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Myanmar’s New Opium War: Vigilantes, Villagers Clash Over Drug Trade
By SHIBANI MAHTANI and MYO MYO
Updated March 25, 2016
Violence in country’s north represents a challenge for incoming government guided by Aung San Suu Kyi
WAINGMAW, Myanmar—The cultivation of opium poppy and production of methamphetamine in these lawless, northern hinterlands have long made Myanmar one of the centers of the world’s drug trade. Now they are posing an early test for Aung San Suu Kyi’s incoming democratic government.
Christian antidrug vigilantes are asking Ms. Suu Kyi’s party, set to take power in a week, to intervene in a clash with villagers who don’t want to see their undulating hillsides of opium poppies destroyed.
Violence between the two groups in recent weeks, ahead of Myanmar’s harvest season, has injured dozens and underscored the difficulty of controlling the rugged borderlands, where rival factions and business interests thrive.
“I thought I was going to die, I was so afraid, I just kept praying to God,” said Mon Aung, a 42-year-old volunteer with the mostly Baptist Pat Jasan group. He was shot on a recent poppy-clearing mission and was recuperating on a shabby hospital bed in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state.
“But even if I died, I would have died for my people and my country,” he said.
It was Mr. Mon Aung’s first poppy-clearing mission, and though he was afraid of violence, he says he was motivated after watching his “brothers, neighbors and friends turning into thieves and murderers because of drugs.”
Narcotics politics have dominated the Golden Triangle region—where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet—for decades. Armed ethnic militias with shifting loyalties and soldiers have routinely destroyed small parts of the fields where impoverished farmers grow poppy, the farmers say, but also profit from the trade, so they leave most untouched.
A burgeoning drug trade with southern China has added to the problem, compelling vigilante groups to get involved to combat government inaction.
Myanmar’s position in the global drug trade has deepened in recent years, despite a shift away from military rule that began in 2011 and will result in the country’s first freely elected government in decades taking office April 1.
The total area under poppy cultivation in 2015 was some 55,500 hectares (212 square miles)—roughly the size of San Francisco—and has steadily risen since 2006, according to the United Nations.
Production of heroin, which is refined from opium sap tapped from the poppy plant, is second here only to Afghanistan. Methamphetamine pills, made in mobile factories in the same regions, have been seized in record numbers by police.
The problem has grown so desperate that the Pat Jasan volunteers affiliated with church groups representing the ethnic Kachin minority embarked on a mission in February to forcibly clear poppy fields. Many say that their people are being slowly killed off by drugs.
They turned back when unidentified attackers bombed and shot at them on Feb. 25, injuring 30. Police said they are investigating the violence, and that Pat Jasan vigilantes and farmers have been questioned.
“Almost every household has at least one person who is addicted to drugs,” said Brang Shawng, head of the Kachin Baptist Church in Waingmaw. “Cases of HIV are climbing. It has turned our children into orphans with criminal parents. The future of our children is unthinkable.”
Churches, he added, are trying to work with addicts, HIV patients and orphans, but are “completely overwhelmed.”
So far, Ms. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy has shown some cautious support for the vigilantes’ campaign. The newly elected, NLD-dominated parliament voted last month in favor of an emergency bill to support Pat Jasan’s agenda, but didn’t specify how.
Most drug experts, including the U.N.’s drug agency, don’t support eradication or Pat Jasan’s hard-line tactics, which include beatings to cure drug users of their addiction. They say the solution must include a broad development plan for the area and a cessation of ethnic conflicts.
“Conflict is fueling the drugs, and the drugs are fueling the conflict,” said Troels Vester, the U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime country manager for Myanmar.
