By Naw Seng

December 16, 2003— Burma’s military government is striving to gain international legitimacy and earn more foreign aid to shore up its ailing economy by launching a drug eradication program in the country, yet the campaign is just a charade according to a report published last week.

"Show Business," an investigative analysis of Rangoon’s ‘war on drugs’ in Shan State published by the Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), concluded, "Only political reform can solve Burma’s problems."

At the end of 2001, the Burmese military government initiated its campaign against opium production in Shan State, aiming to reduce output by 50% in the 2003-2004 opium growing season. According to the report, the junta’s drug campaign selectively targeted northern Shan State, affecting mostly poor farmers in "unprotected areas," which have been subject to mass arrests and extrajudicial killings.

However, the campaign has been careful to avoid poppy plantation areas under the control of ethnic armed groups that have forged ceasefire agreements with the government. It seems that the "crackdown" allows numerous local ethnic militia and ceasefire organizations to produce drugs in exchange for cooperation with the government. Southern and eastern Shan State has hardly been affected at all, the report says.

The report claims that the junta and its allies still run at least 93 heroin and methamphetamine refineries in Shan State, even after some small refineries were burnt down by the junta. It also states that Burmese military personnel are involved in all levels of opium production and trafficking, from providing loans to opium farmers and security for refineries to collecting taxes on opium and storing and transporting heroin.

The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) project in Burma, funded by the United States, Germany, Japan and Italy, is aimed at developing a sustainable approach to changes wrought by the opium ban. The UNODC received US $2.3 million in funding last year from its donor countries, but one of its officers said the program has suffered from a huge funding shortfall, and would need $26 million for the next five-year period.

The UNODC estimated that Burma produced 828 tons of opium last year, a 26% decrease from the previous year. According to official Burmese statistics, opium output last year was 630 tons from 77,700 hectares (191,919 acres) of land.

However, SHAN data collected in Mong Yawng suggested that actual amount of opium cultivation during the 2002-2003 growing seasons was four times higher than claimed by the UNODC survey covering the same period.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the Rangoon representative of the UNODC, said, "My concern is not political gaming, my concern is human beings in this field." The project under the UN office is aimed at ameliorating the effects of the elimination of opium as a crop, but that effort alone is not likely to make up for the loss of opium farmers, who find themselves in great difficulties when they lose their primary income. Opium farmers traditionally depend on opium to make up for a rice deficit and maintain their hard scrabble for existence.

On Dec 26, Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra will visit Yongkha in Southern Shan State to meet Burma’s top generals, including the country’s Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt. The area, under control of the United Wa State Army, has received 20 million baht in funding for a crop substitution program from the Thai government