Increased opium cultivation and Myanmar’s unceasing export of heroin suggests that the army and their proxy militias are becoming more involved in the “Golden Triangle” drug trade.
This coincides with the army’s renewed efforts to force the rebels in this part of the country, who signed a series of ceasefire agreements in the early 1990s, to surrender—or, alternatively, to be integrated into official border units under the junta’s control. These rebels tend to be organised according to ethnicity. Both the Kachin Independent Army and the United Wa State Army (the UWSA), two of the groups with ceasefire accords, are insisting on keeping some degree of autonomy. Unless a new agreement can be reached, the ceasefires are in danger of failing—an outcome that China, which shares a long border with the Shan state, would like to avert.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) publishes an annual survey on opium in Myanmar as part of its larger “Opium Poppy Cultivation in South-East Asia” report. The most recent, from December 2009, shows that cultivation has increased dramatically: by nearly 50% since 2006. This despite the free-for-all in Afghanistan which has turned that country into a market giant, driving down global prices and making it harder for producers elsewhere to compete. Yet more than 1m people in Myanmar are now involved in producing opium, up 27% from the year before.
The Palaung Women’s Organisation (PWO), an NGO that conducted an undercover survey in the Shan state, has published a report with a different emphasis. Theirs describes the role played by the pro-government militias who have, it says, displaced the rebel groups from the intensive cultivation of opium poppies. The poorly paid regular army and its militias count on drug money to boost their salaries, just as the warlords of the Wa had long done.
The UNODC has it instead “that opium-poppy cultivation took place in areas controlled by insurgency and by ceasefire groups”. While launching the most recent annual report, the UNODC’s executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, seemed to attribute the surge in opium cultivation exclusively to “the ceasefire groups—the autonomous ethnic militias like the Wa and the Kachin—[who] are selling drugs to buy weapons.”
The UN agency’s conclusion is at odds with other reports from NGOs and independent observers. Tom Kramer, a researcher who studies the opium trade in the Golden Triangle for the Transnational Institute, says he is sceptical of any report that assigns blame to a single side of the political conflict. Under strong pressure from China, various bans on opium-growing have been established in areas under the control of the Wa and Kokang ethnic armies.
The PWO’s report questions several of the UNODC’s findings. It cites the opium survey’s use of a map which shows two ethnic armed groups, including the PSLA (Palaung State Liberation Army), which signed a ceasefire, enjoying control of a major opium-growing area around the Mantong and Namkham townships of the Shan state. The map, which was supplied by Myanmar’s authorities, ignores the fact that the PSLA in fact surrendered to the army back in 2005.
The UNODC admits to relying on Myanmar’s authorities for data and information on narcotics, and especially drug eradication. As Gary Lewis, the UNODC’s regional director based in Bangkok, acknowledges: “We can’t rule out that the map is out of date or contains an error.” 
The UNODC’s report also fails to mention the activity of a pro-government militia group from Monghsat township. Operating out of Punako village, just over the border from Chiang Rai, in northern Thailand, this militia exerts complete control over local opium fields. The Burmese army’s Light Infantry Battalions 553 and 554 are reported to be stationed just outside Punako.
Academics have cast doubt on the UNODC’s research; Mr Kramer says that their crop-monitoring data are inherently unreliable. Others have asked whether the agency actually tries to verify any of the information supplied by Myanmar’s police and army—which are, after all, the security apparatus of one of the world’s least transparent regimes.
Lway Aye Nang of the PWO says that “the Burmese militias set up by local authorities loyal to the junta are in full control. I don’t think the UN has ever been to our area.” The armed groups that profit by opium-farming there are, in her eyes, proxies of the state and have been for years.
Not that the Chinese-brokered ban on the cultivation of poppies has prevented the UWSA from maintaining a lucrative stake in the drug trade. Rebel Wa continue to manufacture and export heroin and methamphetamines to neighbouring countries, including China, Thailand and Laos.
As for the fields from which most of the raw material of this trade grows, a former UN drug-monitoring expert in Yangon remarked that “there is no possibility of eradicating opium-poppy cultivation unless there is peace and security.” Perversely, with a steady flow of drug money financing militias on all sides of the Shan state’s stalemate, there seems little chance of forging a peace.
Source :http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15707981&source=hptextfeature
Comments
Post a Comment