Lessons from Rwanda and Burundi

Burundi and Rwanda are sister countries. They were both part of a colonial administration district known as Urundi; and they possess the same ethnic makeup and very similar levels of population and land mass. After someone shot down the plane carrying the presidents of these countries, they both had civil war. However since then the situation in the two countries differed significantly.

Rwanda had a single horrific genocide; Burundi has had an ongoing lower-grade conflict. What happened in Rwanda over the short term was much worse than what happened in Burundi; but over the long term Rwanda has done much better. After Paul Kagame's army defeated the genocidal militia, Rwanda has had a competent government - with the result that it has rebuilt its economy and has achieved some significant milestones (such as having the greatest representation of women in Parliament of any country in the world). Meanwhile Burundi has continued in a civil war that destroyed the country; to the point that Burundi is now the poorest country in the world.

The lesson from here is that sometimes a single disastrous event is better than ongoing negativity, even if the negativity is far less destructive than the one-term event. Sometimes single disaster is better in the long term than continued low-grade destructiveness. There are times when it's better to bite the bullet and deal with ugliness than it is to suffer continued failure. The folks in Rwanda and Burundi would be able to tell you as much.