Daniel Pedersen

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TNI-BCN Burma policy briefing No. 5
February 2011

Following the shake-up of Burmese politics last year, the country’s military leaders now face the challenge of introducing a new system while ethnic tensions and exclusions remain.

Burma remains a land in ethnic crisis and political transition. In 2010 the military State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) laid out the landscape for a new era of parliamentary government. In 2011 the authorities face the challenge of introducing the new political system. Ethnic divisions and political exclusions, however, are emerging in national politics, threatening a new cycle of impasse and conflict.
A critical moment is approaching. A new political system is being introduced, and progressive decisions can yet be made. But uncertainty is increasing. Will the new government be the SPDC in new guise or will it be a platform from which ethnic peace and multi-party democracy can truly spread? The stakes could not be higher. The decisions made by Burma’s leaders in the coming year could well decide the country’s future for a generation Ethnic Politics in Burma: The Time for Solutions. Burma Policy Briefing Nr 5

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Restaurant bombing kills two

Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sot

Burma’s Myawaddy has again become an urban theatre of war, with two people killed in a bomb blast on Wednesday night near the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge.

And witnesses said throughout the day on Tuesday they had heard sporadic gunfire from the Rim Moei Market, nestled on the riverbank directly opposite Myawaddy.

The Burmese frontier trading town became famous overnight on election day – November 7 – when soldiers of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army revolted against their Burma Army overseers, sparking pitched battles in the town’s streets.

Since then, the situation has deteriorated along the border as the junta’s troops seek retribution.

There are more than 10,000 refugees spread along both sides of the Moei River, human minesweepers are being driven ahead of Burma Army troops and hostilities are regularly spilling onto the Thai side.

Said a Thai military intelligence officer: “They’re [both Karen and Burmese troops] using Thailand like a guesthouse.”

Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, has ordered its army to embark on a major offensive to secure the border area in a concerted effort to open it up for trade.

The Burma Army has introduced 110mm GPS-guided cannons to the border area and is regularly plying ethnic army-held areas with as many as 200 120mm mortars a day.

It is firepower the ethnic armies of this region cannot match and significant base camps have fallen like dominoes in recent weeks.

Landmines, the main defensive apparatus used to protect their villages, have been detonated by mortar and cannon fire.

To protect themselves against landmines that have not been detonated by heavy artillery, the Burma Army imported 600 prisoners taken from state-run jails to walk in front of them, essentially as mine fodder.

Some sustained serious injury and were hospitalised in Thailand, their stories were corroborated by three escapees who fled across the border.

Soldiers of the ethnic armies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, have been left on the run, sleeping rough in the bush with few supplies.

The DKBA has so far borne the brunt of the Burma Army’s latest offensive.

Until the ruling junta’s November 7 election, the DKBA and the Burma Army had been considered allies.

But a revolt on that day by elements of the DKBA resulted in heavy fighting in the Burmese border town of Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot in Thailand.

The ensuing onslaught in areas to the south of Mae Sot could be viewed as the Burma Army looking to teach its former ally a lesson.

But things have not gone so well for the Burma Army and it has still not managed to wrest control of the contested areas, according to interviews with former soldiers conducted by the Karen Human Rights Group.

One 17-year-old Burma Army deserter told KHRG: “Our camp was attacked and the ones who got injured the most were us, but the DKBA soldiers did not get injured a lot.

“There were around 500 to 600 soldiers when we started operations but the total soldiers who died by landmines or got shot were over 200,” he said.

He fled the fighting to save his life, he said.

evidence of crimes against humanity in Burma’s Chin State

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evidence of crimes against humanity in Burma’s Chin State

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Karen National Liberation Army 'Black' Special Forces commander Htoo Htoo lets a 60mm mortar rip towards a Burma Army base camp in an area known as Maw Kee, close to the Thai border. The State Peace and Development Council base camp has been besieged for weeks now, the soldiers forced to live underground.

Snipers have make on Burma Army base camps

Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sot

Combined ethnic Karen armies have besieged three Burma Army base camps near the Thai-Burma border to the south of Mae Sot.

