CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Are the United
Nations and its agencies becoming part of the
problem rather than the solution in Myanmar? That
is what many Myanmar people are asking themselves
as UN Special envoy Ibrahim Gambari appears to be
a lame duck, unable to persuade the ruling
generals to agree to anything more than appointing
a deputy labor minister, Major General Aung
Kyi, to "liaise" with detained pro-democracy
leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Myanmar
government has blatantly rejected an urging by the
UN
Security Council for restraint and continues to
arrest people who took part in street
demonstrations last month. At the same time,
critics have also begun to question the activities
of various UN agencies in Myanmar.
On
October 4, the Irrawaddy, an independent magazine
and website run by Burmese exiles in Thailand,
published an online commentary highly critical of
the head of the United Nations Development
Program's (UNDP's) resident representative in
Yangon, Charles Petrie. He was accused of making
interviews during the turmoil to international TV
networks, which were "meaningless" and "outraged
educated and politically active" people in
Myanmar.
Earlier this year, the UNDP was
forced to dismiss four of its staff in Yangon.
According to Petrie himself, two had "borrowed"
project money, which had been deposited for
"village micro projects", while one had "failed to
report the misuse of funds" and the fourth was
dismissed because of "non-performance", Petrie
stated in a reply to questions submitted from Asia
Times Online by e-mail.
Now, in October
2007, the United Nations Office of Drugs and
Crime, UNODC, has presented a report on poppy
cultivation in Myanmar, which, according to
critics, contains a number of shortcomings and
dubious assertions, which also run contrary to
several reports compiled by the independent Shan
Herald Agency for News, SHAN, which is run by
ethnic Shan living on the Thai-Myanmar border.
While the UNODC report admits that poppy
cultivation has actually increased since 2006, it
talks about progress and, in the words of UNODC's
Myanmar representative, Shariq Bin Raza,
"impressive achievements". SHAN accuses the ruling
military of collusion in the drug trade, and "show
business" to appease the international community
and that UNODC projects to start tea plantations
in areas formerly used for opium cultivation near
the Chinese border "failed with a big loss".
What has been achieved, both UNODC
and SHAN seem to agree, is that poppy
cultivation inside areas along the Chinese border, which
are controlled by local armies and until 1989 by
units of the now defunct Communist Party of Burma,
CPB, has diminished. In that year, the hill-tribe
rank-and-file of the CPB's army mutinied against
the party's mainly Burman Maoist leadership and
drove them into exile in China.
The CPB
subsequently split up along ethnic lines into four
different armies, of which the United Wa State
Army, UWSA, is now the most powerful. The ex-CPB
mutineers also entered into cease-fire agreements
with the government in Yangon, according to which
they were allowed to retain their arms and control
of their respective areas.
They were also
allowed to trade in whatever they wanted, which
led to a dramatic surge in opium production in the
1990s. The derivative heroin was also manufactured
in the UWSA-controlled area, and the group soon
began to protect the production of
methamphetamines as well. According to official
statistics from the United States State
Department, the 1987 harvest for Myanmar - before
the CPB mutiny - yielded 836 tons of raw opium; by
1995 production had increased to 2,340 tons.
Enter the UN The United Nations
was around then invited to start crop substitution
and other development programs in the former
CPB-controlled area. As a result, and because of
vigorous enforcement by the UWSA leadership, a
virtually opium-free zone has been created along
the Chinese border.
But, as SHAN director
Khuensai Jaiyen said at a presentation at the
Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in Bangkok
in September this year: "Myanmar's war on drugs
has targeted only certain 'token' areas, only in
the north and not in the south and central Shan
State." Shan State for years has been Myanmar's
main opium producing area, and that remains the
case also today.
Further, Khuensai said,
"eradication efforts have had a 'balloon effect',
pushing cultivation in the north to the south and
central. There is also opium cultivation in
western Shan State, where opium has never been
grown before." He also said that the Myanmar
military "has an interest in maintaining opium
production" because the number of government
battalions in Shan State since 1988 to present has
increased from 33 to 141. "The government policy
of 'self-sufficiency' for soldiers has deepened
the military's involvement in the trade," Khuensai
said.
