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Myanmar's Wa: Likely losers in the
opium war
By Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Illicit opium production occurs predominantly in
Asia, although opium and heroin are also being
increasingly produced in Colombia and Mexico. While
post-Taliban Afghanistan has regained its position as
the first producer of illicit opium in the world (see The ironies
of Afghan opium production, September 17, 2003), the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has
monitored a decline of production in Myanmar in 2003.
For decades, Myanmar, known as Burma before the
military junta in power in Yangon renamed the country in
1989, has ranked either first or second in global opium
production. Although opium production in Myanmar has
long been estimated by both the UN and the US Department
of State, their respective annual figures have never
been concordant and debates on whether the production
was increasing or decreasing have been controversial.
However, in 2003, the UNODC was able to conduct a ground
survey in some areas of the Shan State of Myanmar and
therefore to extrapolate the interpretation of satellite
images to the rest of the Shan State.
The
Myanmar Opium Survey 2003 of the UNODC estimates that 92
percent of opium production in Myanmar occurs in the
Shan State, a mountainous and rather isolated area
covering 155,000 square kilometers along the borders of
China, Laos and Thailand. Going by that estimate, 810
tonnes of opium would have been harvested from 62,000
hectares of opium poppy cultivated in Myanmar, down from
828 tonnes and 81,000 hectares in 2002. However,
although the US Department of State also reported a
decline in Myanmar's opium production in 2003 (quoting
even lower figures), some critics contend that such a
decrease only happened in the Shan State and much less
in Myanmar as a whole. Indeed, a recent report emanating
from an independent media group asserted that the
decrease in the north of the Shan State had been more
than made up by a marked escalation in the south and
east of the area, thereby contesting the validity of the
UN report.
Is the UWSA committed to opium
suppression?
Concurrent with the controversy over
the estimate, or even the increase or decrease, of last
year's opium production in Myanmar is the broader
geopolitical problem of the country itself. Partial
discourses and representations that are characteristic
of any geopolitical problem drive the current arguing on
the drug issue in Myanmar. Indeed, drug production has
played and still plays a fundamental role in the
protracted conflict of Myanmar: opium has long been at
stake in its armed conflicts and also became the sinews
of these conflicts that its trade allowed and developed.
During the decades of armed conflict in Myanmar,
all groups have benefited at least to some extent from
the illicit drug trade, whether by reaping direct
financial benefits from it, by taxing it like any other
traded commodity, or by condoning it in order to affect
the fragile balance of power that exists among various
groups. The military junta holding power in Yangon also
participated in playing the opium card to achieve some
of its short-term geostrategic objectives, notably by
signing ceasefires with former armed opponents but also
as a method of subsidizing its army expenditures at the
field level, as well as providing personal financial
incentives.
The highly controversial debate
about opium production in Myanmar has a lot to do with
evaluation of the scope of responsibility of the United
Wa State Army (UWSA) in the drug trade, but also with
the implementation by the UN of its Wa Alternative
Development Project (WADP) in Wa Special Region No 2
(WSR2) of Shan State. While the UNODC gives credit to
the commitment of the UWSA leadership to suppress opium
production completely by 2005, and while it tries to
soften the brutal impact that such a suppression would
have on the Wa people themselves, critics of the
military junta and local ethnic-based groups opposed to
both the junta and the UWSA believe that neither Yangon
nor the UWSA are sincere in their opium-suppression
agenda. They also argue that the UNODC is being abused
and that its very presence legitimates both Yangon's
ruthless dictatorship and its ally the UWSA,
sensationally dubbed "the world's biggest drug
trafficking army" by the US Department of State.
The WSR2, the territory administered by the UWSP
and controlled by the UWSA in the Shan State, was
estimated by the UNODC to have produced 34 percent of
all Myanmar's opium in 2003, up 21 percent since 2002.
Also according to the UNODC, the largest decrease of
opium production last year took place in the northern
Shan State (Kokang), while significant decreases also
occurred in the southwestern and southeastern areas of
the Shan State. UNODC officials explain this production
upsurge in the WSR2 by a drastic 50 percent drop that
occurred in the Kokang area and caused a north-south
drift of opium farmers and production into the northern
WSR2 area. Kokang authorities had issued an opium ban in
1997 to make the Kokang Special Region No 1 an
opium-free zone by 2001.