The camps – at Toh Kyo, K’ne Ley and Maw Kee – are the government’s closest footprint to the Thai border in this mountainous region.

More than 160 soldiers of Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, are pinned down, living underground, not daring to raise their heads for fear of attracting fire.

The Burma Army soldiers constitute the main body of government troops that once controlled the border with its former ally, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which was employed as a forward fighting force.

The DKBA mutinied on November 7, the day of Burma’s much-maligned election, taking control of strategic points in the frontier trading town of Myawaddy.

Fighting persisted for two days before the DKBA pulled out.

Since then the DKBA has rejoined forces with the revolutionary Karen National Liberation Army, which has been fighting for an independent Karen state since 1949.

The two Karen factions first split in 1994.

The Burma Army base camps now besieged are on high ground, from where SPDC soldiers once commanded a comfortable bird’s-eye view as they directed their Karen allies during firefights.

But the wet season is now finished in this part of South East Asia and high ground is a liability, because streams fed by steady rains since June have dried up.

Now the Burma Army soldiers must make their own way down from hillside bunkers to access permanent water, making themselves vulnerable in the process.

The combined Karen forces have laid land mines and set Claymore booby traps on pathways leading to the creeks and their snipers maintain a silent, camouflaged vigil waiting for a chance to hit their enemies.

Drinking water for mere survival takes precedence over sanitary conditions and the SPDC troops now have not been able to wash for almost a month.

“Now they are really under attack,” said one KNLA “Black” Special Forces soldier.

“They’ve got a base camp at the top of the hill and the bottom of the hill is surrounded, we have snipers with .308 calibre rifles and telescopic sights at 600 yards, 300 yards and much closer, maybe not even 200 yards,” he said.

“They’re [the SPDC] spending most of their time underground.”

The base camps have formidable bunkers dug deep into what is now dry, rock-hard clay and the tops are armoured with hardwood logs.

Karen soldiers said foliage was very dense around the camps and it was difficult to see anything.

Nevertheless, on Saturday the SPDC soldiers were forced out of their bunkers in search of water.

They used M-79 grenade launchers to clear a path through landmines to gather drinking water.

One of the Karen snipers said, because of the dense foliage, night time had become an ally.

“Any time they turn on a light they get shot at.

“One guy lit a cigarette, he was shot, I don’t know whether I killed him or not, but the lights went out and the cigarette went down – that was from 600 yards,” the sniper said.

He also wounded another soldier in the leg at 1068 yards.

“I’m using a .308 Remington model 700 with a mid-range Bushnell scope, a 24-power variable magnification adjustable scope,” he said.

“So after that, they moved most of their troops to the other side [of the hilltop], mainly to get away from the snipers and a Chinese-made .50 calibre machine gun we’re using, but then on the other side we hit them with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and 60mm mortars,” he said.

Their position, on the whole, was “not very good” he said, “really not good.”

“They’ve been on the radio begging for recruits to back them up, but they have been refused because three base camps in the area are all under attack.”

Other soldiers said there had been some return fire.

“There’s been some .50 calibre machine gun fire and some 81mm mortars but they haven’t come in on target,” he said.

“They really just don’t know what they’re shooting at.”

The Maw Kee base camp is the largest of the three under attack, home to between 80 and 100 men.

A little further north at K’ne Ley about 50 to 80 Burma Army soldiers are pinned down and “the only place they walk is back and forth in their holes”.

The most northern, and smallest, of the besieged government camps is Toh Kyo.

There too, the SPDC troops are stuck underground, with snipers at 800m, 400m and 200m

Ba Wa, the KNLA’s chief medic for the region, who has 15 medics at 10 different locations in the area, said the water supply to Toh Kyo had been surrounded with Claymore mines and land mines and snipers were laying in wait.

On Monday afternoon Ba Wa was at war with his mobile phone in Mae Sot.

Reports were constantly being called in about an ambush at Wa Shu Pu, between the Karen villages of K’ne Ley and Wah Lay.

