Almost 40 years after his birth with a badly formulated vertebral column and difficulties difficulties – probably because his father was exposed to Orange agent, the toxic chemical that the American army used during the Vietnam War – Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diem finally obtained aid from the United States.
A project funded by the USAID gave its training in graphic design in 2022 and helped it get a job. Even when the company closed its doors a few months ago, it remained a spanter: the same program for Orange agent victims had to deliver a new computer or a small loan.
I was the first to tell him that support may never come; President Trump had frozen the funding of the USAID and had planned to dismiss almost all those associated with the humanitarian agency.
“It makes no sense,” said Ms. Diem, her little body curled up in a wheelchair, under a crucifix on the wall. “Agent Orange came from the United States-it was used here, and that makes us victims,” she said. “A little support for people like us means a lot, but at the same time, it is the responsibility of the United States.”
As Mr. Trump and Elon Musk Gut 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 have demolished the main point of American sales to make amendments, to tremble the foundation of a partnership meant being a rampart against China.
Up to three million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange, including more than 150,000 children born to serious development problems.
Tackling the painful heritage of the use of the war of chemicals as defoliant, as well as other problems linked to American military participation in Vietnam, offered the United States a chance to merge the past and the Present, the soft power and the hard power, at the service of the short duration of the regional power.
It is now arrested. Bulldozers who cleaned contamination in an old American air base in southern Vietnam – which the two countries could possibly want to use – have become silent. About 1,000 mines in mines in the center of Vietnam have been sent home.
And with the suspension of assistance to the victims of Orange agent, as well as efforts to find and identify Vietnam The missing war is deadTrump essentially blocked 30 years of progress in the rallying of former enemies, including two soldiers still feeling trusting.
While the leaders of Vietnam have carefully walking with the Trump administration, in the hope of avoiding its punitive prices, they have deplored the loss war inheritance programs. They have long considered work as a prerequisite for almost everything else.
US officials who have spent a life building bilateral ties are particularly furious, signing open letters complaints and condemning what they consider to be a clearly wrong decision.
“One thing I know about the Vietnamese is that they want to know that they can depend on us; That we do not lose all interest and will not move away, “said Tim Riever, a former foreign policy assistant by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont who led the legislative efforts on the questions of the legacy of War before retired in 2023. “And that’s what the Trump is the administration done.”
American military commanders see Vietnam, with its strategic location, as vital to maintain stability in Asia, especially since China has become more aggressive around shipping routes and islands off the Vietnamese coast.
US Navy warships have made Several port visits In Vietnam since 2018. It is more planned. And as a sign of support from the Pentagon to help as an alliance construction tool, half of the funding that USAID manages for agent Orange cleanup comes from the Ministry of Defense.
Maybe some of them will survive. According to the official account of an appeal on February 7 between the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Minister of Defense of Vietnam, General Phan Van Giang, Mr. Hegseth “underlined the support of the ministry to continuous efforts to collaborate on the problems of the war.”
A federal judge ordered Trump administration on Thursday to temporarily lift the freeze on the financing of the USAID, fixing a deadline of Tuesday for compliance evidence.
But Monday in Vietnam, the work stoppage was still in effect. Even if the financing of yields, in one year intended to mark the recovery of the darkness of a cruel war, of fundamental damage have already been caused to feel – for partners and victims in both countries – as A knife pushed into old wounds.
From enemies to partners
The combat veterans were the original reconcilled. At first, they joined the team level, to get rid of the battlefields of unexploded ammunition. But once Washington and Hanoi have climbed on board, larger problems have been resolved, starting with DA Nang airport, an old American military base near the old line of demarcation between the north and the south of Vietnam.
It was a centerpiece of the countryside to clear the vegetation with the Orange agent, named after the colored band on its barrels and notorious to contain the 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-Dioxine-one the most harmful substances ever created.
At first, no one knew if the poisoned land of the airport could be secure. The projected cost of sanitation has tripled. But after seven years and more than $ 115 million aid in the United States, it was clean. So clean that Mr. Trump landed with Air Force One in 2018.
The Béen Hoa air base, about 20 miles outside Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is a more difficult challenge: a project of $ 450 million over 10 years involving the treatment of enough contaminated land to fill 200 Piscines of Olympic size. The United States has so far contributed to more than $ 160 million, on a commitment of $ 300 million under the direction of USAID.
Tetra Tech, an American engineering company hired by the USAID for part of the project, did not respond to emails requesting its status.
When I visited the lively district of the base last week, an Vietnamese military officer confirmed that cleaning had been interrupted, creating anxiety in the city. Many nearby houses were inside the base of the base, until its imprint is condensed.
Dinh Thi Lan, 56, told me that in 1991, she was one of the first to move to a street left the base and a contaminated lake. During the seasonal floods, she said, the fish sometimes moved.
“I ate the fish,” she said. “I’m worried.”
Behind her, in a back room, I could see a photo of a man with shiny eyes with thick hair, above the candles on a dark wooden table.
“My husband,” she told me. “He died of stomach cancer in 2009. He was 39 years old.”
Impact search
During the war, the province of Dong Nai, with Hoa well on his southeast edge, became a logistics center for the North Vietnamese soldiers while they were preparing to take Saigon.
Before that, the American army had tried to suppress the green landscape of food and coverage.
The pilots generally stole 150 feet from the ground. They sprayed 56% of Dong Nai with nearly 1.8 million gallons Orange agent – more than in any other province of Vietnam.
Truong Thi Nguyet, 75, joined the ranks of guerrilla warfare at Dong Nai at 16. After the war, she founded one of the first Vietnam rehabilitation centers for disabled people caused by Agent Orange, which the United States prohibited in 1971.
In distant villages, she found dozens of boys and girls with missing or ill -trained members, deafness, cerebral paralysis, cognitive disorders and sometimes Everything above. One morning, she discovered a poor family so exceeded that they had put their daughter seriously disabled in a cage outside.
“I never thought of telling anyone this story,” said Nguyet when I visited her house in the canton of Dinh Quan. “It was so painful, and I was so angry.”
“I tried to collect funds and convince the family to build a small room in the house,” she added. “After a while, with financial support, they did it.”
Most of the financing of the rehabilitation center comes from the Vietnamese government. But a panel above the door declares that the USAID provided equipment in 2020: some offices and a metal bed; A games room with a climbing wall and a candy plastic ball pool.
Since 1991, According to the State DepartmentThe US government has contributed around $ 155 million to improve the lives of people with disabilities in areas affected by Orange agent explosives and leftovers.
The USAID program that benefited Ms. Diem, the graphic designer, is limited. Last year, only 45 Orange agent victims in Dong Nai (out of 9,000) received uninteresting loans of just under $ 800. Some bought scooters and others invested in goats, said Nguyen Van Thinh, 47, the head of a club with 260 disabled members.
Ms. Diem was one of 11 women who were approved for small loans this year as part of a “social inclusion” program. His commitment and grain are undeniable. After high school, she went to university far from her home, persuading friends and foreigners to transport her to class or in the bathroom. She obtained a diploma in information technology.
Now, everything she wants is a computer to do her design work – the support she has been promised by the United States, who contaminated her country and knotted her body.
“I want to feel connected with the world,” she told me. “I want to be less a burden.”