The most virulent
critics of the UWSA achievement in suppressing opium
production and of the projects implemented by the UNODC
in the Shan State emanate from the Shan Herald Agency
for News (SHAN), an "independent media group" that
recently published a "Show Business" report on Yangon's
"war on drugs" in the Shan State. SHAN is a media group
related to the Restoration Council of Shan State, the
political setup of the Shan State Army (SSA) - one of
the last armed groups still fighting Yangon's military
junta. Thus, while clearly contributing to a better
understanding of the situation in the Shan State through
its valuable field surveys and reports, SHAN views are
also necessarily tainted by the Shan's political
objectives that are at stake in the protracted Myanmar
crisis.
While the UWSA authorities state their
unconditional commitment to opium suppression, SHAN
argues that they lack sincerity in implementing such an
agenda, mentioning for example that one of the brothers
of UWSA commander Bao You-xiang was involved in opium
production and had caused the temporary closing of one
of UNODC's field offices in the WADP area. Also, SHAN
regrets that there has been no debate about the means by
which the UNODC obtained its figures, something very
much understandable as the survey was carried out in
conjunction with Yangon's Central Committee for Drug
Abuse Control and thus not in the most independent way.
Thus SHAN, but also many Myanmar watchers, raises
serious questions about both the sincerity of the UWSA
leadership and the validity of the UN survey.
However, what is currently at stake in Wa
Special Region No 2 is not only the sincerity of the
UWSA or the validity of the UN survey but the fate of
the Wa people. Wa peasants are the ones who will
indisputably suffer from the implementation of an
opium-suppression agenda that is already under way and
going fast - perhaps too fast. Considering the fact that
only genuine peace and sustainable political development
can resolve the Myanmar crisis, it is obvious that
neither international aid nor economic sanctions will
succeed in solving either the drug problem or the
overall military crisis of the country. However, while
economic sanctions have never proved successful to
achieve regime changes (except maybe in South Africa),
international aid should not be denied to people already
suffering from political oppression and economic
underdevelopment, and who will thus be in even more dire
need of humanitarian aid if opium suppression were to be
fully implemented.
The Wa, from geohistory to
geopolitics
To understand better the role played
by the UWSA in the current geopolitics of illicit drugs
in Myanmar, one has to resort to both geohistory and
geopolitics. Geopolitical analysis requires untangling a
situation in which different actors deal with one
another through representations that are mostly partial,
biased and contradictory, as previous observations on
the Wa and the Shan have exemplified. Thus, to
understand the UWSA better, against which heavy
prejudices exist, one has to resort to both geohistory
and geopolitics of the Wa ethnic group itself.
The Wa are one of the least-known peoples of
Asia, although 400,000 of them are said to inhabit the
Shan State of Myanmar, and 600,000 the Yunnan province
of China. Indeed, very little has been written on the
Wa, except in Chinese, between Sir J George Scott's
1900-01 Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States and Magnus Fiskesjo's 2000 unpublished PhD
dissertation, "The Fate of Sacrifice and the Making of
Wa History". In fact, most of what has been written on
the Wa has to do with the UWSA. The 20,000-strong UWSA
is the military wing of the United Wa State Party (UWSP)
and was formed after the collapse of the Communist Party
of Burma in 1989.
The Wa altogether, and not
only the UWSA, have been said to challenge regional
stability in Southeast Asia, something that Thailand,
the main consuming market of methamphetamine pills
(ya ba) produced among other areas in UWSA-held
territory, has long been keen to advocate. Indeed,
Thailand has repeatedly denounced the UWSA as being the
main threat to its national security. Although one
cannot deny the fact that some elements of the UWSA are
involved in illicit drug production and trafficking
(opium, heroin and methamphetamines), one also has to
acknowledge the bias that the outside world holds
against the Wa ethnic group who, as a people, are of
course no more natural-born traffickers than any other.
Myanmar's tribal peripheries have always been
difficult to access, by the Burmans, the Chinese, and
even to the British and the Japanese. Of course, the
protracted Myanmar conflict has only made isolation
worse by making physical accessibility even harder
through political unrest. This explains to some extent
the current lack of reliable information on the Wa, one
remote hill tribe among others. Hence, still reflected
in today's literature on the Wa of the UWSA is the
tendency to observe them from the outside. Thus, when it
comes to describing the Wa and their current
responsibilities in the drug trade, one may wonder to
which extent representations, both cultural or
political, take over factual evidence.
