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Yangon out to prove there's smoke w (r)
- Subject: Yangon out to prove there's smoke w (r)
- From: ausgeo@xxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 17:51:00
Subject: Yangon out to prove there's smoke without fire in the heroin trade
Asia Times News
Yangon out to prove there's smoke without fire in the heroin trade
Stephen Brookes, Rangoon, 3rd June 1997
Rising out of the dust like a pink and gold hallucination, Burma's new Museum
of Narcotic Drugs loomed above the crowd of soldiers, politicians, ambassadors
and journalists as Khin Nyunt - one of the top leaders of the ruling State Law
and Order Restoration Council - took the podium.
"It is a well known fact," he said, "that in, Burma the SLORC and the whole
populace residing in the border areas have wholeheartedly committed themselves
to eradicate the narcotics drugs problem. However, some Western countries who
turn a blind eye to our successful efforts in this regard are still unfairly
accusing Burma by disseminating untrue reports and exaggerated news."
The April 22 museum opening in northeastern Shan state was part of a broad
counterattack by SLORC against charges that it was not cooperating in the
fight against drugs - and, according to some United States officials, is even
involved in the trade itself, from trafficking to money-laundering.
"Burmese authorities have made no discernible efforts to improve their
performance," senior US narcotics official Robert Gelbard stated last
November. "From a hardheaded, drug-control point of view, I have to conclude
that SLORC has been part of the problem, not the solution."
In May, US Secretary of State Madelaine Albright took up the fight, saying
drug money had penetrated all reaches of society and traffickers were becoming
"leading lights" in Myanmar. "Drug money is so pervasive in the Burmese
economy that it taints legitimate investment," she warned.
And in April, journalists Leslie Kean and Dennis Bernstein wrote in the Boston
Globe: "Burma is swiftly becoming a full-fledged narco-dictatorship, with all
aspects of the government either heavily influenced by or directly
incorporated into the burgeoning drug trade."
Is there really a "narco-dictatorship" in Myanmar, reaping riches on the backs
of American junkies? Drug experts in Myanmar have said that was nonsense - and
argued that SLORC was being made the scapegoat for America's failed war on
drugs.
"The State Department says that opium production has doubled since SLORC came
to power in 1988, therefore SLORC is responsible," one Western official in
Yangon said.
"But that's a phony argument. The key factor in 1988 was that the US
decertified Burma and stopped its drug assistance. The US was providing about
80 percent of the funding for fighting drugs, so naturally when that money
dried up, opium production increased. But rather than admit their error, the
US is blaming SLORC. It's a witch hunt."
Other drug enforcement officials agree. "The Burmese were extremely
cooperative with US law enforcement during the time I was there," said Barry
Broman, who spent two years at the US embassy before retiring last year. "They
provided major assistance. The problem was the limited amount of assistance we
could give the Burmese."
Broman, who spent several decades investigating the narcotics trade in
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before being posted to Myanmar in 1994,
is one of America's most knowledgeable experts on the complex world of Asian
drug trafficking.
"There are a lot of accusations that SLORC is involved in narcotics, but no
one's produced any evidence - so where's the smoking gun?" he said, during a
recent trip to Yangon. "In my experience, the trade is not institutional in
Burma. That's not to say that people aren't profiting - there's indirect
profiting from the narcotics trade. But across the border, you find Thai
politicians and generals in bed with the traffickers. That's not the case
here."
But critics like Albright point to the new role that former drug lords like Lo
Hsing Han and Khun Sa are allegedly playing in the Myanmar economy. SLORC's
refusal to extradite Khun Sa to the US, they said, is proof of its complicity
in the drug trade.
But Broman takes a different view. "On their own, the Burmese effected the
capture of Khun Sa," he said. "They made a major dent in the drug trade, and
we gave them no credit. The human rights people say they cut a sweetheart
deal, but I don't believe that. In the US, we call it a plea bargain. And in
this case, justice was served, because Khun Sa is out of the drug business.
And that means 12,000 armed men [soldiers in Khun Sa's army] are no longer in
the drug business."
Moreover, said Broman, it's unlikely that Khun Sa is as rich as many people
assume. "It's a mistake to think of him as a megabucks guy, like the Columbian
cocaine lords," he said.
"With cocaine, you have cartels that control everything from the coca fields
to the dealers in New York, so the profits are huge," he explained. "But
unlike cocaine, heroin changes hands many times before it gets to the buyer.
Khun Sa would buy the opium from producers, then process it and sell it to a
politician or a general in Thailand, who would sell it to someone else in Hong
Kong or Vancouver. The big profit is all outside Asia."
Myanmar government officials also discount the idea of drug lords as the new
economic kingpins. When asked how much money Khun Sa was pumping into the
economy, one officer from the Defense Ministry just laughed. "They cost us
money!" he said. "We have to support all those former Mong Tai army soldiers.
After Khun Sa surrendered, they were on their own - we gave them money and
resettled them. We don't want to fight them anymore, so we have to find
something else for them to do."
What the Western critics fail to understand, a number of diplomats and drug
officials say in Yangon, is that the opium-producing areas are controlled not
by SLORC, but by armed ethnic insurgent groups along the border like the Wa,
the Kokan and the Shan.
SLORC is primarily interested in exerting political control over these areas,
so has had to come to political settlements with the insurgent groups who have
traditionally funded themselves with drug profits. "These guys were shooting
Burmese for a living," said Broman. "The drug profits buy bullets that kill
Burmese soldiers. So it's in the Burmese interest to control drugs."
But to get rid of the existing opium economy and replace it with something
new, time is needed. "The US wants an instant solution to the problem, but
that's not realistic," said one drug expert in Yangon.
Is Myanmar's anti-narcotic campaign real, or just an exercise in public
relations? Broman and others have said it's real, and is now getting
encouragement from an unexpected source.
"The Chinese are putting pressure on Burma," he said. "China has a growing
addiction problem, and they've told the Burmese they want them to get a handle
on it. China and the US both have the same message," he added, "but the
Chinese are doing a lot more in terms of helping."