NAMKHAM, Shan State —The back road through Namkham Township, a mountainous cluster of village tracts abutting the border with China and Kachin State, is these days more peaceful than its recent history would suggest. The route has occasionally hosted flashpoints of conflict between the Burma Army and local ethnic armed groups operating in the area, including the Kachin Independence Army and Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA). At the moment, however, there are no military checkpoints, and cars taking the six-hour route from Lashio enjoy an uninterrupted passage through a serene landscape of mountain ranges and pastures.
About an hour after the turnoff into Namkham from the highway connecting Lashio to the Chinese border town of Muse, travelers begin to pass through expansive fields of opium poppies, demarcating the 20,000 acres of territory controlled by the Pansay militia. Funding their operations through the taxation of local farmers, locals say the militia is headed by Kyaw Myint, a Shan State Parliament lawmaker for Namkham Township and a member of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.
The Irrawaddy traveled by motorbike to visit 24 villages located on the mountains around Namkham, part of the sprawling territory under Kyaw Myint’s control. Each house in this area, almost without exception, cultivates between three to five acres of land for opium poppies. The Pansay militia has provided arms to the farmers here to defend themselves from rival armed groups and organizations working to eradicate the opium trade.
Mai Aike Naing, an anti-drug activist from Namkham, said that the Pansay militia asked people to grow poppies on their farmland, while taxing 300,000 kyats (US$292) per household in the villages under their control. His allegation is corroborated by a report from the Ta’ang Student and Youth Organization, which stated that the militia also levies farmers for 20 percent of the income generated from opium sales.
“They taxed everyone 300,000 kyats who stayed on their land. They do not care who grows poppy and who does not,” Mai Aike Naing said.
The Burma Army has a base near the Buddhist monastery of Mang Aung village, from which it is possible to see the poppy fields cultivated by farmers living in Pansay-controlled territory. Thet Tun Oo, commanding officer of the Burma Army’s Namkham-based 88th Infantry Division, has told locals that his troops would burn down opium crops and punish farmers who cultivated poppies, a threat that local anti-drug campaigners said has only been carried out against farmers operating outside of the Pansay-controlled zone.
Unorthodox Methods
Last August, hundreds of ethnic Palaung rallied in Namkham, calling on the Burmese government to take action against the drug trade. Following the protests, one battalion was deployed to destroy poppy crops. While Palaung farmland growing opium poppies was razed, the Pansay farms were untouched, according to locals.
“We informed [the army] about the poppy farming in the area,” said monk and anti-drug campaigner Ashin Dama Linkara of Namkham’s Padae village, “but they told us that the area was restricted. We have questions for them. What does it mean that the area is restricted? I feel sometimes as if Burma has two policies in one country. Why can they destroy poppies grown by Palaung, but not the poppies in the militia’s area?”
Seeking to combat widespread addiction among Namkham’s Palaung community, Mai Aike Naing formed the Mang Aung Anti-Drug Group during last year’s protests. The group, now 180 people strong, has cracked down on heroin and amphetamines usage in the area by developing a methodical campaign of vigilantism, using homemade slingshots as weapons to stop and arrest drug users and dealers in the area. To offset their lack of resources, the group will use sheer weight of numbers to lessen the risk of a target fighting back, sometimes mobilizing 100 people to arrest one person.
“From the beginning, many people questioned whether we were able to arrest drug dealers or users without arms. But we got a lot of support from our people as they learned that we could arrest people and stop drug use in our community,” said Mai Aike Naing.
In a part of the country where amphetamines and heroin can sell for as low as 1,000 kyats (US$0.97), Mang Aung Anti-Drug Group is fighting an uphill battle to eradicate drug addiction. Part of the group’s unorthodox campaign is the forced treatment of detainees at three rehabilitation camps, each equipped to hold up to 30 people, which the group set up late last year with funds collected from its members.
“It was difficult to treat detainees as we do not have enough money,” he said. “We have to cook for them as well if their families could not provide food—though some families do bring food. We give them what medical treatment we can and when we feel that they can stop using drugs, we let them go home.”
Mai Aike Naing told The Irrawaddy that the crackdown had been widely successful in the villages around Namkham, eradicating drug transactions in the area and deterring potential users.