Indeed, as
mentioned by anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjo, the Wa have
always been looked at from the outside, their territory
being referred to as a periphery, although when "looking
out from the Wa center, we encounter first the galaxy of
Shan Buddhist principalities found along the China-Burma
frontier, and second, the Chinese and Burmese states,
located at a still farther distance". It quickly
appears, then, that not much has changed in terms of
geopolitics when one looks at the power struggles still
going on among Myanmar, Chinese, Shan, and even Thai
political and military outfits.
Indeed, the Wa,
the former cannon fodder of the Chinese-backed Communist
Party of Burma, formed the UWSA and allied themselves to
Yangon in 1989 (after signing a ceasefire with then
Lieutenant-General and now Prime Minister Khin Nyunt),
then militarily contributed to the defeat of the Shan
army (Mong Tai Army) of former "opium king" and warlord
Khun Sa, gaining in the meantime a foothold along the
Thai border. Now, the UWSA frequently clashes with the
Shan State Army (SSA), constituted by remnants of Khun
Sa's military outfit, located along the Thai border and
most likely, if unofficially, backed by Bangkok. As a
matter of fact, the Shan "rebellion" has long been used
as a proxy by Bangkok in its rather conflictual
relationship with Yangon. Wa geohistory then meets Wa
geopolitics when one considers that the former Shan
States of Burma "served both as primary adversaries and
first buffers against the shocks of the cosmic-scale
events of the penetration of the Chinese state and
civilization, as well as (if to a lesser extent) that of
Burma", as stressed by Fiskesjo.
Thus the Wa of
the UWSA have been brought from a somehow obscure
geohistory to complex geopolitics and are now in the
midst of an increasingly controversial debate about the
scope of their responsibility in the illicit drug trade.
As far as geohistory is concerned, what we know for sure
is that the Wa are part of the Mon-Khmer people, one of
the indigenous and oldest peoples of Southeast Asia and
also one of the world's least-known. Historically, it is
estimated that the central Wa territories made up 150
square kilometers in a very mountainous area between the
Salween and Mekong rivers, where the UWSP/UWSA
established Wa Special Region No 2 after signing its
ceasefire with Yangon's military junta.
As
emphasized by Fiskesjo, the Wa consider themselves
autochthonous of northeastern Myanmar and southern
Yunnan, something that can be argued for by the
persistence, during the past few centuries, of an
autonomous Wa center, both politically and economically
independent. In the region, the Wa precedence is hardly
contested: for instance, their Shan (Tai ethnolinguistic
group) neighbors acknowledge that the Wa first inhabited
the area, and, farther north, the Chinese of Yunnan also
agree to be themselves later immigrants. Fiskesjo
stresses that in southern Yunnan, "local Chinese still
refer to the Wa as the benren, the 'original' or
'autochthonous people'". The Lahu, from the
Tibeto-Burman stock, know of course they are the
latecomers in the Wa territory, having moved there only
in the 18th and 19th centuries. Also agreed by both the
Wa and the Shan is that the former were expelled from
their old lands by the latter, their displacement from
former Kengtung State (in current Shan State) and
relocation farther north around Mongkha being mentioned
both in the Wa oral traditions and in the Shan
chronicles. Mentions of the Wa being defeated and
displaced by Shan immigrants are common all over the
area, from the Kengtung area in Myanmar to the Menglian
area in China.
Common discourses on the Wa are
still shaped by geohistorical perceptions and biases. As
underlined by Fiskesjo, the surrounding "civilized"
polities or ethnic groups saw the Wa as an external
"barbarian" people, "wild", or even, in late imperial
Chinese terms, "raw" (Wa who were not under Chinese
administration as opposed to those who were, the
"cooked" Wa).
But economically, the Wa are not
very different from other highland ethnic tribes.
Indeed, as is commonly the case with such populations in
Southeast Asia, the Wa relied mainly on hill rice
species grown under regimes of shifting slash-and-burn
cultivation. Irrigated rice paddies were and still are
scarce, even in those rare valleys where irrigation is
possible. While Wa people in China have resorted to
irrigation since the 1950s only, it is only during the
past few years that they employed it within Myanmar.
