It is market day in Mong Pawk, a sleepy village deep in Burma's Wa Special Region in north-eastern Shan State, on the border with China. The Saturday market is busy with members of the Akha, Lahu, Palaung, Shan, and Wa ethnic minorities, dressed in colorful traditional clothes. Some have traveled long distances to sell their goods.
Many stalls at the market display baskets full of brown, pungent balls, piles of foreign currency, and scales. There are old silver coins from India and rifle bullets that are used as weights - for trading in raw opium.
The opium harvest has just ended and there is keen demand in the market for the brown, sticky substance, which is used to make heroin. The opium sold at the market will end up as heroin in Beijing, Bangkok, Berlin, Tokyo, Sydney, or London.
Burma is the world's second largest producer of opium, after Afghanistan. A joint survey last year by the government's Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) and United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that Shan State accounts for more than 90 percent of Burma's opium crop.
About 60% of the opium produced in Burma goes to China, 30% to Thailand, and 10% within the country.
Efforts to reduce the opium crop are making steady progress. UNODC says poppy cultivation declined by nearly 46% between 1996 and 1999.
Any program aimed at reducing the production of opium - an easily transported commodity which provides growers in remote areas with a better return than any other cash crop - is likely to face challenges. In the Wa Special Region they are formidable because of a combination of factors, including ideal growing conditions in areas that are difficult for officials to reach and a history of groups involved in drug trafficking.
UNODC figures show that the Wa Special Region accounts for 22% of the opium grown in Burma.
Despite the challenges, the leaders of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) - which administers the area under a cease-fire agreement reached with the government in 1989 - are confident of reaching a goal to make the region opium-free by 2005.
"Our strategy is not to stop opium cultivation immediately but gradually reduce it," said Zhao Aik Nup, the chief of the External Relations Bureau in the Wa Politburo. "Our main assistance is from UNODC but the more help we can get the better." Foreigners are welcome, said Zhao Aik Nup.
"We want to engage with the international community," he said. "If representatives from other countries would come to the Wa [region], they might change their views and perceptions. The situation is slowly getting better and better."
Asked what measures will be implemented to make sure that the opium-free target is achieved by 2005, one of the Wa leaders said bluntly: "We ordered it." The powerful Wa authorities do not consider the possibility that their orders may be disobeyed.
Bo Lai Khan, the UWSA's second commander-in-chief, said a lack of understanding is the main reason more international assistance is not available for the opium reduction campaign in the region.
"The outside world considers the Wa as a terrorist organization because our region is related to drugs," Bo Lai Khan said. "They should come here to see with their own eyes. They think the opium farmers are rich, but they are not. The traders and middlemen make the money and they come from over the border."
The low return to opium farmers is clearly evident at Mong Pawk market. The going price for a kilogram of opium earlier this month was between $120 to $130.
"The big money is not made in the fields or in the market. The drug syndicates and middlemen make the money when the opium is refined into heroin," said Giovanni Gallo, the information officer at UNODC's Rangoon office.
It takes 10 kg. of opium to make a kilogram of heroin, for which the going price is $4,000 on the Burmese side of the border. Once it is taken into China, the cost jumps to $40,000.
Even though opium is the main cash crop in the Wa region, and an important income source for those who grow it, the UWSA authorities deny being involved in drug trafficking.
They say their main sources of revenue include a 10% tax on all agricultural crops - which, until 2005, will include opium - and mining and logging concessions granted by the Burmese government.
Although the goal of ridding the Wa region of opium will be challenging, there is already encouraging evidence of progress. Some parts of the region have already been declared opium-free. They are mainly areas where villagers have been relocated and are growing substitute crops or raising animals.
The UNODC says one of the greatest challenges to eradicating opium is changing the mind-set of the growers.
It can take a lot of convincing to persuade farmers that they will be better off by not growing opium, but there are examples which demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach taken by the authorities and the UNODC.
"Simple things like giving a village access to clean water, sanitation, and substitute crops can make a total difference," said Gallo.
An example is a Palaung village, which was once 100% dependent on opium as a cash crop. Gallo said it was one of the poorest villages in the region. The nearest market is a three-hour walk and fetching water involved an hour-long round-trip by foot.
"The start of a UNODC assistance program in July 2002 and the provision of clean water, a latrine system, and a rice bank has dramatically changed the lives of the villagers," said Gallo.
Villagers now grow potatoes, beans, or cabbages. The headman said the alternative crops had helped the village to become more prosperous.
However, poppy fields can still be seen on hillsides near the village.
One of the reasons opium has assumed such an important role in the lives of villagers is its traditional use as a cheap and easily available medicine. It is used to ease the pain of ailments ranging from headaches and colds to cancer and AIDS. Many people who began smoking opium for medicinal purposes became addicts.
