APSN | Opium cultivation rises in Myanmar, Laos: UN

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Opium cultivation rises in Myanmar, Laos: UN

Agence France Presse - December 15, 2011

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Opium cultivation has surged in Myanmar and Laos as high prices attract impoverished farmers to grow the illicit crop, particularly in conflict areas, according to a UN report published Thursday.

The study by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), using helicopter, satellite and village surveys, saw a 16 percent increase in the amount of Southeast Asian land sown with poppies in 2011 since just last year.

While cultivation was up 37 percent in Laos since 2010, the vast majority of it takes place in military-dominated Myanmar, the second largest opium poppy grower in the world after Afghanistan.

Some 256,000 households in Myanmar – significantly more than in Afghanistan – are involved in the crop's cultivation, which mostly takes place in northeastern Shan state, the UNODC said.

"What is driving the poppy increase is food insecurity, poverty, conflict that's raging in that part of Myanmar and the high prices that are available for people who wish to cultivate," said the UNODC's regional representative Gary Lewis.

He spoke of "a swirling and often toxic mix of guns, of money and of drugs" in the area, although the UNODC's research found the main reason for the increases in opium cultivation was the need for food.

"It's very rare that I have seen poverty... in a rural setting to the extent that one sees in Shan," Lewis told reporters in Bangkok.

Opium cultivation was also up 27 percent from last year in northern Kachin state, on the China border, where tens of thousands have fled ongoing conflict between the government and armed ethnic groups.

Jason Eligh, the UNODC's Myanmar country manager, welcomed recent developments by the government that could help curb Myanmar's drugs problems including work towards ceasefire agreements with ethnic rebels.

A deal was recently signed between the Shan State Army South and local authorities, and mediators have expressed hopes of other truces. "We hope that this is something that leads to long-term peace," Eligh said of such agreements.

Myanmar has surprised critics with a series of reformist steps in recent months as it attempts to shake off its international pariah status.

Lewis said it was a "particularly opportune time" in its history for the international community to help develop alternatives to poppy cultivation – "an investment for peace and security in border areas of Myanmar".

The estimated value of opium production in Myanmar, Laos and Thailand – the countries where most of the region's cultivation takes place – rose 48 percent in 2011 from last year to $319 million, the UNODC said.

Regional cultivation has doubled since 2006, and the report warned that the picture "grows dimmer" when combined with the fact that amphetamine-type stimulants are also a growing problem in Southeast Asia.

While Laos does not have the conflict issues of Myanmar, there are similarly many areas that have not been reached by efforts to develop alternatives to drug cultivation, said the UNODC's Leik Boonwaat.

"In Laos the main reasons probably would be that farmers still are hungry, they still are poor and they still need a livelihood," he said.