The recent UNODC report does not
mention official complicity in the trade. In fact,
the report's only reference to the collection of
"tax" on drug production in Shan State is a claim
that Shan State Army-South, SSA-S, an
anti-government rebel army, has encouraged local
farmers "to cultivate opium in their area, so they
(SSA-S) can gain tax." When contacted by e-mail by
AToL, the Yangon-based UNODC researcher Xavier
Bouan conceded that all armies in the area,
including the government's, "are taxing this crop"
- which the UNODC did not mention in the actual
report.
SHAN has produced two main reports
on drugs in Myanmar, "Show Business: Rangoon's
'War on Drugs' in Shan State" in December 2003,
and "Hand in Glove: The Burma Army and the Drug
Trade in Shan State" in August 2005. Both reports
name Myanmar army officers who are directly
involved in the trade, and have maps showing how
the poppy cultivation has shifted from the Chinese
border areas further inland in Shan State.
SHAN reports also deal in great detail
with the skyrocketing production of
methamphetamines in Shan State, mainly in areas
controlled by the UWSA. By contrast, the UNODC
report does not even mention the manufacture of
such synthetic drugs, which appears to be how drug
lords affiliated with the UWSA have "substituted"
their loss of income from the opium and heroin
trade along the Chinese frontier. Millions of
pills, known as yaa baa, or Thai for
"madness medicine", are flooding into Thailand,
causing severe social problems especially in the
north, close to the production areas across the
border in Myanmar.
Flimsy
research UNODC defends its stance by saying
that their concern is only opium, not synthetic
drugs - but that seems a strange strategy for the
elimination of drugs in Myanmar. And by
concentrating on the "project areas" along the
Chinese frontier, UNODC also seems to be
neglecting the production of opium in other parts
of Myanmar, which even the UN agency admits is
increasing.
According to the UNODC's
recently released report, opium poppy cultivation
in Myanmar increased by 29% from 2006 to 2007, or
from 315 to 460 tons. But it is reasonable to
believe that the increase has been more dramatic
than that; the UNODC report admits that its
surveyors were not permitted to assess the
situation to Sagaing Division adjacent to India -
where other sources have reported an increase in
opium production.
Perhaps even more
telling of government interference, the UNODC
report states that their researchers did not find
any poppies during a trip in February this year to
"northern Chin State", another part of Myanmar
bordering India. However, reports by India-based
organizations - for instance the Mizzima News
Group based in New Delhi - state that poppies are
being grown in other areas, to which the UNODC
team was not taken to by the authorities.
Equally puzzling is the UNODC's silence on
the UWSA, the authority that controls and governs
the agency's main project area along the Chinese
frontier. In January 2005, eight major leaders of
the UWSA, including its commander Bao Yuxiang and
his two brothers, were indicted in absentia by a
federal court in the US on charges of heroin and
methamphetamine trafficking. Another prominent
UWSA leader, Wei Xuegang, an ethnic Han Chinese
who is one of the eight, already had a US$2
million reward on his head after being convicted
of heroin trafficking 10 years ago. In addition,
US authorities are believed to have unsealed
indictments against another dozen or so drug
lords, who are operating under the UWSA umbrella.
Since the indictment was issued, Bao's
younger brother Bao Youhua, has died while Wei has
built a heavily fortified, luxury mansion near
Panghsang, the UWSA's headquarters. On July 4,
2006, Wei, twice a fugitive from justice was
appointed "finance minister" in the Wa
"government", thus becoming the most powerful of
the UWSA's leaders.
He and his comrades
have used the millions they have earned from the
drug trade to buy up real estate in China and
Myanmar, and, especially in Myanmar, to invest in
perfectly legitimate businesses such as plastic
factories, agro-industrial enterprises, mineral
smelting, retail trading, import-export, and the
tourist industry. One international drug
enforcement official based in Thailand called
Wei's business empire "one of the biggest
money-laundering operations in Southeast Asia
today".
So, it may, after all, be just
"show business" in Yangon's and the UNODC's
campaigns against drugs. At the heart of the
problem is the lack of openness, transparency and
accountability in Myanmar as a whole. Without a
fundamental change in Myanmar's rigid military-run
system, and real drug enforcement efforts, the
opium derivative heroin and methamphetamines will
continue to flow across Myanmar's borders. In the
meantime, it seems that the UN indeed is part of
the problem rather than the solution.
Bertil Lintner is a former
correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific
Media Services.
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