They include Na Ha, 83, a Lahu woman who began smoking the drug 40 years ago to relieve pain. Now she needs eight pipes, three times a day - about eight grams daily - to satisfy her craving for opium.
"I don't want to stop because I feel relaxed and it relieves me from pain. My doctor told me that I might die when I stop because I am too old and smoke too much," Na Ha said. "If my husband was still alive, I would kill him because he introduced me to opium."
A UNODC survey of 210 opium addicts in the Mong Kar area in the southern Wa region found that 53% had initially taken the drug for medicinal purposes. Another 20% had begun taking opium to deal with grief, 17% for social reasons, and 10% out of curiosity.
Of 18 addicts in a detoxification center in Mong Pawk, 15 had begun taking opium for medicinal reasons. Of the remaining three, two became addicts after smoking regularly with friends, and one man had sought consolation from the drug after two of his children died.
Although the drug situation remains serious, the authorities in Burma have attracted praise for their efforts to eradicate production and trafficking.
In its 2002 International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports, the US said Burma, whose junta is otherwise not in Washington's good books, had "demonstrated a new commitment to effective counter narcotics measures." The report noted that Burma had "continued its poppy eradication program, initiated actions against drug traffickers and some drug trafficking organizations, drafted new money laundering legislation, and begun to work closely and cooperatively with neighboring and regional countries."
In its war on drugs, the government of Burma cooperates with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, other US agencies involved in poppy surveys, and the Australian Federal Police.
Despite the cooperation with the US, the State Department last year failed to remove Burma from a list of countries regarded as not cooperating with Washington in its attempts to eradicate narcotics.
Pol Col Hkam Awng said he cannot understand why the international community does not want to work directly with Burma in its anti-drug efforts.
"We would welcome them to work at the source," he said. "The Western countries are turning a blind eye to some of the developments we have achieved. People who visit the drug areas appreciate the problems and the situation which we face there. It took Thailand 30 years to get to this level [in eradicating opium] and they had a lot of international assistance. All we want is some recognition."
However, 2005 is still far away. In the meantime, opium will still be traded in the markets of the Wa region. Farmers will still grow opium for a living. Old Na Ha will smoke her pipes, and addicts will continue to spend time in detoxification centers.
More engagement from the international community will help to ensure that the Wa Special Region achieves opium-free status by 2005 - and that it stays that way.
A major concern of the Wa authorities, as well as UNODC, is that production of opium will be replaced by that of Amphetamine Type Stimulants (ATS), including methamphetamines, better known by its Thai name, yaa ba, which means "crazy drug."
"To control the production of yaa ba is almost impossible," said Gallo. "You can easily produce thousands of tablets in your own kitchen - all you need is a tablet-machine, ephedrine, and other chemicals," he said.
Wa authorities say that the chemicals for making yaa ba, and the chemists who make the drug, are brought in from China.
"Our people are uneducated and neither have the money to buy the chemicals nor the techniques to produce yaa ba," a Wa official said.
Police Col. Hkam Awng, joint secretary of the CCDAC, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, said that Burma is making progress in its campaign against illicit drugs.
A total of 34 million amphetamine tablets were seized in 2001, up from five million in 1996.
Seizures dropped to 10 million tablets in 2002, but Pol Col Hkam Aung is cautious about the reasons.
"We cannot say that production went down because of the fall in the amount seized," he said. "We simply do not know how much is produced in Myanmar, but we do know that ephedrine, which is needed to make ATS, is not made locally. All the ephedrine we have seized is from India, China, or Thailand."
A better life tomorrow?
The Wa leadership in its capital Pang San, in the remote Wa region in Burma's Shan State has called for more international assistance to make their region opium free by 2005.
It is not the first time an appeal has been made from the Wa leadership. And it is not the first time their plea is for assistance and understanding to make this remote region free of the curse of opium and by definition its deadly refined by-product we know as heroin.
The plaintive plea from the Wa leadership has not gone unnoticed from the SPDC in Rangoon. For years they have been forthright in their criticism of global policy towards drug eradication in Burma. They have saved their harshest rhetoric for the US whose policy is to constantly ignore the improvements and efforts made by the SPDC to eradicate poppy cultivation despite the fact that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as well as US agencies conducting opium poppy surveys ensure that the SPDC continues to cooperate.
In this poverty and grief-stricken region, where people have to walk days to the market, where running water or electricity is a luxury hardly anyone can afford and where the majority is illiterate, opium cultivation has a century-long tradition.
To ensure that opium cultivation will be stopped by 2005, people have to be provided with alternatives such as substitute crops, animal raising and an environment where they are not dependent on poppy, so thousands of people have to be moved from the remote mountain villages to the fertile flatlands and valleys. Some might call this "forced" relocation; others call it a necessary evil to improve living standards, education and health.
