One of the latest dark-humor observations emerging from Myanmar is a sense of pride in the country being a world leader at least in one metric: opium production. Number one in the world again! The release of this year’s annual United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Opium Survey again ranks Myanmar as the leading opium cultivator in the world, way ahead of Afghanistan. However, the scale of the market declined slightly in the past year from its dramatic upward trend of the past few years.
The new survey was launched at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) on Thursday by Masood Karimipour, the UNODC regional director, and research officer Inshik Sim. It showed that opium cultivation had declined by 4 percent from 2023, from 47,100 hectares to 45,200 hectares. Partly reflecting the nature of instability in Myanmar, opium cultivation declined slightly in Northern Shan but increased by 10% in eastern Shan State where there has been almost no armed conflict since the 2021 coup. The yield of Myanmar poppies also slightly declined by 4 percent, from 22.9 kilograms per hectare to 22, but this comes after an unprecedented surge in yield sizes over the past several years, partly due to upgrades in opium cultivation techniques from rain-fed slopes to irrigation systems.
But what has dramatically changed is the drop in the overall value of the opium economy. The gross value of opium dropped 36-40% in 2024, from (US$ millions) 998-2,460 the previous year to 589-1,570. “Overall, the opium economy generated less revenue for farmers and comprised a smaller portion of the national economy in 2024 relative to the year before,” the report notes. This suggests that while there is a broader international undersupply of heroin and opium, there is an Asian regional oversupply, hence the price drop. The dramatic drop in Afghanistan cultivation in 2022 is still being felt in global supply chains, even though domestic cultivation rose there by 19%, it is still a very low 12,800 hectares, down from its 2022 figure of 232,000. These dynamics, as well as a longer perspective on cultivation in both countries, signal the need for more careful analysis of the opium trade, and not wild conjecture.
How has the junta’s State Administration Council (SAC) reacted? The amount of opium eradication by officials as estimated by the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) was 2,502 hectares. Assuming this figure is approaching some semblance of accuracy, it’s rather a dismal showing. In other words, neither the SAC nor the UNODC are having much real impact on the opium economy or the broader drugs trade at all. This should ideally tap the analytical brakes of the hyperventilating crisis-commentators who predicted a mafia dystopia in Myanmar and an explosion of heroin exports. Even opium is impacted by basic supply and demand. However, the opium economy has to be placed into the broader drug market, domestic and for export. Inside Myanmar there are widespread cheap methamphetamines, known as ya ba, sophisticated crystal methamphetamines (mostly, but not always) for regional distribution, plus growing rates of ketamine use, and new drugs on the market such as “happy water” (a cocktail of MDMA, methamphetamine, diazepam, caffeine, tramadol and ketamine mixed with water or other drinks) and rising use in KTV nightclubs in urban areas. Internationally, Myanmar has been a major manufacturer and exporter of crystal methamphetamines for over a decade, although Mexican cartels are making increasing inroads into Asia and the Pacific.
Who is behind it all?
In attendance at the UNODC report launch was the distinguished anthropologist David Feingold, who first walked into the Shan hills to research opium in 1964. He commended the “clear presentation” and remarked that, “when I went back to the earliest incarnation of this report, this report has improved over the years.” The reports have indeed become more technically proficient than those of 20 years ago. But the glaring obvious gap is who is to blame. Feingold then posed an obvious question: “(I)n the past, there were a number of Myanmar army units that were directly involved in the transport of drugs. And there were a number of other units that were involved in the taxing of drugs. Now, to what extent is that continuing today?” Inshik Sim responded in measured fashion, saying “the situation is more complicated now, but what you observed in the past probably still remains.”
Masood Karimipour pointed at the Dec. 12 press conference to “increasingly complex dynamics between armed groups in Myanmar that are active, including areas where opium cultivation is going on, and we don’t really have sufficient visibility to assign roles or responsibility to one named party or the other and they fall on different factions. And so it’s difficult for us to get into that kind of speculation. What we can do is confine ourselves to what we can verify. And what’s in the report is what we’ve been able to verify using methodology (as presented). Suffice it to say it’s more or less lawless, many areas where cultivation is going on, and there are multiple parties benefiting from the cultivation, including some armed groups.”
The report also included some interesting details on “control” and cultivation. “Government control was found to be a protective factor against involvement with poppy at the village level. While 82% of non-poppy-involved villages report government control, only 70% of poppy-involved villages are under such control. The remaining villages mentioned most often insurgents or militia groups as being in control.” This is oddly worded, even for the UN. But one way it could be read is that 70% of poppy-involved villages are under government control. Leaving aside that the SAC are not a government, let alone a legitimate one, this is a stunning admission. Is Karimipour suggesting that 70% of ‘government controlled villages’ are “lawless?”
Looking at where opium cultivation increased in the country, and without any real conflict such as in the north, it’s not that difficult to determine which armed groups operate in eastern Shan State. Probably the biggest is called the Triangle Military Command of the Myanmar army, based in Kengtung. You literally can’t miss it, it’s almost at the center of town and controls thousands of soldiers, though its ranks are likely depleted from having to send troops to shore up conflict areas around the country. However, just like military commands elsewhere in Myanmar, it has a major network of bases along the border and on strategic hilltops, a few of which probably overlook poppy-strewn slopes. There is also a phenomenon well known in military circles called patrolling, where units of soldiers walk around looking for the enemy. In other words, the largest armed force in eastern Shan State probably has a fairly good idea where the opium is being grown.
Probably even militarily stronger are the combined forces of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and their allies the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) or the Mong La Group, which stretch down to southern Shan State, and control large swatches of the area including Tachilek. Next comes the Eastern/Kengtung Front of the Shan State Army-South/Restoration Council of Shan State which has bases along the border and operates through most of eastern Shan State. There hasn’t been much open armed conflict between all of these groups since 2002, but heavy militarization persists and the area is still a major transit zone for narcotics flows.