A Burma Army unit of about 25 men was in the thick of a Claymore ambush and excited medics were calling their commanding officer to update him.

Terminating a final call before leaving town he said: “I’ve heard five [SPDC troops] injured by rifle fire and one has suffered a land mine injury, but it’s impossible to really know how many have been wounded because it’s still going on,” he said at about 2pm.

Ba Wa said his medics had been monitoring Burma Army radio transmissions and the men caught in the ambush had been reinforcements trying to sneak into Maw Kee.

The reinforcements didn’t get within a day’s walk of that besieged base camp.

Karen National Liberation Army 'Black' Special Forces commander-in-chief Colonel Nerdah Mya surveys the besieged Burma Army camp. By night a mere suggestion of light attracts sniper fire into the bunkers they are trapped in - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK

A young Karen soldier shoulders an M16 as he listens for the radio call to move forwards - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

Soldiers of the Karen National Liberation Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, now fighting together after more than 15 years divided, pile into a truck after being re-supplied with M-79 grenades on Sunday (DEC 19, 2010) - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

A Karen National Liberation Army soldier stands ready to deploy another rocket-propelled grenade at the besieged Burma Army base camp near Maw Kee, close to the Thai-Burma border - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

Karen National Liberation Army 'Black' Special Forces commander-in-chief Colonel Nerdah Mya leads his men to a new position below the besieged Burma Army base camp - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

The Courier Mail
Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot
Sporadic heavy shelling by the Burma Army to the west, north and south of Mae Sot, on the Thai-Burma border has tens of thousands of people on the run, displaced from their homes.
Intense fighting broke out between ethnic armies and the Burma Army on November 7, the day of an election that entrenched the military junta in the governing process.
The ongoing mortar attacks close to Mae Sot mark the latest onslaught against ethnic Karen soldiers who have been fighting Burma’s ruling military regime since 1949.
But casualties among ethnic fighters have been light and civilians are suffering most.
Since the ruling military junta’s November 7 poll, widely regarded as a sham by the West and by the Burmese people themselves, there has been fighting somewhere within 100km of the Thai border town of Mae Sot every day.
Fighting has also spread into Shan State in the north and refugees are spilling into Thailand from Three Pagodas Pass to Fang, north of Mae Hong Son, a stretch of border more than 1,000km.
People are also slipping over the Chinese border.
The Burma Army generally takes high ground as far as 5km away from its target and fires its opening mortar salvoes at about dawn.
On election day, ethnic Karen fighters seized strategic targets in the town of Myawaddy, across the Moei River and 4km from Mae Sot.
On that day 20,000 people spilled across the river into Thailand, with local Thais handing out food and water to the refugees bought with money from their own pockets.
Since then the fighting has moved about 40km south to the villages of Phallu and Wah Lay, and to the north of Mae La refugee camp, about 70km from Mae Sot.
The southern fighting has produced another 3,000 refugees, in the north several hundred have fled but more are expected to arrive within days.
The Thai Army has been “encouraging” people to return as soon as fighting subsides, but often the refugees find themselves back in Thailand within 24 hours.
But it is getting harder for them to convince Thai authorities to allow them to cross.
Exact numbers of people who have returned safely are difficult to ascertain, even for agencies charged with helping refugees, because after they have been evicted from Thailand once, people on the run mostly cross the border out of sight of Thai authorities so they are not sent back again.
An aid worker on the border said there was no doubt everyone would have preferred to stay at home had there been no fighting, but left because they feared for their lives.
Those with homes close to the border have an easier choice than those deep inside Burma.
Critically, it is rice harvest time and often people with farms close to the border are sneaking back into Burma during the day to harvest as much rice as possible then lugging it back to their Thai dislocation sites before nightfall.
There are no certainties for refugees fleeing fighting deep in the jungle.
Do they lose their crops intended to sustain them for the next 12 months, or do they possibly lose their lives staying nearby in the hope the fighting will pass them by and they can harvest their food?
Across Burma all of the ethnic armies are readying themselves for battle.
The Shan State Army, thought to be about 10,000 strong, is taking on new recruits and the Burma Army has responded by moving 50 truckloads of weapons into their area.
Troops and truckloads of equipment are also being moved into a position near the border with China to the north of the largest and most-heavily armed ethnic army, the United Wa State Army.
Also on the China border, a Burma Army ceasefire more than 15 years old has broken down with the Kachin Independence Organisation and the KIO says it expects attacks to begin soon.
All of the ethnics groups have pledged to back each other up in the face of Burma Army offensives.
Combined they constitute an army of at least 50,000.
ENDS

