Golden Triangle puts its poppies to
sleep By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
China and India are entering the frame as key players in
Asia's multibillion-dollar illicit-narcotics trade as
the fading opium barons of the Golden Triangle give way
to savvy peddlers of synthetic and designer drugs. A new
United Nations study offers further confirmation that
the production of opiates is sharply declining in Laos,
matching a similar drop in neighboring Myanmar.
Thailand, the third country in Indochina's trafficking
belt, has not been a significant supplier for two
decades.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) said this year's opium crop in Laos had
plummeted by 45% compared with 2003 cultivation, while
production had fallen by 64% to only 43 tonnes.
"Together with the parallel decline in opium
cultivation in Myanmar, this historical achievement, if
sustained, will end more than a century of opium
production in the Golden Triangle," said Antonio Maria
Costa, UNODC's executive director.
Similar
findings have been reported independently by the
International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the US
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), though both are
waiting to see whether the trend will be sustained.
Output of opium in Myanmar, the world's
second-largest supplier in recent years, fell from a
high of 1,500 tonnes in 1998 to 865 tonnes in 2001,
according to the DEA. The UNODC estimated the 2003 crop
at 810 tonnes and said cultivation had declined by more
than 100,000 hectares, or 62%, since 1996.
While
it was initially thought that adverse weather had
decimated Golden Triangle crops, UN and US
anti-narcotics authorities now accept that both
communist Laos and the ruling military junta in Yangon
are honoring commitments to wipe out a scourge that has
blighted their international images.
Laos
pledged in 1999 to eliminate poppy cultivation by 2005,
and is well on track. Myanmar, rumored to have
officially sanctioned the opium trade in the 1990s as a
way of pacifying restive ethnic minorities on its
borders with Thailand and China, surprised many by
becoming an active participant in suppression activities
in 2002.
There was plenty of motivation for the
switch by Myanmar: the United States and much of Western
Europe began to enact economic sanctions in the same
period and suspended direct counter-narcotics aid,
partly in retaliation for Yangon's lethargy over the
myriad heroin-trafficking rings that radiate from its
northwestern regions.
Nevertheless, the
window-dressing of the last decade, which generally
amounted to little more than seizure bonfires and other
media stunts, has given way to a direct commitment of
scarce government funds to eradicate the problem at its
source.
Thousands of hectares of crops have been
razed in Myanmar's highland Shan State, which until
recently enjoyed protection from the armed forces. The
number of seizures doubled in 2001 and now surpasses
those in most other Southeast Asian countries.
"Burma [now officially known as Myanmar] since
1988 has tolerated opium cultivation for the sake of
ethnic harmony and what one could best term the narrow
security objectives of the armed forces, and the end
result was that it has underwritten income development
in some areas," said a diplomat from Myanmar. "[But] you
would now have to say that the junta is cooperating as
much in suppression activities as Laos and possibly even
Thailand, although the achievements often are not so
evident because the Burmese don't get the level of
support that they undoubtedly need because of their
pariah status."
Declining financial aid from
developed countries - partly due to compassion fatigue
and the specific economic embargoes against Myanmar - is
one reason the UN and other development agencies fear
the successes in the Golden Triangle may not be
sustained.
The United States, the biggest
sponsor of anti-narcotics programs worldwide, commits
about US$170 million annually to direct suppression and
eradication projects in the Western Hemisphere, but only
$7 million in East Asia. Laos, Thailand and Pakistan are
the chief Asian recipients. When education, training and
technical exchanges are included, Latin America gets
about 90% of the total US funding of $900 million. This
is predominantly because of a 2002 initiative that led
to a massive increase in support for DEA operations in
Colombia.
In Indochina, the decisive policy
shift is running far ahead of crop-substitution
activities, a weakness compounded by the social fallout
from a draconian relocation of subsistence farmers from
cultivation areas that may have laid the seeds for a
future return to opium production. Human-rights groups
believe that tens of thousands of highland Hmong, Shan
and Kokong villagers have been deliberately uprooted to
disrupt poppy crops and - in the case of Myanmar -
installed as security buffers against ethnic
insurgents.
