| |
Myanmar can't kick its drug
habit
By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
Myanmar is likely to cease growing opium in significant
quantities by the end of the decade. Poppy harvests from
scattered hill settlements in its portion of the Golden
Triangle have already been cut by about 30 percent in
the past 10 years with a minimum of outside pressure
being applied.
Yet US President George W Bush
still named the pariah state this week as one of two
leading global narcotics bandits, together with Haiti.
And unlike Port-au-Prince, which is a close neighbor and
figures in Washington's regional defense strategies,
Yangon will not be offered any aid in reducing its
addiction to drug cash.
Bush also listed China,
Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and
Vietnam, as well as 13 nations in South America and
Africa, in his mandatory annual filing to the US
Congress on drug production and trafficking trends. But
only Myanmar and Haiti earned the ultimate rebuke of
having "failed demonstrably" to meet international
standards of enforcement measures or having adhered to
counter-narcotics agreements.
Both are
technically liable to face economic sanctions; but Haiti
was given a waiver "in the national interests of the
United States", and will continue to attract US aid
despite being in violation of compliance guidelines. Not
so Myanmar, which is now in the first month of an
extended US trade moratorium that includes a ban on
import shipments and a prohibition on travel by members
of the ruling military junta.
The contrasting
treatment of two major world suppliers of illicit
narcotics is as much a reflection of Washington's
diverse geopolitical interests as the state of drug
transshipment markets.
"There is a fundamental
political issue at play here, in that Washington
perceives the drugs culture as being intrinsic to the
survival of the junta, the suppression of personal
liberties and the failure to implement democratic
change," said a diplomat, adding that Yangon "has not
responded positively to counter-narcotics aid in the
past and there is nothing to suggest that its mindset
has altered".
Most Western anti-narcotics
agencies pulled out of Myanmar after the 1988 political
uprising and subsequent military crackdown, a period
that coincided with the expansion of border trade and a
massive surge in opium output.
Chinese
syndicates set up mobile laboratories on the Thai and
Chinese frontiers after the opening of three crossings
in 1998-99. Indian traffickers moved in after Delhi
negotiated a trading deal in 1995. The border access
enabled the Chinese triads and their ethnic Shan
suppliers to bring in tons of acetic anhydride, a
chemical used to make high-grade heroin suitable for
markets in North America and Western Europe.
By
1996, the area under cultivation with poppies had
increased almost threefold to 210,039 hectares,
apparently aided by a pact between Myanmar's armed
forces and Wa tribesmen, who gradually displaced the
Shan in prime growing areas. Myanmar then accounted for
almost half of the global supply of illicit opium and
more than one-third of refined heroin, according to the
chief United Nations agency dealing with transnational
crimes.
But it was only after the emergence of
the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and its hardline
suppression of the drug trade in the late 1990s, that
Myanmar became the main focus of US attention. With the
Taliban reducing Afghanistan's share of global output
from 37 percent to a modest 5 percent, Myanmar suddenly
became the source of a massive 73 percent of raw opium,
though its heroin contribution was far smaller because
of low yields.
Yangon might have felt hard done
by, as its opium production was also on the decline,
dropping to 90,000 hectares in 1999 and since averaging
slightly more than 100,000 hectares. The quantity of
heroin trafficked through Myanmar plummeted by 70
percent between 1998 and 2001 and is believed to be
still falling, although these data do not take account
of shipments through second countries such as China,
India and Thailand.
There is little doubt that
the cutbacks were directed from Yangon. The
International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) noted that
2002 eradication efforts "reduced by about 7 percent the
total area under illicit opium-poppy cultivation, thus
contributing significantly to the general decline ... in
that country".
Officially, Myanmar wants to
eliminate all illicit drug production within two years.
Most independent observers are skeptical, but
nonetheless expect Myanmar eventually to drop off the
global blacklist for opium.
So why the hostile
reception from the United States? Diplomats say
Washington is concerned that Yangon may be using the
cutbacks as a cover for increasing production of other
forms of illicit narcotics with a potentially greater
market impact.
"Clear and unambiguous evidence
exists that Burma is focusing more resources on
synthetic drugs and has been for the last five or six
years or more," said one European analyst, using the
former designation for Myanmar, officially renamed by
the junta in 1989. "Given its poor track record on
heroin enforcement, there is understandable disquiet
that Burma might become a global source for products
that are harder to detect and easier to make than
heroin."
Bush's congressional report noted an
alarming increase in the availability of amphetamines -
especially methamphetamines - and other synthetic drugs
in US markets, mostly originating from Asia and
trafficked by Chinese syndicates through the Netherlands
and Canada. Wa suppliers are known to prefer
methamphetamine tablets over heroin because they are
smaller and easier to conceal, are cheaper to
manufacture and cost less to ship because of their
smaller bulk.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) has responded by boosting its partnership with
Thai security forces in border regions. However, this
has failed to stem the inflow of chemicals used in the
production process.
"Ephedrine ... is diverted
and smuggled out of China and India. Caffeine, which is
used as an adulterant in the illicit manufacture of
methamphetamine tablets, is mainly smuggled into Myanmar
through its border with Thailand [and] is being
trafficked in such large quantities that the authorities
of Thailand have imposed regulations on its control in
the northern provinces of the country," the INCB noted
in a recent report.
Despite a host of
enforcement accords with India, China and Thailand and
pledges to crack down on the trade, Myanmar confines its
actions against amphetamines and opium and its
derivatives to occasional media stunts. Annual seizures
of opium within Myanmar constitute less than 1 percent
of total global seizures, while anti-amphetamine drives
are so rare that there are few reliable data. None of
the 30-40 refineries operating on the Thai border has
been closed down.
Even the arrest of Shan heroin
mastermind Khun Sa in 1996, heralded at the time as a
breakthrough in enforcement efforts, is now widely
believed to have been an attempt to consolidate the Wa's
grip ahead of a push into synthetic drugs. Khun Sa still
trades openly in heroin from his confinement in Yangon.
In 2001 a shipment of 126 kilograms of heroin seized in
the United States was traced back to the warlord and one
of his wives was subsequently arrested as an accomplice.
"The junta reacts in much the same way as it
does to diplomatic pressure, by doing only as much at a
drugs-enforcement level as it needs to deflect
international criticism," said the European diplomat.
"Cutting Burma out of the heroin equation,
assuming it does happen, will be something of a hollow
achievement as long as it adopts such a cavalier
approach to enforcement in general."
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
