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2 Thein Sein's drug
problem By Brian McCartan
CHIANG MAI -
As President Thein Sein's government strives to
earn his long isolated country greater
international respectability, its support for
militias and their role in narcotics trafficking
is one prickly issue his reform agenda has so far
failed to address. As Western countries suspend
their sanctions and prepare to invest in the
country, they will no doubt want assurances that
their new ventures are not linked to Myanmar's
still booming drug trade.
Since the 1960s,
government-backed militias have been a part of the
Myanmar government's counter-insurgency strategy,
particularly in the northern Shan State. Created
to guard villages against insurgents and support
the army in its operations, militias have
frequently become involved in the narcotics trade,
often with the tacit approval and support of the
military.
In the past year, Thein Sein's
government has brokered ceasefire
agreements with most of
the country's ethno-nationalist insurgent groups.
The deals have followed a tense standoff as major
ethnic armed groups, mostly in Shan State, refused
to join an earlier government program that aimed
to incorporate their foot soldiers into army-led
Border Guard Forces in the run-up to the 2010
elections.
The former ruling military
junta had some success in pressuring several of
the smaller groups to join its army-led,
nationwide People's Militia Force (PMF). As PMF
units, the former insurgent groups joined almost
400 other militias set up by the military in Shan
State to battle ethnic rebel groups over the past
decade.
These militias include ethnic Lahu
militias in eastern Shan State, the former Kachin
Defense Army (KDA) now in Kutkai township in
northern Shan State and the Markkieng militia in
southern Shan State. All are believed to be
involved in narcotics trafficking.
In
2003-2004, Senior General Than Shwe, leader of the
then-ruling State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC), ordered that every village tract should
have at least one PMF battalion. While the plan
was never fully implemented, numerous units were
set up in areas contested by both the government
and insurgent groups. Many of these
government-created units were established on
ethnic lines.
While PMF units in
southeastern Myanmar are composed primarily of
villagers forced into the role of part-time
militiamen trained and sometimes led by Myanmar
Army officers and non-commissioned officers, in
Shan State many of the PMFs operate effectively as
small private armies with their own leaders,
uniforms and unit patches.
Many of the
militia leaders have become warlords over their
respective areas, with assumed powers to conscript
new members and order local villages to pay
"taxes" and provide supplies. Although often
organized along ethnic lines, the militias have
little involvement with ethnic politics and their
respective drives for autonomy.
Many of
the militia commanders have become identified with
human rights abuses, narcotics trafficking and
extortion. This, however, did not hinder several
militia commanders from being elected in the 2010
polls, most under the banner of the United
Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the
political party most closely identified with the
former military regime.
It seems unlikely
that most of these commanders would have been
elected if ethnic leaders from insurgent ethnic
Shan or Wa organizations had been allowed to field
their own candidates. Nor would they have likely
won at the polls without the widespread and
blatant vote-rigging carried out in support of the
USDP.
Military-created militias in Shan
State have long been involved in the narcotics
trade. The first militias in the region, then
known as Ka Kwe Yay (KKY), were set up in the
early 1960s to fight the insurgent and
China-backed Burmese Communist Party (BCP) and
various other ethnic-based insurgencies in the
region.
In reciprocation for their
assistance, the government looked the other way on
their opium trafficking activities. Many of these
groups eventually began to spend more time and
effort guarding opium caravans to Thailand than
fighting ethnic insurgents, forcing the government
to crackdown on and disband certain militias.
By then several militia commanders had
become major players in the regional narcotics
trade, including notorious warlords Khun Sa and Lo
Hsing Han. Khun Sa's ethno-nationalist insurgent
Mong Tai Army grew into the premier opium and
heroin trafficking organization in the region's
Golden Triangle drug-producing region encompassing
areas of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. Khun Sa
eventually surrendered to the government in 1996
and lived out his final years in Yangon.
Lo Hsing Han also leveraged his
involvement in the Ka Kwe Yay into becoming a
major opium trafficker. He was arrested in
Thailand in 1973 and later extradited to Myanmar.
Released in a 1980 general amnesty, Lo was
conscripted by the government to act as an
intermediary in ceasefire negotiations with ethnic
Kokang and Wa rebel groups following their 1989
mutiny from the BCP. In exchange, Lo was given
lucrative business opportunities by the junta
including, according to a 1993 Thailand Office of
Narcotics Control Board report, the right to
smuggle heroin from Myanmar to Thailand.
Together with his son Steven Law, Lo has
created one of Myanmar's largest conglomerates,
the Asia World Company. The company's interests
include the lead construction role of the new
capital at Naypyidaw, management of Yangon's main
port, reconstruction following Cyclone Nargis, and
a role in the construction of the recently
suspended China-backed Myitsone dam project in
Kachin State.
Lo and his son were placed
on a US visa blacklist in 1996 for their suspected
drug trafficking activities and added to the US
Treasury Department's sanctions list in 2008 for
their financial connections to the military
regime. There has long been speculation that Lo
Hsing Han built his business empire on
narco-profits, although he has consistently denied
the widespread allegations of involvement in drug
trafficking.
New age warlords Myanmar's current militia commanders in Shan
State are unlikely ever to reach the drug
producing heights of Khun Sa or Lo Hsing Han.
But like their predecessors they have been
able to leverage their roles as counter-insurgent
militia leaders to move into the narcotics trade,
which in turn has allowed some to establish
flourishing business concerns. Initially providing
protection for heroin refineries and opium
shipments, militias are known to have recently
moved into trafficking and production of
methamphetamine.
Myanmar is also the
second largest producer of opium in the world,
next to Afghanistan, and is a major regional
producer of methamphetamine. Crystal
methamphetamine, also known as "ice", rudimentary
forms of ecstasy and other synthetic drugs are
also produced in laboratories controlled by
militias as well as many ethnic insurgency
organizations.
Although Western countries
have been the most vocal about the need for
Myanmar to curb its prolific narcotics trade, much
of Myanmar's narcotics production, both for
opium-heroin and synthetic narcotics, is earmarked
mainly for Chinese and Southeast Asian markets.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