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot

The great danger the violence that threatens to spiral out of control in Burma’s post-election period is that it will be painted by the ruling military junta as ethnic groups fighting one another.
And public perception is a keystone in how modern wars are dealt with at an international level.
At the moment intense fighting in Karen State, north of the military and administrative capital Naypidaw, is pushing tens of thousands of people across the border into Thailand.
It seems likely to spread across the country.
Burma’s ethnic peoples are little understood by the West.
And the Western propensity to link the nation’s future with that of Aung San Suu Kyi is a failing.
The world’s press, it seems, has a problem explaining myriad ethnicities existing together in a nation state cobbled together by an occupying colonial force long gone.
Its reticence to delve into Burma’s diversity is baffling.
One of the higher-profile news pieces to attract recent headlines is the fact the newly-elected parliamentarians’ right to speak has been stifled before parliament has even convened.
On Saturday December 4, it was reported that Burma was undergoing political change according to United Nations envoy to Burma, Vijay Nambiar.
But in fact, what Nambiar said was gradual political change might begin as newly-elected politicians vacated the seats they have not yet formally occupied.
“Government formation is taking place. I think there will be new spaces, new slots in the parliament which will open up for by-elections,” he said.
Nambiar added that this might provide “small opportunities for increasing the political space for a broader, inclusive involvement”.
It is a fact that the ethnics control and inhabit most of Burma’s countryside.
They live together and work together, mostly in Burma with the common aim to grow enough food to sustain them and collectively survive as peoples.
In different regions they have substantially different cultures, languages, national songs, flags and beliefs.
But they are not at war with each other and they are not at war with the Burman ethnic majority.
Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, is at war with its own population.
Aung San Suu Kyi is undoubtedly important to Burma’s future, but there is a future no matter the role in which she finds herself cast.
The “ethnic minorities”, as they are so often referred to, have democratic processes to elect their leaders.
In some cases their elected leaders represent as many as seven million people.
While Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest, the ethnic leaders have been talking to each other.
In fact significant dialogue has been underway since 2001.
All are keen to speak with Suu Kyi, to let her know their intentions, but their decisions taken in unison representing the people who elected them to positions of such responsibility will not be swayed by a single person.
That is not how a democracy operates.
The Karen National Union vice president David Tharckabaw says the Western media’s preoccupation with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is “interesting”.
“There’s sort of a messianic complex developed about her,” he said.
“It’s as if, if she dies, democracy will come more quickly – and it won’t.
“Too much of a personality cult is not good for anyone,” said Tharckabaw.
“It is not good for her, not good for the movement,” he said.
“But I don’t want what I am saying to be misinterpreted, and I can see that it could,” he added.
“I believe she has sacrificed and suffered long enough and with the junta still having no respect for her, well, it’s not working,” said Tharckabaw.
“I personally believe (and he insisted he was not speaking on behalf of any of the organisations he represents) that she should ‘come out’.
“I think she would be more effective if she came outside,” he said.
The prospect of Aung San Suu Kyi leaving Burma would probably horrify many activists in the West.
But they do not have to weather years devoid of social contact and an inability to take action against what is perceived as a great injustice to a great many people.
“She should put herself above politics,” said Tharckabaw.
He said by doing so she could become far more powerful, making herself a figure of great unity for the peoples of Burma.
“She could travel and she could speak about democracy,” he said.
ENDS

