Tag Archives: Shan State

Down the Malay Barrier 3.

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The Shan State forms one of Myanmar’s ethnic communities.  Located in the northeastern quadrant of Myanmar, it borders southwestern China (Yunnan), Laos, and Thailand.  Under other circumstances, a bunch of forested hills on the inland edge of a no-account country would be of no interest.  In fact, however, it is an important–and increasingly important—link in the international narcotics supply chain.

For one thing, the many small farms grow both produce and opium poppies.  Poppies grow easily in the poor soil often found in hill regions.  Poor peasants value poppies as a cash crop.  For another thing, part of the anti-Communist Chinese Kuomintang Army retreated from Yunnan into the Shan State after the Communist victory in 1949.  Rather than transit to join the other supporters of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, they settled down in Shan State.  There the refugee army embarked on opium and heroin production.  For yet another thing, since 1962 the central government’s effort to suppress autonomy movements has spawned local resistance groups.  As the old saying goes, “For success in war, three things are necessary: money, more money, and still more money.”[1]  Shan autonomists have relied upon drug sales to build up military forces more than capable of holding off the army of Myanmar on most occasions.[2]

If opium and heroin built the foundations of the Shan State drug trade, the producers have been alert to changes in global market conditions and new product development.  Take, for example methamphetamine and fentanyl.  Methamphetamine is a synthetic stimulant.[3]  “Crystal meth” is an alternative form of methamphetamine.  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is far stronger than is heroin.[4]  All have become popular “recreational” drugs.  Much of production of the chemical components of both methamphetamine and fentanyl took place in China.  In recent years, pressure from the United States caused the Chinese government to restrict production in China proper.  Producers shifted their facilities outside China, including to Shan State.

New supply chain routes then developed.  Fishing villages dot Myanmar’s long coastline on the Bay of Bengal.  Doubtless the local fishermen feel the same eagerness to profit from the drug trade as do the peasant farmers.  Probably they carry their cargo to ports like Yangon and Singapore, while another route may run down the nearby Mekong River to Ho Chi Minh City.

Myanmar’s war with the ethnic groups has been a murky business.  To offer one example, the Kachin Defense Army, in Shan State, is suspected of having done a deal with the army of Myanmar involving the drug trade.  However, the trouble with criminals—even criminals in uniform—is that they’re dishonest.  The Kachins seem to have been sending some of their product to the Arakan Army on the west coast.  Discovering this betrayal, the army and police launched a series of raids into Kachin territory in Spring 2020.  They hauled in 200 million tabs of meth, 1,100 pounds of crystal meth, 630 pounds of heroin, and almost 1,000 gallons of methyl fentanyl.[5]  The army probably sought to remind the Kachins of the deal, not break the deal.

[1] Attributed variously to Marshal Trivulzio and Raimondo Montecucolli.

[2] You might enjoy and learn from “Proof of Life” (dir. Taylor Hackford, 2000).

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl

[5] Hannah Beech and Saw Nang, “Record Raids in Myanmar Point to Shifting Drug Trade,” NYT, 20 May 2020.

Down the Malay Barrier 2.

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Geography and climate.  Burma is an up-and-down country sandwiched between India and Bangladesh in the northwest, China and Laos in the east, and Malaya in the south.  The Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal create long seaboards.

Just as Egypt is “the gift of the Nile,” Burma is “the gift of the Irrawaddy.”  Burma’s chief river runs most of the length of the country through a wide, lush valley.  Encircling that valley to west, east, and north are ranges of hills and increasingly rugged mountains.

Burma is in Monsoon Asia: there is a wet season and a dry season (October-May); it’s mostly hot and sometimes steamy.  For Western travelers, health dangers abound.[1]

 

The history that matters.  Burma began as a series of city-states in and around the Irrawaddy River valley between 200 and 100 BC.  Larger kingdoms rose and fell through the 800s AD.  All the while, new ethnic groups immigrated from China and India.  Then, during what Europeans would call the High Middle Ages (c. 1000-1500 AD), a succession of still bigger kingdoms emerged to engulf many of the territories surrounding the Irrawaddy valley; and first Buddhism, then Islam spread from India.  All this created an ethnically and religiously diverse Burma.  From the late 1600s to the early 1800s, a series of empires and kingdoms sought to expand the boundaries of Burma and to impose strong central government on outlying ethnic communities.

This worked pretty well until an expanding Burma collided with an expanding British Empire in India.  Three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824-1885) ended in British rule over Burma.

British rule increased the Western impact on the country: Buddhism was disestablished as the state religion; secular schools—largely staffed by Christian missionaries—were created; a fleet of riverboats and ferries sailed the rivers; and a railroad ran the length of the great central valley.  Furthermore, many new immigrants—Indians—settled in Burma, while the mixed race “Anglo-Burmese” later became an important sub-group.  The British administration granted enlarged autonomy to the “tribal” areas containing ethnic minorities.  By the early 20th Century, Burma had become a remarkably diverse multi-ethnic community.[2]

Naturally, British rule inspired a student-led nationalist movement.  Minor British concessions failed to appease nationalist demands before the Second World War.  The Burmese ethnic groups had composed their differences—for the moment—in a 1944 conference.  A war-exhausted Britain granted independence in 1948.

When the civilian government failed to squash demands from the ethnic minorities for greater self-government, the army overthrew the government (1962), then later changed the country’s name to Myanmar.  Burma has been a military dictatorship ever since.  The generals have wrecked the economy through socialist-inspired policies incompetently applied.  They haven’t done much better at either defeating or reconciling the ethnic minorities.  A host of ethnic “National Armies” dominate much of the country.  The recent persecution of the Muslim Rohingyas has attracted much attention, Burma/Myanmar is a cauldron of conflicts.  Prominent among the rebellious areas is the Shan State.

[1] See: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/myanmar-burma

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_Myanmar