Opium-free Wa: A costly sacrifice

UWSA soldiers in Wa capital Panghsang//Don Pathan

However, the lack of sustainable alternative livelihoods for ex-opium farmers has caused growing social problems. With opium continuing to flourish in other areas of Shan State directly under Burma Army control, Wa people are increasingly questioning the ban.

"Everything is getting worse. People are desperate for food and clothes. They are complaining more and more. They want to know why there was an opium ban in the Wa area when there was no ban in other places."

The words of 60-year-old Ai Nap, a former opium grower from Pangyang township, reflect the growing dissatisfaction among hundreds of thousands of Wa farmers forced into hardship by the opium ban enforced two years ago in the 6,000 square-mile Wa ceasefire territory along the Sino-Burma border.

Under pressure from China and the Burmese regime, and with their leaders indicted by the US for drug trafficking, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) has stringently imposed the ban throughout its northern territories since June 2005. Famously, UWSA Chairman Bao Youxiang swore to forfeit his head if poppies were found after the deadline.

"They just called village headmen for meetings and warned them of the ban without any explanation, reason or questions. They just said those found planting opium would be punished or even put to death," explained a Shan trader from the Wa capital, Panghsang.

The sudden imposition of the ban without ensuring that sustainable alternative livelihoods were in place has been devastating for local farmers, who have subsisted on opium cultivation for generations.

"The plan was put to work too fast, and the people were not ready," said a local employee of an international development NGO working in the Wa area. "The number of people who don't have enough rice to eat are about 75% of the population."

Wa farmers have traditionally relied on income from their opium harvest to supplement their meager upland rice crops. Opium has the advantage that it can be grown in the same field season after season, while rice fields have to be shifted. There is also a guaranteed market, with local and Chinese traders willing to pay in advance for opium crops.

"Now we just plant highland rice and corn and sell to nearby villages," said Ai Nap. "But the income can't be compared with growing opium. Opium brings four to five times more income than rice. Growing rice is not enough to make a living. There is not even enough rice to eat." 

Ai Nap has been surviving by selling off his livestock. Others have been cutting down trees to sell as firewood, or selling forest products such as orchids, but these resources are fast being depleted.

China and the UN World Food Program (WFP) have been providing emergency food assistance to the Wa population, estimated at over 400,000. However, Wa officials claim this aid is fulfilling only a tenth of the real needs.China 's most recent shipment in October 2006 of 10,000 tons of rice to Panghsang was distributed at the rate of 20 cups per person, barely sufficient for two weeks.

The WFP has targeted 100,000 people in the Wa area for assistance since 2004. However, local people complain about the amount and quality of rice provided by the UN agency.

"It was just like a token," said Ai Nap. "People got only 10 cups per person. Some distant places only got 8 cups per person. They also had to pay for transport, and some people who went to get the rice for us also took a little. We got only once. We don't like the rice they gave. Chinese rice is better in quality than the Burmese rice that WFP gave. The Burmese rice is very hard. It is said to be from old stock of years ago."

While the UWSA has been touting its rubber plantation projects as an alternative livelihood for opium farmers, so far these only exist in limited areas, close to the main towns. A dozen or so Chinese companies have invested in the plantations, with the raw product destined for export to China.

The companies are offering employment to local labourers, at the rate of 20 yuan (US$2.50) a day for clearing land for the plantations, and the promise of 60% of profits once the trees produce rubber. However, local farmers are wary that their land will be encroached upon and that they will receive no benefit.

Near Ai Nap's village, west of the town of Pangyang, a Chinese company has been staking out about 1,000 acres for rubber plantations, including land that the villagers had intended to plant with other crops. "We won't agree to it," he said emphatically. "We don't know which company these laopans (Chinese bosses) are from. They just came to talk with the Headquarters (at Panghsang) and then started the work near our village."