Health and human rights in Eastern Burma

This report summarises the data of a population-based survey which was undertaken to assess the health and human rights situation across parts of four states and two divisions that comprise the eastern states of Burma as a whole. A former survey was performed in 2004, the results of which were published in the report Chronic Emergency, which focused mainly on conflict zones within Karen, Karenni, and Mon States. This report builds upon the methodology of and issues dealt with in Chronic Emergency, and covers a much larger geographic area, including southern Shan State and Tenasserim Division. In addition, this survey covers a wider range of political and conflict contexts throughout eastern Burma, ranging from areas of ongoing low-level conflict, to areas of fluctuating control and others controlled by armed ethnic groups which have a ceasefire agreement with Burma’s military regime

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National Democratic Front

Statement Nr. – 0/06/Head-10

1. The NDF has earnestly welcome and supported recommendation to the UN by its Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Burma (Myanmar), Mr. Tomás Ojea Quintana, to form a Commission of Inquiry (COI) for crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated by the SPDC military clique. The NDF is ready to cooperate fully with such a UN COI.

2. According to the policy of the SPDC, troops of the SPDC armed forces have been committing gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity daily in all places of Burma. They have been committing such crimes as extra-judicial executions, torture, destruction of the people’s homes, confiscation of their properties, rape of women, forced recruitment of children for the armed forces, forced labor etc. in violation of the domestic and the international laws.

3. The NDF, its fraternal organizations and human rights NGOs have been submitting reports on human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by the SPDC and its troops, with supporting evidence, to the UN Human Rights Commission, yearly and the UNGA has yearly urged the SPDC for improvement of human rights conditions in the country. However, the SPDC military clique has totally ignored the UNGA resolutions and continues to commit gross human rights violations, especially in areas of the ethnic nationalities.

4. Accordingly, it is necessary for the UN to form a COI as a step for taking effective action to improve human rights conditions in Burma. The NDF and its fraternal organizations have fully cooperated with the international and human rights org

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By DVB

Remnants of a burned village in Karen state: Photo - Burma Matters Now.

Footage has been released that shows the shocking aftermath of a recent scorched earth campaign by the Burmese army in eastern Karen state.

More than 900 people escaped into the surrounding jungle after the village of Dutado (or Tha Dah Der) in Hpapun district came under artillery fire on 23 July. A member of the Thailand-based Back Pack Health Worker Team was shot dead by troops, and the village was razed to the ground. Eye-witness reports said that the artillery fire lasted for around four hours.

The Burmese army left the village the following afternoon as the ruins of some 70 houses, a school and a church were left smouldering. A report released today by the Free Burma Rangers medical group said that “the troops occupied the village through the next day, burning, looting and killing livestock.”

Landmines had reportedly been laid to prevent anyone from returning, a tactic often used to assume indirect control over an area. Karen state is littered with landmines laid by both the Burmese army and armed opposition groups.

Graphic images have also been released of a similar incident that happened on 22 March this year in Nyaunglebin district of Bago division, which borders Hpapun. Villagers from Hoh Lu had been returning from a nearby village, when they encountered a number of Burmese troops from an army base close to Hoh Lu.

The troops opened fire, killing a five-month-old boy and another five-year-old. The mother of one of the children managed to escape. Specific details of the incident and the reasons for the killings remain unclear, but Karen civilians are regularly accused of collaborating with armed rebel groups in the border region, much of which is a shoot-to-kill zone.

Karen state has hosted one of the world’s longest-running civil wars as the Karen National Union (KNU) and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), vie for autonomy from the ruling junta. More than six decades of low-intensity conflict has forced millions from their homes, while villages are regularly burnt to the ground by the Burmese army.

The 12,000-strong KNLA’s wide support base in Karen state means that the Burmese army often exploits a perceived blurred line between civilian and KNLA collaborator, leading to incidents such as these where innocent children are killed. Junta chief Than Shwe, who has presided over Burma’s estimated 500,000-strong army, is now facing calls to be investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

DVB

Mizzima News Special Report
Friday, 06 August 2010

By Perry Santanachote

(2 of 3)

Military culture: a paradigm shift

In 2003 Aung Min was riding high on drug “taxes” collected from traffickers that crossed into his command area, but one day he arrested and executed 15 traffickers, seized their heroin and sold it on the Chinese black market for 200 million Kyats (US $200,000), 20 times more than he would make in a year of tax collecting.

