Keen to impress the West and get sanctions
lifted, Burma is cracking down on opium production. But hundreds of thousands
may be left in poverty.
Draped
in botanical clouds of red white and blue, the poppy fields that spread across
Burma’s remote northern mountains should be an attractive destination for
eco-tourists. And they probably would be except for one thing – these poppies
are full of opium sap, and the Burmese government has launched a fresh campaign
to eradicate the crop.
In the
meantime, the mountains are crawling with military, militias and rebel armies.
They are battling away in a three-decade civil war between ethnic Shan and WA
and government forces that has long been fuelled by the profits gained from
opium harvests. Opium traders, heroin laboratories and the government’s
militarization of the region, meanwhile, have combined to condemn the
indigenous people to decades of impoverishment.
President
Thein Sein’s latest opium eradication campaign began only this year. In
February, police units armed with weed-whackers – a two-stroke engine that
spins a metal blade – decapitated millions of poppies, while villagers watched
in despair as their livelihoods were destroyed.
With
the emergence of a semi-civilian
government after years of military junta in power, the U.S. government and the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime are hoping that the signs of a budding democracy
will offer an opening for the country to curb its contribution to global drug
trafficking.
But
while the government presses forward toward its stated goal of “wiping out the
opium problem by 2014,” some experts remain unimpressed. “It looks more like a
public relations gesture than a serious attempt to tackle the country’s drug
problems,” says Tom Kramer, an expert on narcotics with the Amsterdam-based
Transnational Institute. Indeed, to some, the anti-opium drive seems more about
wooing Western governments into lifting sanctions than getting to the root of
the issue.
“It’s a
signal to the U.S. for more engagement,” Kramer says.
But the
United States isn’t the only country that the Burmese government hopes to
impress with its campaign. Equally important to the government’s calculations
are its neighbors. Burma is scheduled to chair the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014, which has declared that its 10 member states
will be “drug free” by 2015. Not coincidentally, Sit Aye, a legal advisor to
President Thein Sein, was keen earlier this year to reiterate the 2014 goal.
Yet
reaching this target would mean accurately identifying the problem, and that
means tackling amphetamines, something that is frequently overlooked with so
much attention on opium production and the heroin trade.
Methamphetamine
seizures in Southeast Asia increased from 32 million pills in 2008, to 133
million in 2010, according to the UNODC. And while Burma is the second largest
exporter of opium worldwide, it’s believed to be the top exporter of
methamphetamine tablets. An estimated one billion tablets are believed to have
been exported to Thailand alone in 2010.
“There
are 12 likely methamphetamine manufacturing sites in the Golden Triangle areas
[where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet along the River Mekong],” according to
the UNODC, and 50 different organized crime groups involved in trafficking
drugs from Burma. The millions of pills manufactured in Shan state circulate in
casinos, nightclubs and other markets across Asia, controlled by organized
crime syndicates that are in many cases run by Chinese triads.
For
governments in the region there have been some encouraging recent signs. In
January, for example, Thai police seized 3,864,000 yaba tablets and 71
kilograms of ya ice (crystal methamphetamine) near Bangkok. The drugs, which
had a street value of more than one billion baht, were believed to have come
from Burma. A March raid near the Burmese frontier town of Tachilek, meanwhile,
seized an additional 8.7 million pills.
But
this success isn’t without costs – especially for poor local farmers, who bear
the brunt of the more vigilant anti-narcotic effort. The reality is that the
annual opium crop is the main livelihood for several hundred thousand poor
farmers and ethnic minorities in parts of Burma.
The
crackdown on opium cultivation “isn’t solving the problem,” Kramer says. “It’s
only hitting the poor poppy farmers, and it’s high time to re-evaluate these
policies.”
Even
UNODC’s communications chief in Bangkok, John Bleho, admits that some drug
control measures “have driven opium growing communities towards chronic poverty
and increased food insecurity.” But he argues that the United Nations still
believes that the significantly ramped up opium eradication effort in Burma “is
a positive development.”
The
Burmese government is said to have a three-year alternative development
strategy to promote crop substitution in an effort to help farmers transition
from opium production. But this will require time and major international
funding. In the meantime, there’s no program to compensate destitute farmers
for the loss of their livelihood.
U.N.
drug officials admit that unless massive international funding for crop
substitution materializes quickly, poor farmers are likely to return to opium
cultivation as soon as the next planting season comes round. In a region where
medicine is scarce, the morphine-rich poppies provide effective treatment for
acute pain, respiratory problems and a range of stomach ailments.
And
there’s also the problem of corruption. Government officials have long been
accused of complicity in the narcotics business. Kway Myint, a member of
Burma’s ruling party, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development
Party, is a case in point. He reportedly ran for the regional parliament of Shan
state on a platform of allowing opium production to continue in his district.
Nway
H’noung, a spokesperson of the Palaung Women’s Organization, told the Bangkok
Post’s Spectrum: “He promised people who voted for him, that they could grow
opium for five years, and they can. He is the leader of the Panhsay People's
Militia, a drug lord and now a government MP. His militia can be seen growing
opium and they have the biggest acreage in the area.”
Nway is
hardly an anomaly. According to the Shan News Agency’s 2011 Drug Watch Report,
no less than seven sitting members of parliament – national and Shan-local
assembly – are closely linked to the narcotics trade.
“The
little people bear the brunt of any crackdown on drugs,” Kramer says. “But the
government doesn’t go after those who make the big money. Nobody talks about
the 42 militias in Shan state, who have been used by the state to control the
conflict but who have become major players in the drugs trade.”
Few
people, it seems, believe the new government in Yangon has the political will
or the power to investigate high-ranking politicians, businessmen, militia
leaders, and army generals implicated in the drug trade.
“The
war on drugs has completely failed,” Kramer says. “It addresses symptoms and
not causes. It’s high time to re-evaluate policies. It should address poverty
and development issues.”
Tom
Fawthrop is a Thailand-based journalist and producer. His work has appeared in
The Guardian, Al-Jazeera and the New Statesman, among other publications.
Tom
Fawthrop
The
Diplomat
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