As for the main cash crop of the Wa, it has
been, and still is to a large extent, opium, which
became widespread in mainland Southeast Asia's northern
uplands by the late 19th century. As is still the case
(only 0.8 percent of the population of the WSR2 were
found addicted to opium in 2003), very little opium was
consumed in the historical central Wa country, except
for medical purposes. One has to acknowledge that
Myanmar's overall opium economy is clearly the outcome
of a long-lasting political crisis and a protracted
internal armed conflict, where the illicit economy is
fueled by the war economy in the same time that it fuels
it. However, opium production still appears to many as
the only viable way to compensate for structural
shortfalls in food security at the small-scale level of
the peasant economy. Indeed, 75 percent of the
population of WADP area suffers from rice shortages
during four to six months of the year, a dire situation
that UNODC wants to address by providing both
alternative income (cash crops) and more intensive
agricultural techniques, mostly through the double
cropping of rice (better land use, irrigation, improved
varieties of rice, etc). The Wa have launched a
large-scale rubber-tree plantation around Pangshang, and
China, whose border runs along the outskirts of the city
and where most Myanmar heroin is trafficked, has
promised the tax-free import of Wa rubber in an effort
to help with opium suppression.
Caught
between opium suppression and sanctions
The Wa of
the UWSA would seem to have an unmatched opportunity in
Myanmar. Indeed, the central government has granted them
de facto autonomy that no other tribal group or
political or military organization has ever gained in
Myanmar. However, this huge opportunity that the Wa have
in Myanmar, where a ruthless military dictatorship still
clings to power and makes concessions only when it has
no other choice, is to be used most cautiously by its
leadership if it does not want to jeopardize its
stability and very existence. Seemingly willing to
change both its image and its status, the Wa leadership
still claims that it is committed to getting rid of
opium production by 2005, something that, if achieved at
such a pace and in such material conditions, would prove
extremely detrimental to its population.
Although the UN and various non-governmental
organizations are working in WSR2 to improve the
people's economic and health conditions, such a quick
and drastic change - most likely aimed at proving their
alleged sincerity to the outside world - could threaten
both Wa socio-political stability and the status quo
that the Wa enjoy with Yangon. UNODC, whose very
presence in the area (working both in dictatorial
Myanmar and with the so-called "world's biggest
drug-trafficking army") is highly criticized by many
democracy advocates, also tries to guide and advise the
Wa leadership toward achieving what is a self-imposed
goal. For example, UNODC tries to soften the
humanitarian impact of the Wa authorities' policy of
forced relocation of opium-poppy growers from uplands to
lowlands within the WADP area.
Whether the
UWSP/UWSA leadership will succeed or not in its goal to
rid its territory of opium production, the determination
of its senior leadership to achieve such a goal is
evident. The Wa leadership declares itself fully
committed to suppressing opium production and hopes to
receive international help to sustain a move that could
jeopardize the regional balance of power by threatening
the fragile social, political, and military stability of
the Wa Special Region. The risk is that, whether it
succeeds or not, the UWSA will not get any help from an
international community that imposes sanctions on
Myanmar and views the UWSA mostly as a drug-trafficking
organization.
However, as stated in the recent
report on Myanmar from the Transnational Institute, one
has to remember that in such geopolitical issues,
"demonizing one specific player in the field, as often
occurs, usually has stronger roots in politics than in
evidence". And although Myanmar's crisis is rooted in
politics and will only be solved politically, the
international community tends to forget about realities
and issues at the local level as it is increasingly
confronted with calls for stricter economic sanctions on
Yangon as well as with the military junta's struggle to
cling to power.
One has to acknowledge, when
looking at the political and military deadlock that has
characterized Myanmar's recent history, that current
sanctions, both political and economic, have not yielded
the expected results. As more sanctions are imposed, it
seems, fewer levers become available to the
international community to influence Yangon's policy.
This is especially true when sanctions are imposed
without being followed by neighboring states. For the
main regional players, Thailand and China of course, but
also India, there seems to be too much economic and
geostrategic influence at stake in Myanmar to go ahead
with sanctions advocated and implemented mainly by
Western countries.
In Myanmar, in the Shan State
and in the Wa Special Region, one has to remember that,
beyond highly respectable and important political and
moral principles, millions of people struggle to survive
on a daily basis. The main threat to the Wa people is a
major humanitarian crisis after 2005 due to the opium
ban enforced by the UWSA in spite of insufficient and
inadequate developmental help. Considering such a tight
deadline for such an effort, combined with international
sanctions that will forbid the necessary aid from
reaching either dictatorial Myanmar or the so-called
"world's biggest drug-trafficking army", the pace of
opium suppression will not be matched by the ability to
create alternative ways of living and rural communities
risk being sacrificed. And since the ongoing opium
suppression is clearly not sustainable without outside
aid, it is the Wa people who will suffer the most from
both the ban and the economic sanctions while opium
production may only be displaced to elsewhere in
Myanmar.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, PhD, is
a geographer and research fellow at CNRS in Paris.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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