An opium poppy sticks out among others in this field outside the village of Lowi Soi, on the Lwe San Sone Range in Burma’s Northern Shan State, close to the Chinese border, in January 2000, when Burmese authorities took Interpol delegates and journalists to see the results of its anti-opium campaign. Critics now call the 15-year drug eradication campaign that started in 1999 a sham aimed at attracting UN and NGO aid for development the junta should be carrying out itself. Photo: AFP

Military intelligence investigated Aung Min shortly after the incident when his foot soldiers were seen suddenly adorned in gold jewellery and he had made a considerable transaction to his mother in the middle of Burma’s banking crisis that had left several banks bankrupt and the Kyat inflated beyond repair. That red flag landed him 15 years in prison. However, the crime he committed was not really the problem; it was the spectacle that got him in trouble.

“Military officers’ involvement in drug trafficking is very common, particularly in Shan State. Even the killing,” said an ex-army captain and friend of Aung Min. “It’s rare that they are arrested. Aung Min was inexperienced so he didn’t know how to be low-profile.”

The former officer divulged Aung Min’s story on condition of anonymity. He left the army last year after 10 years of service and now lives across the border in northern Thailand. He went through three years of officer intake with Aung Min and said they were close friends. The last time they saw each other was on October 7, 2002.

“He was very honest – a simple man,” he said. “I was surprised when I found out. I think it was due to the environment because he was assigned to this area and this kind of bribing, taking money, dealing drugs – this might have changed him.”

Many Burmese soldiers survive on revenues collected from extortion fees because their salaries are meagre and the government has cut off their rations. Today, a private earns about 16,000 Kyats a month, a sergeant earns 35,000 to 40,000 Kyats, while a major general earns 800,000 Kyats.

“The army capacity is also declining: the fighting capacity, military capacity, administration capacity, organising capacity. It’s all due to mismanagement,” he said. “While at the top level they’re getting more benefits and becoming wealthier.”

The ex-army captain explained that battalions had been cut down, but they still had the same amount of work. Faced with the challenge, they had to get creative and make deals with traffickers instead of trying to fight them.

“We can’t fight Karen rebels with 120 soldiers. It’s like 120 people with the duties of 500,” he said.

In 2005, headquarters ordered him to set fire to 180 homes in a Karen village in Kanasoepin Village, Thandaung Township.

“My superiors asked the villagers to forcibly relocate to a designated area. They wanted to control them and destroy the village so they couldn’t communicate with rebels,” he said. “I had to get an agreement with the village head to set up three houses only, document and report to regional command. This way it’d be win-win.”

In this incidence, “win-win” was not bribery, it was security. He only had 18 soldiers with him that day, in an area he referred to as “the black area” where Karen rebels are active.

“If we burned down the village, the Karen rebels would have attacked us,” he said. At that point, he realised he wanted out of the army. “I didn’t want to live with that stress anymore – to deal with that anymore.”

He said there were no official orders to bribe opium farmers or traffickers, but that it had become a major component of military culture. Everyone takes bribes and the money goes all the way up the chain until it eventually reaches Senior General Than Shwe. Officers stress that discretion is key because of the military’s appearance of reform. If a soldier’s actions threaten to expose their role in the drug trade, he will suffer the same fate as Aung Min.

Aung Min’s story illustrates the military’s deep involvement in the drug trade – a complete contradiction to the image it has projected to the world.

Appearances deceptive

A favoured tactic of the regime in its delusive fight against drugs is the highly publicised heroin eradication programme, which the ex-officer explained is set up.

