Drug-tainted village takes pride in poppy purge
source : SCMP
DANIEL LOVERING of Agence France-Presse in Mong Yawn
Riding in a pick-up truck crowded with fellow soldiers from the United Wa State Army (UWSA), Ni Sa, 25, looks out over a green expanse of rice fields and shakes his head in bewilderment.
"They are only rice fields, no poppies. After 1995 we gave up the poppy," the battalion chief born in Mong Yawn, a village just 3km from the Thai border that has long been considered a hub for regional drug production.
Burma's military Government and the UWSA, a Rangoon-allied ethnic Wa militia, insist that Mong Yawn is free of illicit narcotics, particularly the amphetamines that have flooded the region and outpaced opiates as the drug of choice in recent years. Thailand has accused Mong Yawn of hosting numerous amphetamine factories that supply a booming trade in Thailand, to which an estimated 700 million tablets will be shuttled by traffickers this year.
Accusations over illicit drugs and skirmishing among ethnic militias along the rugged border region recently touched off a bitter row between the countries. In February, fighting between the Wa and the rival Shan State Army, said to be backed by the Thai military, prompted the first clash in years between the two traditional enemies.Since then the neighbours have traded barbs over who is responsible for the heroin and methamphetamine factories that flourish along the ill-defined mountainous border. In the latest dispute, Burmese and UWSA officials say a Thai F-16 fighter jet fired two rockets near Mong Yawn late last week, wounding several of their troops. Thailand claims the jet was flying surveillance and merely triggered a sonic boom.
Mong Yawn in Burma's Shan state was once a stronghold of drug lord Khun Sa - who surrendered to the Burmese junta in 1996 - and an acknowledged centre for poppy cultivation. But Burma and the UWSA, who invited journalists and delegates from six Asian countries to visit the dusty border town following a UN-sponsored narcotics control meeting in Rangoon last week, say times have changed. UWSA special commander Khimmaung Myint said Mong Yawn was simply a fast-developing village with new hydro-electric plants and brick buildings springing up by the day, evidence of the Wa's new prosperity from legal businesses, crop-substitution programmes and government concessions.
"We are determined to develop this area from a small village to a city . . . we have brick buildings where there had been small huts before," said commander Khimmaung. "Thailand is claiming these constructions are for the purpose of creating amphetamines. That's like hate propaganda."
The Wa commander, Burmese army officers and heavily armed Wa soldiers on Saturday guided delegates from Cambodia, China, Laos,Burma itself, Thailand and Vietnam and journalists through the town to "see for yourselves" the reputed dark heart of Mong Yawn. In a carefully orchestrated tour, visitors were taken to a freshly installed hydroelectric plant that officials said Thailand had incorrectly identified from satellite pictures as one of 38 amphetamine factories in the area. Fruit plantations, rice storehouses and a pig farm were other enterprises that officials said demonstrated that the Wa - the first insurgent minority to sign a peace pact with the Burmese junta, in 1989 - were no longerdependent on narcotics for their income.
"We don't want to fight any more, but if the Thais try to say all the Wa race are involved in this drug business and this place is still seen as the drug production area . . . we will defend ourselves to the last man," the Wa commander said. Before 1996, drug trafficking was a reality in MongYawn. "It is undeniable that some actions related to drug trafficking had taken place in this area. Some of our people are suffering from this drug menace," he said. "But the Wa people in the area will take a pledge before you and the international community that they will not be involved in drug activities," said Khimmaung. He claimed that a contingent of Wa loyal to Khun Sa, and known as the Wa National Army, had broken away and were responsible for any trafficking and production today.
Mong Yawn's streets are lined with crisp concrete and brick buildings as well as scaffolded construction sites, all standing under the unflinching watch of youthful UWSA troops brandishing automatic rifles and rocket launchers. Many of the Wa in Mong Yawn are ethnic Chinese, and Burmese officials claim the income that has subsidised the large-scale development in the village has come from natural resource concessions near China. "Their primary source of income is from government concessions on timber, minerals, precious stones - particularly rubies - and jade," Lieutenant-Colonel Kyaw Thein said.
The very fact that access was granted to the mysterious town alleged to be a wellspring of illicit narcotics is a change. "We had closed our doors in order to develop this area . . . But now our policy has changed because we understand that if we don't explain things to people they will think this and that," said commander Khimmaung.