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Yangon's anti-drug spin
By Tom
Fawthrop
YANGON - A bitter debate is raging over
the role of Myanmar's generals in fighting the narcotics
trade: are they serious about cracking down on their
country's status as the world's number-one exporter of
heroin, or are they partners in crime with such
legendary drug barons as Lo Hsing-han and Khun Sa, who
now openly launder their narco-profits in the capital,
Yangon?
Some Western observers claim that the
government's anti-narcotics unit is is getting results.
Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the Yangon representative of the
United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), told Asia
Times Online that "we accept the government is serious
about drug eradication based on tangible results". Opium
cultivation and production have been reduced in recent
years, and drug seizures have increased.
A
senior US diplomat based in Myanmar adopted a similarly
positive stance, pointing out that the embassy now takes
the view that "there was no evidence of institutional
involvement in the drug trade", meaning that the George
W Bush administration feels that it can work with Yangon
in an attempt to stop the flow of narcotics from Myanmar
to Western countries, including the United States.
UN drug officials were excited by a recent
narcotics bonfire show in June staged by Yangon. Drugs
seized by Myanmese military and police were ceremonially
put to the torch in front of a selected audience of
diplomats and VIPs. A UNDCP spokesman claimed that the
bonfire was "more than symbolic, as it indicates the
willingness of those directly involved to get rid of the
opium".
Whatever the reductions in the opium
harvest and increases in narcotic seizures, heroin
exports from Myanmar's section of Southeast Asia's
Golden Triangle continue to flood the world market.
However, the UNDCP is so impressed with "progress by
Burmese efforts at narcotics control" that it has gone
out on a limb to launch an appeal for more international
aid, which is in effect asking Western nations,
especially the European Union, to revise their current
policy of sanctions against the Myanmar government.
Since the release of opposition leader and
symbol of resistance Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest,
Yangon's generals have stayed silent on the question of
moves toward democratization and serious dialogue with
the opposition. However, their embassy in the United
States officially declared their enthusiasm to work with
the US on drug suppression and anti-terrorism. These
twin avenues are seen as alternative routes toward
obtaining international aid and recognition, and paths
that do not oblige Myanmar's military to give up any
power to the opposition.
Outside the United
States, others are more skeptical. The Thai military has
been been assigned to assist that country's police in
trying to stem the flow of another drug from Myanmar
known as ya ba, or "crazy medicine", that has
produced an epidemic of addiction to this Golden
Triangle brand of amphetamines. Thailand's
anti-narcotics specialists have no confidence in their
Myanmese counterparts as long as the current leading
drug lord, an ethnic Wa Chinese named Wei Hsueh Kang, is
given a free hand by Myanmar's generals to continue
production and export of heroin and speed on a massive
scale.
Wei is a wanted man, indicted by a US
court and with a State Department offer of a US$2
million reward on his head. Far from making any effort
to capture the drug lord, the junta's intelligence
chief, Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, views Wei as a
useful ally in the government's war with the ethnic
minority Shan people and their rebel army.
Strategic alliances with opium warlords are
nothing new in Myanmar since the Golden Triangle, also
comprising parts of Thailand and Laos, first became
established as a major opium-growing region in the early
1960s. In those days remnants of the anti-communist
Kuomintang Chinese who had fled to Shan state after Mao
Zedong's 1949 revolution expanded poppy cultivation and
developed heroin-distribution networks with the active
connivance of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In 1989, the number-three man in the hierarchy of the
junta, General Khin Nyunt, forged a ceasefire agreement
with the United Wa State (UNWSA) setting up a new
strategic alliance between Yangon and the
opium-trafficking armies of the Wa against the
secessionist Shan State Army and other ethnic minorities
opposed to the government.
Drug infusions for
a moribund economy
All major growth sectors of
Myanmar's economy since 1988 - the banks, hotels and
construction companies - are tainted with narco-profits.
Lo Hsing-han's family runs the nation's single biggest
corporate group, Asiaworld, a part-owner of the
four-star Traders Hotel in Yangon together with foreign
partners from Malaysia and Singapore.
Wa
businessmen have become key investors in Yangon real
estate and control the new Mayflower bank, Hong Pang
trading company and an assortment of other post -1990
companies. Wei Hsueh-kang is a leading shareholder in
Hong Pang, and also runs another enterprise called Green
Land.
Khun Sa, who until 1996 was viewed as the
region's top heroin warlord, has apparently retired from
the trade, and has been rewarded by the government with
a lavish mansion on Inya Lake, one of the elite
residential districts of the capital. He too has become
part of Myanmar's nouveau riche and runs a major bus
company.
This correspondent questioned the UNDCP
about drug barons such as Lo Sing Han, Khun Sa and the
Wa Chinese who appear to be the new business class,
usually in partnership with the generals. UN
drug-control chief Lemahieu, who advocates more Western
aid for Yangon's drug-suppression operations, conceded
that the specter of these drug lords enjoying full
protection from the government as they conduct
money-laundering on a grand scale "is highly
embarrassing".
Francois Casanier, research
analyst with Geopolitical Drugwatch in Paris, says: "All
normal economic activities, if you can call anything in
Burma normal, are instruments of drug-money-laundering.
And no drug operation in Burma can be run without the
Slorc." (Slorc is an acronym for State Law and Order
Restoration Council, the old name of Yangon's ruling
junta. It is now officially renamed the SPDC: the State
and People's Development Council.)
One
indication that the Myanmar government benefits directly
from narcotics comes from an International Monetary Fund
study that found large expenditures unaccounted for:
despite the fact that foreign-exchange reserves for
1991-93 were only about US$300 million, Slorc purchased
arms from China valued at $1.2 billion during the
period.
Peter Gutter, an adviser to the Burma
Lawyers Council in Bangkok, claims that "at least 50
percent of Burma's economy is unaccounted for and
extralegal. The earnings from heroin now exceed those
from all of Burma's legal exports."
After a
four-year investigation, Casanier and a team of
researchers reported that the state-owned Myanmar Oil
and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) was "the main channel for
laundering the revenues of heroin produced and exported
under the control of the Burmese army".
Casanier
concludes, "Drug money is irrigating every economic
activity in Burma, and big foreign partners are seen by
the Slorc as big shields for money-laundering."
To aid or not to aid Yangon?
Myanmar's
military junta is trying hard to woo Washington, hiring
a US public-relations firm to lobby on its behalf at a
cost of $450,000. Promoting the case for the junta is
Arizona-based DCI Associates, which also represents the
tobacco industry and the National Rifle Association, as
well as George W Bush when he was governor of Texas. The
first success for Yangon and DCI was swinging an
invitation to the head of Myanmar's anti-drug unit,
Colonel Kyaw Thein, to Washington in May.
However, Shan dissidents and the Myanmese
opposition are opposed to more aid for narcotics
suppression. Aung San Suu Kyi has opposed all
international aid that ends up in the hands of the
government as only boosting the generals and bringing no
benefit to the people.
Given that Myanmar is the
only country in the Asia-Pacific region that appears to
meet all the criteria of a firmly established
narco-economy, the Myanmese opposition argues that only
serious steps toward democracy, a free press and the
setting up of an independent police force can turn
things around.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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