The Golden Triangle and its infamous trade may soon be history. Radical changes in local drug policies are sweeping across Burma, banning opium and flattening leafy poppy flowers by the field.
"There will be no more poppies in this region after 2005," says Chairman Bao You Xiang, supreme drug lord and leader of Burma’s Wa Special Region No. 2 in a rare interview in his homeland.
"I once said that I would chop off my head if opium is still produced here after the ban. And I will keep my word."
Burma is the second largest producer of opium in the world after Afghanistan, with the Wa Special Region No. 2 a top supplier. In 2001, the Wa alone was responsible for 30 per cent of the world’s opium, fully supported by Chairman Bao’s United Wa State Army.
Most of the opium is smuggled out of the Southeast Asian country, refined into heroin and used by addicts across the globe. If fully enforced, Chairman Bao’s ban will shrink the world’s supply of heroin and destroy the dangerous trade in Asia’s Golden Triangle, where the borders of Burma, Laos, and Thailand meet.
Critics doubt the chairman will ever give up this million-dollar business, while the United States has put a bounty on his head, accusing him of leading the world’s biggest narcotics army.
Confronted with these allegations, Chairman Bao barely manages a shrug. "I give you my word," he says with a straight face and a heavy gold watch dangling from his wrist.
"Opium is not good for the people. For years I have seen how opium is destroying the Wa. It makes my heart bleed. I will ban it to save my people."
With no other explanations offered, the United Nations still takes the chairman at his word. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is monitoring the country’s opium production closely and has reported positive results.
The poppy fields decreased 18 percent last year in some of his districts where people get help to live without opium. Some 45,000 farmers in the Wa take part in a small UNODC project that helps them earn an alternative income.
But the effort is nowhere near enough. Some two million people across the country live off money made from opium. As subsequent bans are enforced in the coming years, they will all be left in despair as happened in the Kokang Special Region No. 1 last year.
Deprived of their main income, an estimated 60,000 opium farmers left in search of money and food. Health clinics and schools closed, while parents reportedly sent their daughters to brothels in Thailand and sons to join rebel armies just to see them survive.
"We are creating enormous problems here," says Jean-Luc Lemahieu, representative of UNODC in Yangoon. He calls the Kokang hardship "an eye opener" and warns that the struggle will be three times worse when the 400,000 people in the Wa region see the ban enforced in 2005.
"The opium farmers are picking up the bill — there is no one else to do it," he says.
Farmer Kya Va has grown poppies on his sloping fields in the Wa all his life. He lives in a stilted bamboo hut with his wife and four children and depends entirely on a few hundred dollars made from opium each year to feed them.
"I don’t know what to do," he says in a quiet voice as one final harvest separates him from a troubled future. "No opium, no money — I fear that we will all suffer."
Fully aware of the somber prospects for the people, Chairman Bao and the Burmese government still believe that a complete ban of opium is the only way to bring development and international recognition to this rugged corner of the world.
The international community has kept its hands off Burma for years except when using sanctions and diplomatic pressure to try and push the military-government toward democracy.
Now, UNODC is struggling to fund its project in the Wa, which still only covers two per cent of the needs once all the bans are enforced across the country.
"There is an impending humanitarian crisis on hand here because of the cynical attitude in the west," says Lemahieu who believes that donors are well aware of the situation but won’t put their money in the country because they fear criticism.
But if the world refuses to help Burma’s opium farmers, it may lose a historical chance to tackle the drug problem, he warns. "The time clock is ticking," he says. "We need to expand very, very fast."