Then at the bottom of the chain are People’s Militia Forces, or Pyithu Sit. While the inner workings of militias in Shan State are murky, their general disposition, command structures and, above all, loyalty has been well documented: they are part of the Myanmar army. UNODC could have easily asked an intern to ‘LMGTFY’ and would have quite quickly come across a neat article from the Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) called ‘People’s Militia Forces: Myanmar Military’s ‘Invisible Hand’ from March of 2024. Helpfully, it lists the major groups: 32 in northern Shan State and 11 in southern Shan State. In eastern Shan State, there are eight militias stationed in “Mong Yawng, Mong Hai, Nam Pong, Mong Koe, Mong Ton, Mong Phyak, Pu Na Ko and Lahu Group(s).” It’s inconceivable the UNODC wouldn’t be able to determine all of this unless they are evading the political and security realities that underpin the opium economy and conflict in Myanmar.
Take the map on page 12 of the report, and look at the Very High Density opium cluster north-east of Taunngyi. As anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the Myanmar military would know, this area is between the Eastern Regional Military Command and the Central Eastern Military Command at Kho Lam. The commander of Eastern Command in Taunngyi up until August 2022 was Lieutenant General Ni Lin Aung, who then served as Central Eastern Commander until July 2023, when he was appointed Deputy Minister for Home Affairs and head of the Myanmar Police Force until August this year when he returned to military duties. All during a period when opium cultivation was surging, one of the major officials who would have almost certainly known about it was then appointed as the ostensible point person to stop it. See how the system works?
UNODC doesn’t want to point any fingers (anymore)
Almost every year the UN releases opium surveys they provoke these issues of culpability. And every year UNODC gets away with avoiding and their donors never see fit to ask the obvious question: who is behind the protection of the heroin trade? And every year someone gets up at the FCCT and asks the same question (usually the distinguished anthropologist David Feingold, who actually has known the answer for decades). We should all be aware who cultivates opium: poor farming communities always have, not transnational criminal syndicates. And the Myanmar military and their security system protect it for money, as they do the broader drug economy and all other illicit rents.
There is a long trail of UN dishonesty that warrants closer examination. SHAN wrote in their ‘Shan Drug Watch’ series in 2009 that they, “long believed that the 1993 figures of Burma’s extensive opiates production (1,800 tonnes) were grossly inflated, and hence the much-ballyhooed reduction of drug production through 2006 was illusory. In 2007, Xavier Bouan, from UNODC, was forced to agree. Speaking with Shan Drug Watch at a drugs forum organized by the FCCT on September 12 (full disclosure, I appeared on that panel), Bouan conceded that the official estimates in the 1990s were based on US satellite intelligence, and were probably not reliable. He went on to say: “We started to do our own survey only after 2000. Naturally, we made a few mistakes at first… [Now, most of] our findings converge with those of SHAN.”
Yet as candid as Bouan was, his then boss Jean-Luc Lemahieu was a classic UNODC poser, always quick to conjure one of those pithily moronic slogans that seem to come naturally to country heads: “Opium in essence is about poverty, whereas ya ba is about greed” was one of his. His reward for years of impact-free work in Myanmar? Head of the Afghanistan office. Didn’t that work well? Antonio Maria Costa came next, and will be remembered mostly for his brave prediction that “(t)he once-notorious Golden Triangle has ceased to play a major role as an opium production area and this region can no longer be called the Golden Triangle for the reason of opium production alone.”
The steely, determined, crime-fighting Jeremy Douglas came later, but among his swollen sack of cringing quips and media pandering, he was far more candid than his successor. He said in 2023 in response to a question on complicity in the opium trade, “(t)here are groups that are under the umbrella of the security services of Myanmar and there are others which are not under that umbrella, which are independent and advocating for their autonomy. The ones under the umbrella have a formalized relationship, and they have their territory and they’re more or less left alone. It’s hard to believe that they don’t know what’s going on in territory of the border guard or people’s militia forces, which we know, and the Thais know, and everyone seems to know, are involved.”
By then, he’d had partly learnt his lesson from past transgressions. The well-respected Transnational Institute (TNI) had to scold Douglas and UNODC in 2019 because of their shoddy claims in the 2018 Opium Survey claiming cultivation areas and blaming cultivation and protection on the Kachin Independence Organization and the RCSS, both of whom issued public statements criticizing UNODC. That year, I gave a briefing to diplomats in Yangon alongside a senior UNODC official on the booming crystal methamphetamine trade. I pointed out that research I had been part of concurred with most of UNODC’s findings but the agency wasn’t pointing out which armed groups actually operated in the territory where the super-labs were operating. Just months later, the security forces raided the Kaung Kha militia area in Kutkai where a major lab was uncovered. They definitely knew.
At the Opium Survey launch in January 2023, Douglas claimed that the “Golden Triangle was back in the opium business” but also acknowledged that simple police work cannot address the problem, which required broader insight into the political context of the trade: something that many observers of the opium trade have been stressing for decades.
This year’s opium survey was financed by the governments of America and Japan. It is curious why those two governments don’t want to get to the bottom of who is actually involved in the heroin trade. And yet these dynamics of undulating opium production and official protection, and outright enrichment by many officials, have been permitted to fester for decades. It’s a fair question to ask UNODC’s donors why they persist in funding programs that have had no demonstrable success, partner with the very officials protecting the narcotics trade who also happen to be war criminals, and produce polished reports that, placed in a 20-year timeline, should indicate failure on all fronts.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar
