Day: June 27, 2023

Drug production and usage is on the rise in Myanmar in the aftermath of the military coup, ethnic rebel groups and activists said Monday, as countries around the world observed International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The growth in Myanmar’s drug market in the more than two years since the Feb. 1, 2021, takeover is directly correlated with what observers have described as a precipitous decline in rule of law in the country amid the junta’s poor governance, the groups said.

On Monday, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, said it had destroyed 900 million kyats (US$430,000) worth of drugs seized in northern Myanmar’s Shan state from 2018 to 2023, to mark the annual U.N. day to combat drug abuse and the illegal drug trade.

The rebel group said the haul included nearly 160 kilograms (350 pounds) of opium, 57 kilograms (125 pounds) of heroin, and more than 3.4 million methamphetamine pills known as “yaba.” 

Armed conflict between the military and the ethnic Restoration Council of Shan State / Shan State Army, or RCSS/SSA, following a junta offensive in the region prevented the TNLA from destroying the drugs until this year, it said.

TNLA spokesperson Lt. Col. Mai Aik Kyaw told RFA Burmese that drug production and abuse in Myanmar largely takes place in areas “with junta troops or a police presence, where the rule of law is said [by the regime] to ‘prevail.”

“The drug trade has increased since the military coup,” he said. “We sometimes have to go into towns to seize drugs [because the junta isn’t effectively policing the trade].”

In addition to cracking down on drug trafficking in Shan, the TNLA has also had to make up for the junta’s failure to promote drug rehabilitation programs in the state, Mai Aik Kyaw said.

Military involvement?

But the TNLA spokesperson alleged that the increase in drug trafficking and abuse isn’t merely a result of willful ignorance on the part of the junta.

He said that some of the drugs in Shan are being produced by militia forces directly under the junta, such as the Pyu Saw Htee, to fund food and salaries for their fighters.

The RCSS/SSA also reported holding drug awareness activities on Monday to mark International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. It said in a statement that since 2022 it had seized nearly 460,000 MDMA, or ecstasy, pills and 975 kilograms (2,150 pounds) of methamphetamine known as “ice.”

Ethnic rebels also reported seeing a growth in drug production and abuse, but said they have been unable to address it because they are too busy fighting junta troops amid a military offensive.

Thant Suem Mont, chairman of the anti-junta Chin Defence Force, or CDF, said that eradication efforts in Chin state under the deposed civilian government had abruptly ended with the military takeover, putting the onus on his rebel group to fight the trade.

But he added that poppy cultivation “will have to be dealt with later” because the CDF does not have the resources to combat both the trade and the junta.

“Poppy production has increased since the military coup,” he said, with cultivation “almost doubled” over the same period.

‘It’s as if the sellers have licenses’

Shan and neighboring Kachin state have long been centers for illicit drug production. 

Following China’s 1912 revolution that brought about the end of the Qing Dynasty, the country’s new government prohibited opium production, prompting a wave of Chinese opium poppy growers to relocate to the remote regions across the border in Myanmar. 

The opium trade thrived in Shan and Kachin, in part due to lax regulation in Myanmar, until a total ban on the drug’s use and production was introduced in the mid-1970s.

But anti-narcotics activists told RFA that they have seen a substantial uptick in the drug trade across Myanmar since the coup, with abuse spreading from the country’s urban to its rural areas. Increased production has driven down prices, they said, with one pill of yaba costing as little as 350 kyats (17 U.S. cents) and a gram of heroin only 5,000 kyats ($2.40).

Tin Maung Thein, a resident of Magway region’s Kyaukme township who has worked in drug prevention for more than 30 years, said that since the takeover “drugs have become the best goods to trade” in Myanmar amid a breakdown in the rule of law.

“It’s as if the sellers have licenses,” he said. “[Addressing this issue] is the answer to the drug crisis … [and] that’s why I am very worried about the future.”

The junta appears to at least acknowledge that the drug trade is a problem in Myanmar.

