Cost of war

Cong Corrales

“Our so-called leaders speak with words; they try to jail you. They subjugate the meek but it’s the rhetoric of failure.” -The Police, Spirits in the Material World, 1981

WITH all the warmongering that has been going on the past days, the war-hawks are sure going to make a killing this coming Christmas (pun intended).

Many pundits of different political persuasions have already weighed in on Digong Dada’s supposed revolutionary government come Nov. 30. Needless to say, I am not joining the fray anymore lest My Wit’s End will end up dishing out an analysis paralysis on the subject.

Instead, let’s say that this column will be sort of an advanced statement of billing to the cost of what will inevitably be a full-scale nationwide war. Yes, you read it right. We are going to discuss the cost of war — the monetary and social costs.

How are we going to do that, you ask? We will base our calculations from the available data of the recently concluded Marawi campaign of this administration. We will also include the data of former President Estrada’s all-out war in Mindanao. It might not arrive at an accurate figure, in terms of monetary cost, but at least we can get a clearer picture of how much this looming all-out war against the communist insurgency across the country would cost.

We, however, might have to multiply the estimated cost three-fold to account for the other two island groupings of the country.

Right out of the bat, no less than Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana gave an estimated cost of P3 billion but that was in August. The Philippine Daily Inquirer cited Lorenzana as saying that the Army alone spent P1.3 billion midway into the supposed liberation of Marawi.

That figure is not hard to imagine considering they were successful in bombing Marawi to smithereens. During the Marawi campaign, we saw the extensive use of free-fall bombs from F-50 fighter jets. The military opted bombardment because they didn’t know how to fight in close quarter battles.

In his column in Mindanews, Maki Datu-Ramos pegged the cost of each bomb at P150 thousand to P200 thousand. You only need to multiply this amount by the number of bombuns each day from May 24 up its supposed liberation to get a close estimation on how much taxpayers’ money was spent to pulverize the city.

“To sum up, Mindanao wars for a period of 1970 to 2001 had cost the Philippine government a staggering P2 trillion an amount nearly equivalent to our past P2.6 trillion 2015 national budget,” Datu-Ramos wrote.

It was also during the Marawi war that we saw our Army use rocket-propelled grenade launchers. We saw the Scout Rangers use them in news photos and video clips. These RPGs are courtesy of Philippine’s old friend Uncle Sam.

Supposedly under the US Foreign Military Sales project, the government had an Approved Budget of Contract of P94.98 million for the purchase of 355 RPG-7s and 4,813 rounds of assorted ammunition. The final approved contract amount, however, was set at P81.73 million. You can check out the figures out at https://maxdefense.blogspot.com/2017/07/philippine-army-finallyeceives-atgl-l.html.

“Based on (feedback) we receive from MaxDefense community members from the Army, the RPGs were already used in combat as early as last year against Maute terrorists in Western Mindanao,” Max Defense group blogged in July, this year.

If we recall Estrada’s all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2000, the government coffers coughed up some P6 billion. Ed Lingao, who was writing for the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism then, estimated that the government spent P76 billion in the war in Mindanao from 1970 to 1996 alone.

Now, we go and examine the social cost of the Marawi war. According to the latest figures monitored by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, a total of 77,170 families (353,636 individuals) evacuated Marawi City. The DSWD further broke it down to 38,949 families fled to northern Mindanao, 33, 221 families fled to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, 2,386 families fled to Soccsksargen region, and the rest to the regions of Davao, Caraga, and the central Visayas.

To date, DSWD said there are 4,668 families (20,639 individuals) still crammed in evacuation centers and an estimated 75,502 families still living with their relatives outside of Marawi City.

As I’m writing this column, Karapatan-Caraga issued an alert that residents from 12 tribal communities in Barangay Diatagon, Lianga and Barangay Buhisan, San Agustin in Surigao del Sur evacuation their homes due to military operations.

At least 706 students and 51 teachers of nine Lumad schools are affected, Karapatan-Caraga pointed out in their alert.

Expect these figures — both monetary and social costs — to triple or even quadruple when Digong Dada starts his war of attrition against the communist insurgency.

Ever since its founding in 1969, each president has taken a stab at quelling the communist insurgency through military might. For almost half a century, each president of the republic has taken the more expensive route in addressing the civil war rather than negotiating for peace and truly address the roots of the unrest in the countrysides. Why would Digong Dada change that tradition now? Because he promised change? Pfft.

The United States is still very much in power in the Philippines, oligarchs are running high at the Batasan Hills, and a fickle man-child, with bouts of temper tantrums, is in the Palace. We are, figuratively, back where we started.

So much for change, huh?