“Many people here do not know how to drive motorbikes,” he said. “They feel too ashamed to walk out of the villages and buy drugs, as the drug dealers don’t dare to come and sell it in the community now. Therefore they have to stop.”
Burmese authorities from Namkham Township were initially wary of Mang Aung’s actions, suspecting a link between the group and the TNLA, the ethnic rebel group representing northern Shan State’s Palaung community. As the benefits to the local community have become apparent, authorities have given Mang Aung Anti-Drug Group a wide berth, according to Ashin Dama Linkara.
A member of another prominent anti-drug group based around Padae village, Ashin Dama Linkara said it was common for anti-drug campaigners in Padae to work in tandem with Maung Aung Anti-Drug Group, given the close proximity of their home villages. Ashin Dama Linkara said that his group operated a two-strikes policy, briefly detaining and warning first-time dealers and users, and sending them to the Burmese police force in Namkham town if they were caught a second time.
Discussing the power of anti-drug campaigners in the region, Ashin Dama Linkara told The Irrawaddy that his group had last August forced the expulsion of Ye Win Lwin, the commander of the 10th Light Infantry Battalion which is itself a subsidiary of Thet Tun Oo’s 88th Infantry Division.
“Our team arrested a boy who went to buy opium. The boy told them that the commander asked him to buy it. We went to arrest the commander, but he tried to claim that he wanted to find out who was selling opium. Our villagers told the commander he had to leave the village, as many people there were angry with him,” he said.
Ashin Dama Linkara said that eliminating drug use in Namkham would be easy if the Burmese authorities ordered the Pansay militia to stop growing opium poppies in the area.
“We often say here that even if we could make a ceasefire agreement, there would be no peace because of the drug problem. They need to stop people from growing poppies for our community to be peaceful,” he said.
TNLA Crackdown
Southwest of Namkham lies the Mantong Township village of Mar Wong, a center of operations for the TNLA and the site of the ethnic army’s recent celebrations for the anniversary of the Palaung insurrection against the Burmese government. Mai Aike Pit, a Mar Wong villager, told The Irrawaddy that until the TNLA’s intervention, the area’s drug problem was so rampant that villagers could not leave clothes or other possessions outside their homes, for fear they would be stolen by addicts.
“Most villagers here were farmers and laborers,” he said. “They worked at poppy farms run by the Chinese, and eventually they became drug addicts. Having poppies on our land did not mean our people got rich. Our people got poorer, only the Chinese got rich.”
In recent times, the TNLA has dispatched a force of more than 500 soldiers in increasingly audacious attempts to destroy nearby poppy farms controlled by the Pansay militia.
“It was difficult sometimes to go on these trips,” said senior TNLA leader Mai Pain Sein. “The militia group would sometimes inform the Burma Army before we were able to reach their areas of control. So we would have to fight a combined force of Burma Army soldiers and the militia group.”
Tar Bone Kyaw, the TNLA general secretary, said that opium had destroyed the livelihoods of the Palaung people, citing a 2009 report by the Palaung Women’s Organization that 85 percent of the area’s male population over the age of 15 were addicted to opium.
“Let me describe to you the poverty of our people,” he said. “Some houses here only have rice to cook for food on some days. And then men who are addicted to drugs take away half the rice to trade for opium to smoke. This is the situation of some of our families.”
The TNLA says that of its claimed fighting force of 4000 soldiers, 500 are past or present drug addicts from the Palaung community—300 have recovered from their addiction, and 200 are still in the process of treatment. Tar Bone Kyaw told The Irrawaddy that the TNLA was working hard to eradicate drugs from the surrounding area, and would continue raids on Pansay-controlled opium crops to protect the livelihoods of Palaung villagers.
The ethnic army’s determination was matched by Mai Aike Naing, who said he had already refused to yield to intimidation from those behind the region’s drug trade.
“Before I said I would lead protests [last year], they told me I was an idiot because some drug dealers could try to kill me,” he said. “I told them I would pay with my life for my people. I am not afraid to die.”
Correction, Jan. 21, 2015: This article originally reported that Kyaw Myint was a lawmaker in the Union Parliament.