There would be orders from the regional command centre to cut off poppy at a plantation, he said. The authorities would call the farmers and village leader before heading out and telling them to prepare the crop. Upon arrival the farmers would show the soldiers the unusable poppy plants, made so by the plants’ inability to produce the seeds required to make heroin. The soldiers would slash these and leave the good ones intact. Then they would document the eradication with photographs and bonfires. Afterwards, the soldiers collect 10 million Kyats from the village head. This process is repeated every three months.

The Palaung Women’s Organisation (PWO), an NGO based in Mae Sot, Thailand, found in its 2009 report, Poisoned Hills, that only 11 per cent of poppy fields had been destroyed the previous season, mostly in areas visible to the UN’s satellite monitors. The police reports they obtained claimed that 25 per cent of fields were destroyed.

More “taxes” are collected in the trafficking process too. The ex-army captain explained that regional commanders communicate with ceasefire group leaders and issue passes to place on the narcotics cargo trucks so that they are exempt from searches at checkpoints. There are 13 regional commanders throughout the state. About three of them: the Eastern, the Northeastern and Triangle commanders are active in the drug trade. Prime Minister Thein Sein is a prime example of the power these regional commanders hold, as he was the Triangle Regional Commander in 2001 and dealt with Shan warlords on a regular basis before his promotion in 2007.

‘Politically correct’ drug trade

“In my 10 years in the army there’s been an increase in drugs, trafficking, bribes and this kind of involvement,” said the ex-army captain.

The escalation in drug activities is partly caused by the growing number of militia and ceasefire groups.

“Before the army got an agreement with the ceasefire groups they fought against the rebels and weren’t involved in drug trafficking because they were not friends, they were enemies,” said the former captain. “After the ceasefire they had to get money from them for sustainability.”

Today there is an estimated 17 ceasefire agreements with the country’s ethnic rebel groups. The number of active militia groups is unknown, but the SHAN received junta documents that revealed 396 in the Northeastern command alone. In the run up to this year’s election, the military has increased pressure on ceasefire groups to join its Border Guard Force. Those that concede and support the junta’s political ambitions are awarded with military support in their drug activities. SHAN editor Khun Seng said that the junta party needs canvassers that have influence in their respective communities.

“Those who are most influential are involved in the drug trade, especially the militia leaders,” he said. “These people will take advantage of the situation.”

Khun Seng said that as an extra incentive, each militia group was now assigned an operational area where they could do whatever they want without disruption.

“If you are ‘politically correct’, you can do anything in Burma,” he said.

As an example he described this year’s Armed Forces Day in Burma.

“The commander [Colonel Khin Maung Soe] in Tachilek spoke on the sidelines to the militia leaders, ‘This is your golden opportunity. My only advice is that you send your products across the border, but not on this [Burma’s] side’,” Khun Seng said.

PWO’s investigation corroborated SHAN’s accounts that more drugs were indeed coming out of militia-run areas. It reported that opium cultivation increased over 200 per cent in Mantong and Namkham townships in Shan State, both areas controlled by the government. During the 2008-2009 season, the acreage found by PWO for only these two townships, out of the total 23 townships in Northern Shan State, was nearly three times (4,545 hectares) the total recorded by UNODC for all 23 townships combined. The UNODC reported a 100 per cent increase in that same time period in all of Northern Shan State, from 800 hectares to 1,600 hectares.

Both SHAN and PWO have criticised the UNODC’s methodology, which relies on data reported by the junta’s (State Peace and Development Council, SPDC) eradication reports and satellite imagery without proper verification.

The ONCB in Thailand also acquires its Burma drug data from the SPDC.

“For the most part we exchange data with them with good communication and understanding,” Pornthep said. “There has been no lying on their part and their data can be backed up. For instance, the figures for poppy cultivation are the same as the UNODC, the US and China.

“We never meet with the NGOs in Burma,” he added. “We only communicate with the government and narcotic police.”

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 1

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 2

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 3

Mizzima News Special Report
Friday, 06 August 2010

By Perry Santanachote

(3 of 3)

Seizures mean little

Khun Seng also disputed a statement in the UNODC World Drug Report that attributed the increase in methamphetimine production to ethnic insurgencies in Shan State readying to fight the SPDC by selling more drugs to purchase arms.

