The International Herald Tribune - UN reports more opium coming from Myanmar

The International Herald Tribune - UN reports more opium coming from Myanmar
By Thomas Fuller
Published: February 2, 2009

BANGKOK: Opium poppy cultivation inched up by 3 percent last year in Myanmar, according to a United Nations report released Monday, the second consecutive annual increase that appears to signal a reversal of years of declining opium production in the so-called Golden Triangle.

"Containment of the problem is under threat," Gary Lewis, the representative for East Asia of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said at a news conference Monday. "Opium prices are rising in this region," he said. "It's going to be an incentive for farmers to plant more."

The Golden Triangle, the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet, once produced two-thirds of the world's opium, most of it refined into heroin. But pressure by the Chinese government to eradicate opium in Myanmar helped lead to steep declines, with a low point of 21,500 hectares, or 53,000 acres, of poppies planted in Myanmar in 2006.

Since then, opium cultivation has bounced back by around 33 percent, to 28,500 hectares last year.

UN officials warn that the global economic crisis may fuel an increase in poppy production because falling prices for other crops may persuade farmers to switch to opium.
Leik Boonwaat, the representative in Laos for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said corn prices had fallen by half over the past year. The price of opium, by contrast, has increased 26 percent in Laos and 15 percent in Myanmar over the same period.

Farmers in the isolated highlands of the Golden Triangle are also hampered by bad roads and difficulties getting their crops to market. They often find that small parcels of opium are easier to carry across the rough terrain.

Although opium is still grown in parts of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, UN officials say that about 94 percent of the region's opium comes from Myanmar. Most of the Golden Triangle heroin is sold within the region, Boonwaat said, but small amounts also reach the United States and Australia. Recent seizures of heroin thought to come from the Golden Triangle have been made on the Thai resort island of Phuket, Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon, Myanmar's commercial capital.

The alarming spread of HIV by heroin users in southern China several years ago persuaded the Chinese authorities to crack down on opium and heroin trafficking. Western intelligence officials say Chinese spies are active in anti-narcotics operations in Myanmar, especially in northern areas where central government control is weak.

"There's strong collaboration with Chinese intelligence," Boonwaat said.

The UN report on opium poppy cultivation is based on surveys taken from helicopters and on the ground. The United States relies more heavily on satellite images to calculate opium cultivation, and its reports are sometimes at odds with those of the United Nations.

The UN report did not cover methamphetamine production and distribution, which among some criminal syndicates has displaced opium and heroin in the region.

In Thailand, methamphetamines remain a problem but longstanding efforts by the royal family to substitute opium production with vegetables, coffee and macadamia nuts have virtually wiped out opium production among the northern hill tribes.

Afghanistan remains the world's premier source of opium, producing more than 90 percent of global supply.

Afghan soil is also remarkably more fertile than the rocky, unirrigated opium fields in the Golden Triangle. The UN estimates in its 2008 report that one hectare of land yielded an average of 14.4 kilograms, or 31.7 pounds, of opium in Myanmar but 48.8 kilograms in Afghanistan.