Less than a month from now, Air Force One will be landing in Naypyitaw, carrying the leader of the world’s still most powerful country. One of the prepared reports from his host country is expected to be the government’s present drive against drug production and trafficking.

This is important, because continued decertification in March 2015 mean continued American opposition to loans from multilateral development banks.  Of course, the penalty can still be waived on “national security” grounds, although it is hard to say if Washington will consider Burma’s  strictly neutral foreign policy stance from a positive or negative viewpoint.

During the last two months, Punako and Nampong, two of the most notorious People’s Militia Force (PMF) strongholds have been raided. A consignment of more than 600 blocks of heroin was also seized in Monghsat. In all the three cases, some little known suspects have been detained but all prominent chiefs of the said PMFs (set up by the Burma Army) have been left untouched.

As reported in Bouncing Back: Relapse in the Golden Triangle by Transnational Institute (TNI) last June, quoting Jean-Luc Lemahieu, former representative of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) “there are no angels in this part of the world, but there are no full devils either”.

The report nevertheless points out several design flaws in the government’s 15 (now 20) year master plan to eradicate drugs which was adopted in 1999. “Government officials say that this target (2014) was fixed without much consultation, and are at a loss how to implement it,” it says. “It will never work,” a senior military officer commented, “but carry it out anyway.” As predicted by him, the plan fell far short of achieving its goal and was retargeted to 2019. To date, it is not quite clear either how the government is planning to go about the next 5 years.

One of the problems is the strategy of the military that has created the PMFs to counter the rebels. The Ta Moe Nye PMF in northern Shan State is a case in point:

The Ta Moe Nye Militia in Kutkai Township was formed in the 1960s and supported the government in fighting the CPB (Communist Party of Burma). Its leaders established a close working relationship with the subsequent SPDC chairman Senior General Than Shwe when he was serving as a Tatmadaw officer in northern Shan State, supplying guides and large numbers of mules and horses of army operations. “We never paid them for it, but there was an understanding that they would get something in return”, says a retired army officer who was on active duty in the region at the time. “These militias were involved in opium and heroin production and they sent convoys to Lashio. We let them through, and we knew they were transporting drugs.”

The PMFs, it explains, “are intended to act as buffer between the Tatmadaw and armed ethnic opposition groups, and to deny the latter access to territory, resources and population. Militias are directly under Tatmadaw control and are allowed to do business and to tax the local population and trade passing through their checkpoints. Many of them have become heavily involved in the drug trade, especially in recent years.”

Successive military government’s focus, it concludes, is on managing the problem as opposed to attempting to resolve it.

The results are not surprising:

·       Kokang (in 2002) and Wa (in 2005) successfully banned opium production “mainly because of pressure from the Chinese,” according to a representative of Mongla group. Following the bans, opium cultivation‐and outside investment‐relocated mainly to southern Shan State

·       Crop substitution programs, which involved land grabbing for agricultural investment especially by Chinese companies, further marginalized the poppy growing communities who were forced to depend all the more on poppy cultivation in order to survive

·       Continuing conflict has also created ‘vacuums’ where foreign financiers have taken advantage of. “It is difficult to get rid of the drug trade, because of the strong financial support from (outside sources),” according to a former member of a ceasefire group

·       The involvement of Tatmadaw units and commanders in the drug trade has also been documented

One problem that needs immediate resolution, the report says, is the participation of civil society in discussions on drug policy. This has prompted a CSO member to point out that Burma’s drug issue “is all about us without us.” Indeed, since the drug problem affects everybody, it was time all stakeholders came together to find a solution, instead of wasting time looking for a culprit.

Until then, the United States should continue encouraging all of the stakeholders to work together instead of engaging in a debate whether or not to continue decertifying the country.