- First, we should look at the pure financial cost of these civil wars.
- Second, who paid for it?
- Third, what if we had used that money for the development of the region where the fighting has taken place instead of the wars?
- Fourth, who benefited from the wars?
- And last and most importantly, what should we do next ?
Certainly, the cost to the government has been massive; you only need to look at defence spending – K1.193 trillion in 2011-12 – to get some idea of the cost of perpetual conflict.
The second question is easier to answer: we all have to pay for it, and this is a major reason why we’re now all in a large amount of debt. Recently, the finance minister announced in parliament that we owe more than US$11 billion. No surprises there.
The answer to the third question is the really tragic aspect of this, particularly in an age when it is quite difficult to get money from donors. Everybody knows that we are the lowest recipient of aid per capita among undeveloped countries. Yet, we have still spent our own money on these conflicts. If we used this money on development projects instead, we probably wouldn’t need to receive support from other countries today.
There’s an obvious answer to the fourth question: nobody really benefited from the wars. Many people, both military and civilian, have died, children missed out on their education, refugees camps had to be set up along the border areas, political stability has declined and development in other areas of the country has been hindered. If we add in the additional costs of these ethnic conflicts, the external debt figure doesn’t sound so large.
So let’s address the fifth question – perhaps the most difficult one. An excellent start would be to avoid the wars that have dogged us for decades. Both politically and economically, the country can’t bear any armed conflict at this crucial time.
During his address to parliament earlier this month, President U Thein Sein seemed to emphasise the economic loss of these internal wars. The next day, The New Light of Myanmar proudly carried his words with the headline: All must try to see national race youths who brandished guns using laptops.
Personally, I couldn’t agree more, except to say that we could probably have given two laptops to each ethnic youth if we didn’t fight so much in the past, with one coming from the ethnic army and one from the government. Now is the time for both sides to give the young people of our country that opportunity.