Burma Drugs

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'Golden Triangle' is a death valley for many
By  Rupa Chinai - Kohima  - The Sunday Times/India
9th March 1997

forwarded by Dawn Star, Euro-Burmanet, Paris
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/drugs/
> Situated next door to the world's largest source of illicitly grown
> opium in Myanmar, India's north - eastern border states provide
> conditions that are ideal for the expansion of the "golden triangle".
> 
> A recent visit to remote mountain outposts on the India - Myanmar border
> reveals in chilling detail how opium and heroin addiction are destroying
> the younger generation of tribals in both the countries.
> 
> Insurgency and political strife, economic and social instability mark
> living conditions on Both sides of the border.  In Myanmar, neglect
> forces the local tribes into a high level of dependence on opium
> cultivation and its trade as a means of survival.  Likewise, India's
> north - eastern border states are emerging as significant conduits in
> the national and international drug trade.
> 
> In both countries, drug abuse and opium addiction, leading to HIV -
> AIDS, have already dealt a crippling blow to the fast diminishing tribal
> populations.  Tragically, neither country appears to have come to grips
> with the gravity of the problem - the growing menace of addiction and
> disease and its consequences for the rest of the population.
> 
> The "golden triangle", which encompasses the fertile opium - growing
> areas of northern Myanmar - the region where the borders of Myanmar,
> Laos and Thailand meet - has produced quality heroin valued highly in
> the international narcotic drugs market at around Rs 2 lakh a kilo.
> 
> The "triangle" is locked within a country that has long closed its doors
> to the outside world.  Ruled by a military dictatorship, SLORC (State
> Law and Order Restoration Council), Myanmar has revealed little about
> its insurgency - ridden, northern tribal territories, where Yangon's
> writ has held no sway.  Drug lords, like the dreaded Khun Sha, have
> controlled fiefdoms in the Kachin and Shan states, where a separatist
> movement has been largely supported by drug money.
> 
> In Mon town, a mountain settlement of the Konyak Nagas in one of the
> remotest parts of the India - Myanmar border, social organisations
> involved in drug rehabilitation estimate that almost 50 per cent of the
> youth are opium addicts or practise some form of drug abuse.  Deprived
> of any from of economic survival and starved of basic health or
> education facilities, the youth are increasingly being driven to take to
> drugs.
> 
> According to the Konyak Mothers' Association, in 1996, 28 of them in Mon
> town died of drug abuse.  In the absence of any medical and HIV -
> testing facilities here, the incidence of HIV - AIDS can only be guessed
> at.  Records of the national AIDS control organisation, however, reveal
> that an alarming proportion of HIV - infected people in Manipur and
> Nagaland have acquired the infection through intravenous drug abuse.
> For small, ethnic populations, such numbers are catastrophic.
> 
> Moreh, another township on the Manipur side of the Indo - Myanmar
> border, along with several other entry points in the state - Ukhrul,
> Churachandpur and Molcham - remains a major route for smuggling refined,
> high - grade white heroin, a derivative of opium.  Police and customs
> officials at the border admit they have no handle on its free flow, but
> estimate that heroin smuggling from here to other Indian points on the
> international drug route is considerable.