Zhao Wen Guang, member of the Wa Politbureau and chief of the Agricultural Bureau, said: "We have to make sure that the people and the farmers can survive once opium cultivation becomes illegal. That's why we have to move them from the mountains to the valley."
It is unexpected to hear these words from a man who most of his life fought in the jungle and is accused of earning millions from the drug trade - in fact, the only sign of wealth is a gold watch studded with sparkling gem stones.
"We want to provide our people with an opportunity to live a better life by stopping growing opium. In the valley, farmers can grow two crops of rice every year, in the mountains their only choice is to grow opium," he said.
"Most of the people have realized now that they can produce more in the valleys because they are not dependent on growing opium anymore."
Asked about forced relocation, Bo Lai Khan, second commander-in-chief of the United Wa State Army said: "We force no one to move, but people believe that they will have a better life if they move. Now they have to grow opium; they have no sanitation or education or medical facilities; some have to walk a day to fetch water or even more to bring their goods to the market. Everybody who wants to stay is allowed to stay."
He added that most of the relocated villagers have a better life now.
However, Bo Lai Khan admitted that they were facing many unexpected problems.
"We made many mistakes and are still learning. We want to increase the productivity of our country and improve the living conditions of our people, but we need more assistance from the international community."
Hospitality is very important in the Wa culture and while serving their foreign guests and themselves huge quantities of whiskey for breakfast in the capital Pang San, the Wa leadership called for more foreign visitors to come and see the improvements themselves.
"We are convinced that visitors will change their views and perception towards the Was and will understand that relocation is necessary to fulfill our task," they said.
The problems the villagers and the authorities face can be seen in Song Keh, a relocated village in the southern Wa region. Almost 400 villagers were relocated in 1999 from the mountains in northern Wa.
Even though the valley is still poverty stricken and filthy children are everywhere, it now has an irrigation system and an 11.7 kilometer long power line constructed by the Wa State Army and the whole valley is cultivated with rice.
However, it wasn't like that when they moved there. San Kah, a teacher, said that it took three days to move from their former village to the valley and 42 people died while moving - more than 10 percent of the population. Once they arrived they were provided with land, 10 buffalos and rice for six months - but no seeds to cultivate their land.
As a result, the farmers were forced to do what they know best and what they were doing for decades - grow opium.
Giovanni Gallo, program officer for information, press and analysis at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that the Wa authorities did not allow any opium cultivation and sent the army in to eradicate the poppy, leaving the villagers with no income and no hope.
"The relocation policy failed in some ways. The Wa authorities do not understand that they have to provide alternatives to opium to be successful in their goal," Gallo said. "It is as simple as that. If you don't provide alternatives such as seeds to ensure survival in the beginning, people need to grow opium, otherwise they starve."
When UNODC started its program in Song Keh in October 2000, the village was in a state no better than the conditions in the mountains.
"The people were living in dirt, poverty and were starving because they were given no alternative to opium. Today, the village is one of the few which has electricity," Gallo said.
Since then, UNODC has provided the village with 18 tons of rice for consumption and crops. Gallo stressed that it would need more help from the international community as well as a complete mentality change among the Wa leadership to solve the problems in the region.
"The Wa leadership must understand that it is not enough to ban opium and order people to move. Without assistance and a constructive approach, the situation will get worse," Gallo said.
However, despite these problems, villagers are saying that their lives have improved considerably compared to their previous life in the mountains.
The village headman, Aii Sa, said that he does not want to go back to mountains.
"We had less land and less food. Even though we still don't have enough food, it is a lot better than before."
People who gathered around the headman to see the foreign visitors nodded their heads in approval.
He also said that not everybody had to move. Those who wanted to stay were allowed to stay. The Wa leadership asked another family instead.
Wa authorities say 60,000 villagers have already been relocated as part of the program.
The construction of an irrigation canal by UNODC in Mong Kar, Wa Special Region 2 in Shan state was completed in 2003. The project, conducted by UNODC with help from the Wa authorities, will supply water for an area of 97 hectares. The inauguration of the canal will happen later this month and will be attended by Secretary 1, Gen. Khin Nyunt.
To cultivate the land, the Wa leadership wants to move almost 4,000 villagers from the mountains to the Mong Kar valley.
Kya Keh, headman of a Lahu village overlooking Mong Kar valley, is encouraging his people to move down to the valley because he believes people have better opportunities there.
"There is good land, good fertility. If everybody gets a piece of land, everybody will be happy," he said.
Phong Ding, deputy chief of the Agricultural Bureau, in an interview at the canal in Mong Kar, promised that every villager would be given a piece of land to cultivate.