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| US Soldier in Afghan Poppy Field (File Photo) |
By Tom Fawthrop
Keen to impress the West and get sanctions dropped, Burma is cracking down on opium production. But hundreds of thousands may be left in poverty.
Draped in botanical clouds of red white and blue, the poppy fields that spread across Burma’s remote northern mountains should be an attractive destination for eco-tourists. And they probably would be except for one thing – these poppies are full of opium sap, and the Burmese government has launched a fresh campaign to eradicate the crop.
In the meantime, the mountains are crawling with military, militias and rebel armies. They are battling away in a three-decade civil war between ethnic Shan and WA and government forces that has long been fuelled by the profits gained from opium harvests. Opium traders, heroin laboratories and the government’s militarization of the region, meanwhile, have combined to condemn the indigenous people to decades of impoverishment.
Read the full story at The Diplomat