On Monday, junta Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Soe Htut said in a statement marking International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking that while the regime has made arrests, “there has been no decrease in illegal drug trafficking” in the country.

The junta did not make a show of burning seized drugs in observance of the day, as it has in previous years, but pro-junta media reported that authorities had destroyed 1.2 trillion kyats (US$572,000) worth of illicit drugs in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and Taunggyi.

Reports said that the junta had seized US$462 million worth of drugs – including heroin, opium, ecstasy, ice, marijuana, and opium byproducts – in 2021, and US$534 million worth in 2022. They said that the value of drugs seized by the junta in 2023 had reached nearly US$180 million as of May.

UNODC report

A report issued in late March by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, found that opium poppy cultivation had increased significantly in Shan, Kachin, Kayah, and Chin states in the more than two years since the military coup.

It said Shan state was the largest producer of opium poppies in the country by far, with 39%, while Chin was responsible for 14% of production, and Kayah and Kachin produced 11% and 3%, respectively.

Since the coup, poppy cultivation in Myanmar’s mountainous areas has increased by more than 100,000 acres, the report said. Potential yield from such an increase is equivalent to 790 tons of refined opium, it said, or an 88% growth over production prior to the takeover.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

The slowing of Myanmar military defections to the National Unity Government (NUG) since 2022 challenges the opposition theory of victory based on hollowing out the junta army as an effective fighting force, spread too thinly across too many fronts. The Myanmar military’s most important victory to date may not have been on the battlefield, but in the barracks, having staved off mass defections. 

Cracks have recently emerged, however, as the Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF) announced that its two battalions had defected to the NUG. The border guard forces on the country’s eastern frontier with Thailand had been integrated into the Myanmar military for more than a decade.

Though small with only a few hundred men, it is the first Border Guard Force (BGF) to defect en masse. And while it is one of dozens of BGFs, which are in no way a monolithic force, the reasons for their defection may be shared more widely across the multi-ethnic country of 55 million people.

The Border Guard Forces

Border Guard Forces emerged as the Myanmar military reached ceasefires with various ethnic resistance organizations that had been fighting the central government for decades. This accelerated during the National Ceasefire Agreement process, during which 10 ethnic armies signed a pact with the military in 2015. The military sought to divide the different ethnic armies and buy off individual commanders with promises of local autonomy, control over lucrative cross-border trade and more control over special economic zones. 

The most notorious example of these zones is the gambling hub of Shwe Kokko in eastern Kayin state.

In 1994, a group broke away from the Karen National Union/Liberation Army (KNLA), establishing themselves as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. In 2009-2010, they became the Kayin State Border Guard Force, under the leadership of Colonel Saw Chit Thu, and formally integrated into Myanmar’s military.

Under the agreement, Saw Chit Thu was allowed to develop the area. Enter a Chinese national, with Cambodian citizenship, She Zhijiang, whose Yatai International Holdings pledged to invest $15 billion in Shwe Kokko, starting in 2017. 

Yatai New City is nothing but a hub of gambling, human and drug trafficking, and on-line scam centers. An ex-BGF colonel, Saw Min Min Oo, is one of directors of Myanmar Yatai, the local partner. Another key player is Chit Lin Myaing Co., ostensibly the corporate holding company of Saw Chit Thu’s Border Guard Force.

In December 2020, the military raided Shwe Kokko, but when the government tried to oust Saw Chit Thu in January 2021 some 7,000 border guards threatened to resign in protest, forcing a government rethink. The government quickly reappointed him and Saw Chit Thu became an important military ally following their seizure of power on Feb. 1,  2021. 

Since then, Shwe Kokko has grown, with rents paid to the State Administrative Council (SAC), as the junta formally calls itself. Thailand arrested She Zhijiang in August 2022 at China’s request and will soon extradite him, but business continues. Under pressure from China, Thai authorities briefly turned off the power to Shwe Kokko and other SEZs in June 2023. 