"In many areas, opium elimination has
been achieved without the farmers having the opportunity
to develop other sources of income. Although the opium
growers in fact never derived a great deal from this
crop, the cash from selling opium was important for
farmers living on, or below, the poverty line," Costa
wrote in a foreword to the UNODC report on Laos.
"We have the collective responsibility to ensure
that the poorest of the poor are not the ones who pay
the price for successes in drug control. Extending a
compassionate hand to destitute farmers is also a
condition for ensuring the sustainability of the
elimination of opium production in Laos," he said.
Rising street prices for heroin, a direct
consequence of successful suppression efforts, will act
as a lure for growers, though the re-emergence of
Afghanistan as the leading producer of opium will help
balance the global market supply.
The other side
of the Golden Triangle's enforcement breakthrough is
that the narcotics picture has not so much changed as
become distorted by market shifts, which suggests that
eradication achievements have probably been overplayed.
Surveys by the DEA and the UNODC suggest that
far from exiting the trafficking business, many
syndicates have simply switched to the manufacturing of
synthetic and designer drugs, which are more compact and
thus easier to transport and are not affected by
seasonal weather patterns.
A landmark study of
drug trends last year by the UN found that the abuse of
ecstasy and amphetamines was now greater than demand for
heroin and cocaine combined, with the use of stimulants
alone soaring tenfold in the past decade.
On a
worldwide basis, abuse is highest in East and Southeast
Asia, with the countries bordering the Golden Triangle
reporting the worst addiction problems. A localized
dependency problem usually points to bigger production
and trafficking capabilities.
"You know ... the
economics rattling around in the back of my mind make me
wonder if the profit margin isn't higher on
amphetamine-type substances than on heroin, which leads
me to be all the more concerned that we tackle that more
aggressively," said Robert Charles, the US assistant
secretary of state for international narcotics and law
enforcement. "In other words ... just because you get
out of one business doesn't mean you're actually getting
out of the drug business if what you're doing is gaining
a profit margin by getting into another drug business."
Chinese trafficking rings operating just inside
Myanmar's border with Thailand each year produce more
than 8 million methamphetamine tablets - known locally
as ya-ba, Thai for "crazy medicine" - while
smaller quantities originate from Laos, Thailand and
Cambodia.
The pills are cheap and easy to
manufacture, and refineries are so mobile that chemists
can easily stay ahead of suppression efforts. Narcotics
officers also worry about the intra-regional nature of
the supply networks, which are far more complex than the
localized opium crops.
Clandestine laboratories
in India and China annually export more than 4 million
tonnes of precursor chemicals such as ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine to keep the refineries operating,
drawing on trafficking routes in Sri Lanka, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Thailand and probably North Korea that are
also used to smuggle contraband and illegal migrants.
There is circumstantial evidence that North
Korea's state security apparatus is trafficking and
possibly manufacturing methamphetamines. Production
plants are sprouting up in southwestern China, and there
are fears that India will become a major supplier.
China is already the biggest Asian producer of
crystal meth, an extremely potent form of
methamphetamine known on the streets as "ice". Most is
now consumed within China's border populations, but
Western countries are bracing for a deluge once capacity
rises.
"Wiping out gum-opium production in the
Golden Triangle would be a godsend in the social and
security contexts for countries in the frontline like
Thailand and Burma, which have had to devote enormous
resources that could have been put to other uses," said
the Myanmar diplomat.
"But let us not get too
far ahead of ourselves. My concern is whether Asia is
prepared, at the resources level and in its political
mindset, for a drugs-proliferation challenge that does
not recognize the geographical limits of opiates and
potentially could spring up anywhere that precursors
exist. One would have to say it probably is not."
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