if the people who made the decision to freeze these 
funds know anything about the tragic history of the U.S. and Vietnam ... and 
they must not care about the many thousands of tons of severely contaminated 
soil that is exposing tens of thousands of people to a very serious health 
risk," Rieser said.

   The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and USAID referred all questions on the war legacy 
projects to the State Department in Washington.

   In a one-line email, the State Department said that "USAID has three 
contracts conducting dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa in Vietnam that are active 
and running."

   Asked to elaborate on how long the Bien Hoa project was shut down and what 
operations had resumed, as well as the status of other war legacy programs, the 
State Department said "we have nothing to share on the details of these 
programs at this time."

   Vietnam's Defense Ministry referred questions to the Foreign Ministry, which 
did not respond to requests for comment.

   But in a Feb. 13 press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu 
Hang expressed concern about what could happen if American funding for war 
legacy projects, which amounts to some $200 million per year, were to end.

   "The suspension of USAID-supported projects, especially those on clearing 
bombs and explosives left over from the war, as well as the Bien Hoa airport 
detoxification project, will have a strong impact on human safety as well as 
the environment in the project areas," she said.

   On Tuesday, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the dismantling of USAID likely 
violated the U.S. Constitution and blocked further cuts, but stopped short of 
reversing firings or fully resurrecting the agency.

   Cuts risk undoing decades of diplomacy to rebuild ties with Vietnam

   Sen. Leahy, who retired in 2023, told The Associated Press that it had been 
a lengthy process over the last 35 years to build the relationship by working 
hand-in-hand with the Vietnamese to address the problems left behind.

   "It is through these efforts that two former enemies are now partners. If we 
pack up and leave without finishing what we started, it will send a message 
that the Americans can't be trusted," he wrote in an email.

   "People in the Trump administration who know nothing and care less about 
these programs are arbitrarily jeopardizing relations with a strategic partner 
in one of the most challenging regions of the world."

   It's too early to say exactly how the abrupt decision will affect relations, 
but it is likely to call into question whether Washington is still a reliable 
partner in other dealings, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a political scientist who is 
a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore's ISEAS--Yusof 
Ishak Institute.

   "The level of trust gradually increased and it is very easy to dismantle," 
he said, adding that Vietnam may now think twice before deepening military 
cooperation ties or purchasing American weapons.

   "There is good reason for Hanoi to be very cautious."

   POW/MIA projects not affected, but others saw funding cut

   One joint program not affected by the USAID cuts is ongoing efforts to find 
and identify missing American troops, the Hawaii-based Defense POW/MIA 
Accounting Agency in Hawaii told the AP. Funding for the effort falls under the 
U.S. defense budget rather than foreign aid.

   But funding for the effort to find and identify hundreds of thousands of 
missing Vietnamese war victims was cut, then reinstated, and it's still unclear 
whether money is again flowing, Rieser said.

   And, he said, funds remain frozen for a new U.S. exhibit at the War Remnants 
Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's main museum on the war, which is 
currently focused on documenting American atrocities like the My Lai massacre 
and the devastating impact of Agent Orange.

   The exhibit, which was to open this year to coincide with the two 
anniversaries, highlights U.S. efforts to address the worst legacies of the 
war, Rieser said.

   "Right now it's a museum of American war crimes and the whole point of this 
is to show that we didn't just walk away from what happened, we decided to do 
something about it," he said.

   "We want that to be part of the story for the hundreds of thousands of 
visitors to that museum, to show that the United States didn't just walk away."