“The Kokang and Wa are producing at the normal rate, no more, no less. The increase is due to the involvement of the militia groups, he said. “Now with the Wa and Kokang, these people can produce but they can’t transport without the co-operation of the militia groups. If they do it by themselves they are caught.”

A Burmese soldier walks between opium flowers while destroying poppies in January 2000 in the Lwe San Sone Range. Junta soldiers and villagers destroyed acres of plantations in Shan State, one of the world’s largest opium-growing areas, as part of a broader campaign started in 1999 by the junta to eradicate the narcotics trade in the country. Eleven years on, drug lords continue to operate with impunity and the Burmese Army remains closely involved in the lucrative opium economy, using it as leverage against ethnic ceasefire armies. Photo: AFP

Which explains the number of seized drugs in Burma. UNODC Regional Representative Gary Lewis stated at the release of the 2010 World Drug Report in Bangkok, that 23 million methamphetamine pills were seized in Burma last year, from one million in 2008. Lewis said the numbers likely reflect a surge in production, rather than crime prevention.

Khun Seng agreed that more seizures meant more production, but said that was only part of the picture. The military was particular about where the seizures came from. That is, when the seizures were not fabricated. Militia-produced drugs almost always made it across the border, he said.

The Kokang, a ceasefire group well known for drug production and trafficking along the Sino-Burmese border, were recently attacked by the SPDC for their refusal to join the Border Guard Force and all their drugs were seized. The regime long turned a blind eye to the Kokang’s drug operations and even publicised the area as a “drug-free zone” after its eradication campaign, but in August last year, this all changed and the regime announced a massive seizure of drugs in the Kokang area, while driving more than 37,000 refugees into China.

Several large shipments of methamphetamine, believed to have originated from the United Wa State Army (UWSA), were also recently seized in Tachilek near the Thailand border.

“Seizures are irrelevant and are made only when the authorities want to put pressure on, for instance, the UWSA, for political and security reasons,” Lintner said.

The UWSA, armed with 30,000 soldiers, is the largest ceasefire group to reject the junta’s proposal to become part of the Border Guard Force and the military has turned up the heat as the election approaches. Much of the seized drugs last year are believed to have come from the Kokang and Wa – seizures that would never have happened in the past.

“Proceeds from the drug trade were always a major source of income for several rebel armies in Burma, before and after the ceasefires,” Lintner said. “But the Burmese government and the UNODC chose to turn a blind eye to the traffic as long as the ceasefire groups were on good terms with the government. Now, when some of the ceasefire armies are resisting the government’s demands that they transform their respective armies into Border Guard Forces, they are suddenly being accused of trading in drugs, which they have always done.”

Even with the drastic surge in methamphetamine seizures, the World Drug Report noted that seizures continued to remain very low in Burma. Despite being the second-largest producer of heroin in the world, only one per cent of worldwide heroin interception was seized in Burma in 2008. Similarly, of the 32 million tablets seized in East and Southeast Asia in 2008, only about three per cent, or 1.1 million, were seized in Burma.

The report also states that the number of tablets and the amount precursor chemicals seized in Burma jumped last year, when the SPDC entered by force parts of north and eastern Shan State not under their control.

The new political order

The new drug economy that the SPDC has built in Burma will only worsen as the regime’s crusade for power and control intensifies in the run-up to the election. Lintner anticipates the drug trade will eclipse what was seen in the 1990s.

“In 1990, only opium was produced, and the derivative heroin,” he said. “The production increased dramatically in the 1990s, and now is back to what it was 20 years ago. Plus methamphetamines, which were unknown in the Burmese sector of the Golden Triangle 20 years ago.”

In 1997, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright knew all too well where Burma’s drug trade would lead when she aptly stated, “Drug traffickers who once spent their days leading mule trains down jungle tracks are now leading lights in Burma’s new market economy and leading figures in its new political order.”

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 1

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 2

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 3