How Myanmar’s illicit opium economy benefits the military.

For the past 10 years drug production in Myanmar has been on the rise. The amount of land used to grow poppy – from which the opium sap used to make heroin is derived – has more than doubled since 2006. According to the UN, Myanmar now accounts for more than 25 percent of the global area under illegal poppy cultivation, making the country the second-largest producer of illegal opium in the world after Afghanistan.

The vast majority of Myanmar opium is produced by poor farmers in highland areas of Shan State close to the borders with China, Thailand and Laos, which have been affected by decades of conflict between ethnic armed groups and the central government. In 2012, studies conducted by local researchers recorded opium cultivation in 49 out of Shan State’s 55 townships, involving more than 200,000 households.

Drugs play an ambiguous role in Myanmar’s borderlands. Drug abuse has taken far more lives than armed conflict in many communities over the past decade and the growing heroin epidemic across parts of Shan and Kachin states is one of the main drivers of HIV/AIDS in Myanmar.

But the income opium generates for growers provides a way of staving off poverty amid rising food prices and resulting food insecurity, heavy demands for “taxation” from an array of armed groups, and the continued lack of government investment in rural services. They grow poppy because they cannot produce enough food to feed their families throughout the year. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that almost 1 million people in Shan State suffer “severe and chronic food insecurity”, equivalent to almost one in five of the region’s population. The income generated from Myanmar opium enables farmers to buy food and sometimes also to cover the cost of rudimentary healthcare and education. Continue Reading …