Myanmar’s northern border zones in many cases are controlled in part by armed ethnic groups with names such as Ta’ang National Liberation Army, Shan State Army-North and United Wa State Army. Some areas have been racked by decadeslong wars, and none of these groups was among the factions that signed a lauded government cease-fire last year.
cont http://www.wsj.com/articles/myanmar...es-villagers-clash-over-drug-trade-1458935295
By SHIBANI MAHTANI and MYO MYO
Updated March 25, 2016
Violence in country’s north represents a challenge for incoming government guided by Aung San Suu Kyi
WAINGMAW, Myanmar—The cultivation of opium poppy and production of methamphetamine in these lawless, northern hinterlands have long made Myanmar one of the centers of the world’s drug trade. Now they are posing an early test for Aung San Suu Kyi’s incoming democratic government.
Christian antidrug vigilantes are asking Ms. Suu Kyi’s party, set to take power in a week, to intervene in a clash with villagers who don’t want to see their undulating hillsides of opium poppies destroyed.
Violence between the two groups in recent weeks, ahead of Myanmar’s harvest season, has injured dozens and underscored the difficulty of controlling the rugged borderlands, where rival factions and business interests thrive.
“I thought I was going to die, I was so afraid, I just kept praying to God,” said Mon Aung, a 42-year-old volunteer with the mostly Baptist Pat Jasan group. He was shot on a recent poppy-clearing mission and was recuperating on a shabby hospital bed in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state.
“But even if I died, I would have died for my people and my country,” he said.
It was Mr. Mon Aung’s first poppy-clearing mission, and though he was afraid of violence, he says he was motivated after watching his “brothers, neighbors and friends turning into thieves and murderers because of drugs.”
Narcotics politics have dominated the Golden Triangle region—where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet—for decades. Armed ethnic militias with shifting loyalties and soldiers have routinely destroyed small parts of the fields where impoverished farmers grow poppy, the farmers say, but also profit from the trade, so they leave most untouched.
A burgeoning drug trade with southern China has added to the problem, compelling vigilante groups to get involved to combat government inaction.
Myanmar’s position in the global drug trade has deepened in recent years, despite a shift away from military rule that began in 2011 and will result in the country’s first freely elected government in decades taking office April 1.
The total area under poppy cultivation in 2015 was some 55,500 hectares (212 square miles)—roughly the size of San Francisco—and has steadily risen since 2006, according to the United Nations.
Production of heroin, which is refined from opium sap tapped from the poppy plant, is second here only to Afghanistan. Methamphetamine pills, made in mobile factories in the same regions, have been seized in record numbers by police.
The problem has grown so desperate that the Pat Jasan volunteers affiliated with church groups representing the ethnic Kachin minority embarked on a mission in February to forcibly clear poppy fields. Many say that their people are being slowly killed off by drugs.
They turned back when unidentified attackers bombed and shot at them on Feb. 25, injuring 30. Police said they are investigating the violence, and that Pat Jasan vigilantes and farmers have been questioned.
“Almost every household has at least one person who is addicted to drugs,” said Brang Shawng, head of the Kachin Baptist Church in Waingmaw. “Cases of HIV are climbing. It has turned our children into orphans with criminal parents. The future of our children is unthinkable.”
Churches, he added, are trying to work with addicts, HIV patients and orphans, but are “completely overwhelmed.”
So far, Ms. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy has shown some cautious support for the vigilantes’ campaign. The newly elected, NLD-dominated parliament voted last month in favor of an emergency bill to support Pat Jasan’s agenda, but didn’t specify how.
Most drug experts, including the U.N.’s drug agency, don’t support eradication or Pat Jasan’s hard-line tactics, which include beatings to cure drug users of their addiction. They say the solution must include a broad development plan for the area and a cessation of ethnic conflicts.
“Conflict is fueling the drugs, and the drugs are fueling the conflict,” said Troels Vester, the U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime country manager for Myanmar.
Myanmar’s northern border zones in many cases are controlled in part by armed ethnic groups with names such as Ta’ang National Liberation Army, Shan State Army-North and United Wa State Army. Some areas have been racked by decadeslong wars, and none of these groups was among the factions that signed a lauded government cease-fire last year.
cont http://www.wsj.com/articles/myanmar...es-villagers-clash-over-drug-trade-1458935295