Border Guard Forces have done much of the front-line duty against the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the cost of doing business with the junta. In April 2023, there was intense fighting near Shwe Kokko, which caused a large refugee exodus into Thailand. 

Though the junta’s border guards suffered heavy casualties, they were supported by the Myanmar Air Force, which eventually pushed the KNLA back; the KNLA and allied People’s Defence Force militias suffered their own heavy losses. 

Since the coup, casinos and scam centers, funded by Chinese transnational criminal enterprises, have proliferated along the border, under the protection of Naypyidaw-backed BGFs. They are an important financial lifeline for the economically beleaguered junta, whose sources of revenue have dwindled due to their economic mismanagement.

The Karenni patchwork

Like elsewhere in Myanmar’s border regions, the political tapestries are complex and there are a multiplicity of actors in Kayah state. 

The Karenni National Progressive Party immediately joined with the NUG following the February 2021 coup and has actively fought against junta forces. They have worked with the Karen Nationalities Defense Force that was established following the coup as an umbrella for local people’s defense forces in Kayah State and southern Shan State.

The KNPLF was one of the 2015 National Ceasefire Agreement parties, formally integrated into the military as the Karenni Border Guards Force.

Despite being on the junta’s side, the KNPLF has been attacked by the Myanmar military. On 24 December 2021, over 100 members of the 66th Light Infantry Division massacred and incinerated the bodies of some 40 civilians, including two aid workers from Save the Children, in Hpruso. When the KNPLF tried to intervene and secure the release of detained civilians, the military killed four of their members. In early 2023, the KNPLF refused to attend a ceasefire meeting in the capital Naypyitaw. 

Unlike other BGFs, the KNPLF control no special economic zone. As such their defection is not a financial loss for the junta. With fewer financial incentives than the border guards in Shwe Kokko and other areas, the KNPLF has been less willing to fight on behalf of the junta or be used as cannon fodder.

Fighting in the Karenni region has subsided in relative terms, according to the think tanks IISS and ACLED. And there may be a reason for the decline in violence: The various Karenni forces have routed the military in recent engagements. In reply, the military has increased air attacks; some 108 in Kayah state in April, alone. There’s been at least at least two since the defection, with more expected.

And yet, it is a loss and one more piece of the border that the junta no longer controls, between the Karen region and Shan State, adjacent to Thailand’s Mae Hong Son and close to Naypyitaw. 

While numerically small, the KNPLF immediately joined in military operations against the junta, which had tried to seize their headquarters in Mese township. Several military outposts near Mese fell over this past weekend, and there are reports that Light Infantry Battalion 430 surrendered, with some 100 troops. If so, it would be the largest surrender to date. 

Finally, on June 12, a group of ethnic armies and opposition militias established the Karenni State Interim Executive Council, the first revolutionary state government established. The KNPLF’s defection helps to maintain political solidarity.

Contagion unlikely

Every Border Guard Force is their own organization, with their own political and economic motivations to maintain their alliance with the junta. 

The BGFs who control the special economic zones in Shwe Kokko, KK Park, and Kokang still have a financial incentive to stay loyal to the junta. Many fear the more puritanical ethnic armies, which are vehemently against the gambling and human trafficking that goes on within the economic zones and might not countenance being under the NUG umbrella. 

And given the fighting that has transpired between some BGFs and ethnic armies, the latter may not be too willing to embrace their formal rivals. Spread thin, the junta needs the border guards now more than ever, which gives them additional leverage over Naypyitaw.

A contagion is unlikely, but the first BGF to defect represents a crack. As the junta fails to provide other BGFs with materiel or air support, while milking them for funds and using them as fodder, some groups may take note. 

To that end, it’s imperative that the NUG handle this well, integrating the defecting Karenni forces and accommodating their leadership. After all, the theory of victory is based on the man-by-man, unit-by-unit hollowing out the junta’s forces.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.