The farmers have good reason to fear becoming reliant on the Chinese markets. Further east along the Sino-Burma border in the "drug-free" areas of Special Region #4, another ceasefire leader Sai Luen invested tens of millions of yuan in sugar cane plantations, allegedly as an opium substitution crop, to sell to China . When the price of sugar fell, the farmers made huge losses, and Sai Luen had to convert the sugar mill he had built into a coal-fired power station.

It is not only the local ethnic leaders who are guilty of "top-down" decision-making in crop substitution projects. A UNODC project to start tea plantations prior to the opium ban in their pilot project areas of Mong Bawk and Mong Ka "failed with a big loss," according to a local development worker interviewed in late 2006.

"They got some Chinese technical advisers to work on the project, but it didn't work out," he explained. "The villagers didn't have ownership and didn't want to do it. The UN distributed plant saplings and chemical fertilizers but all failed."

With little access to alternative agricultural livelihoods in their hill villages, the majority of young people are choosing to migrate elsewhere to try and survive. This mirrors the migration that took place in the Kokang areas in northern Shan State , following an opium ban in 2003 which forced up to a third of the population to leave the region.

As a Wa officer from Panghsang explained: "We can see big changes now. People have been moving to other places in search of jobs. Some came to Panghsang to find work. Some have gone to China."

Apart from construction work in the towns, the main jobs available are as labourers in the timber trade and in the mining industry. Young Wa men are now commonly seen loading and unloading teak and other hardwood along the Salween River and on roads around Panghsarng. Despite the Chinese ban on cross-border exports of timber from Burma between March 2006 and May 2007, logs have continued to be shipped north from the UWSA's concession areas in northern, southern and central Shan State.

Young men have also been finding work in antimony mines in the Wa areas of Mongmai and Mongpawk, as well as in gem mining areas such as Monghsu, west of the Salween . The harsh conditions in the mines commonly lead to drug addiction. "All miners use amphetamines. Chinese bosses give drugs to the workers so they will work harder and not feel sleepy," said Sai On, a Shan trader who has traveled extensively in mining communities in northern Shan State.

Not only the men, but also young Wa women have been migrating and are now working as sex workers on both sides of the Wa-Chinese border. Local people claim that prior to three years ago, it was extremely rare to find a Wa female sex workers. Now a Chinese website is even advertising their services as follows: "Most Wa men have their guns and most Wa girls have their bodies."

The risk behaviour of these newly mobile populations is sparking fears of increased HIV/AIDS transmission among Wa communities, whose isolated mountainous existence had formerly largely spared them from the epidemic.

The UNODC has repeatedly warned that opium eradication without food security and alternative livelihood programs for opium farmers may lead to a "humanitarian disaster" in Burma.

While this scenario does indeed appear to be unfolding in the Wa territories, what is most embittering for Wa farmers is that surrounding areas of Shan State are facing no such stringent opium bans. Poppies are still being grown freely in nearby Burma Army-controlled areas, such as Panglong to the north and Tangyan to the west.   In fact, since the UWSA ban, hundreds of Wa farmers have migrated to these areas to continue growing opium.

"Many people went to the west of the Salween under the protection of the (pro-regime) Lahu people's militia. Some went south to Mor Fa, to grow opium free and unhindered, under the protection of the Burma Army," explained Aik Nap.

With such areas strictly off limits to foreigners, the regime can continue discreetly sustaining its troops and their allies on profits from the opium trade, while gaining international credit from the much-publicized drug ban in the Wa area.

Meanwhile, the hardship being suffered by the Wa people is no political loss for the regime. Since 2005 they have been upping pressure on the ceasefire armies to surrender their arms. A dwindling, impoverished Wa population fits neatly into the regime's plans to force the UWSA to disarm.

Thus, while the junta is benefiting nicely from the Wa opium ban, the prospects of genuine drug eradication in Burma remain dim.

Last June, a year after the ban, UWSA vice-chairman Xiao Minliang reiterated his group's commitment to maintaining their "supreme sacrifice" of opium eradication. The tragedy for hundreds of thousands of Wa farmers is that the sacrifice appears to have been in vain.

Khueunsai Jaiyen is the director of the Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N)

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