Traffic in Yangon moves much faster on even-numbered dates. That is when, as a result of fuel-saving measures introduced this month, only cars with licence plates beginning 2, 4, 6 or 8 can drive around. Since plates starting with 8 are reserved for vehicles assembled from kits in Myanmar—and there are not many of those—journeys are much swifter than they are on odd-numbered dates, when the rest of Yangon’s car-owners are allowed to spin their wheels.
This arrangement is one of several measures recently introduced in a panic after America’s and Israel’s attacks on Iran. Thailand had already banned fuel exports to parts of Myanmar. The cut in oil supplies from the Middle East has made things worse, pushing up inflation, which was already high.
Indeed, the cost of living is now the main topic of conversation in Yangon—much more so than the civil war that continues to wrack Myanmar’s hilly borders and rural heartlands. Yangon and most other cities are held by the ruling junta. But these areas are cut off from neighbouring countries. Although it is feasible for people and goods to use the roads to get to and from Thailand, the journey is risky and requires paying off various armed groups, including the army, along the way—another reason for the rising cost of imports.
In response the government is promoting import substitution. International brands are disappearing from supermarket shelves in favour of locally made alternatives. One veteran diplomat says the 300 or so army officers who study in Russian military academies each year are learning about more than just tactics. They are bringing home Putinesque ideas about how to run an economy. For them, autarky is preferable to prosperity.
This is the context in which Myanmar’s newly elected parliament held its first meeting on March 16th. Elected in a sham contest from which the opposition was barred from standing, the assembly will nonetheless formally appoint the country’s new leadership, probably by early April. Everyone knows the current “Senior General”, Min Aung Hlaing, will stay in charge. But there is some doubt over exactly which post he will take. Observers think he wants to be made president so that he can attend international summits—something up to now denied him as author of the military coup in 2021. Yet the general may also be worrying that giving up his job as commander-in-chief of the armed forces might create an opening for a usurper.
With the rainy season fast approaching, the army has gone on the offensive. Russian-supplied bombers and helicopters and homemade paragliders—piloted by lone soldiers who drop bombs by hand—give the army an edge over the rebels. That and the methamphetamines that officers are feeding to their troops.
Yangon, for all its troubles, is a world away from the fighting. For people with money, things can be good. “Mules” carrying huge bags of hard-to-find consumer goods fill inbound flights. But for those at the bottom of the heap, life is far worse. For barefooted children wandering jagged rubbish dumps—and their parents searching fetid streams for recyclable scraps—life is increasingly miserable. When the military staged its coup five years ago around a quarter of the population were in poverty. Now half are.
Many youngsters in Yangon dream of escape. But America and Britain have recently stopped issuing visas to students from Myanmar. Some are learning Japanese instead, hoping to be recruited as care workers in old people’s homes in Tokyo or Kyoto. Other opportunities are less enticing: scam centres on the border with Thailand or sex work in Singapore.
The people who find ways to get out of Yangon are being replaced by newcomers from the conflict zones. The city is becoming more multicultural as groups of displaced people arrive from the borderlands and move in with their ethnic kin. Myanmar’s military leadership may yet achieve its main aim of uniting the country. The irony is that it will have united everyone in hatred of it. ■