Praise from the United Nations for continued drop in poppy cultivation in military-ruled Burma paints a false picture of success, say members of the Shan ethnic community and human rights activists. What cannot be ignored, they add, is how profitable the narcotics trade remains for the local commanders of the junta.

Plans to eradicate poppy cultivation will fail until this connection is addressed, says Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), a news outlet based in Thailand that covers the Shan, a people who come from Burma’s north-eastern Shan state. ”The root cause of the problem is the same: the Burmese army is involved in the drug trade.”

‘’With the Burmese army profiting at every level, no wonder the junta is not serious about eradicating drugs,” he added during a release of a report this week on poppy cultivation in the Shan state. ‘’More poppy is grown today in areas under the control of the Burmese army than in other areas.”

The increase in the number of Burmese military battalions suggests how lucrative this nexus is, he noted making a presentation here at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand. ‘’Before 1988 there were 33 Burmese military battalions in the Shan state; now there are 141.”

This link between poppy cultivation and increased troop strength stems from the Burmese junta’s policy of self-reliance, he explained to IPS. ‘’Each military unit has to raise money locally to pay for its expenses. So money from drugs helps to meet these needs. The officers profit the most.”

Human rights activists are as troubled over ‘’development” programmes that have been introduced by U.N. agencies to wean away the estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people involved in poppy cultivation in areas controlled by the Burmese military and elsewhere in the Shan state. ‘’The people are not being given the freedom to choose the projects they consider best; these projects are often imposed,” says David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based global rights lobby.

‘’That is not the way to pursue proper development,” he added during an interview. ”It is a very top down approach. Community participation should come first, because the local people need to have the complete freedom to be fully involved in local development projects.”

Research done in the local area reveals that the development projects to replace poppy cultivation ‘’treats the locals as passive recipients of assistance,” he added. ‘’Some of the projects failed because the people were not involved on their own terms.”

In June, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) singled out Burma for praise in its annual report. The South-east Asian country’s poppy cultivation had fallen by 35 percent in 2006, covering only 21,500 hectares, stated the report stated. This meant there had been an 83 percent drop in nearly a decade, it added.

‘’Since 1998, South-east Asia’s share of world opium poppy cultivation has fallen from 67 percent to only 12 percent in 2006,” it revealed. ‘’Much of this has been due to large declines in cultivation in Myanmar.”

Burma, which has been run by successive military regimes since a coup in 1962, is part of the infamous Golden Triangle poppy-growing area. The other areas include parts of Laos and north-east Thailand. Burma’s ruling junta, which changed then name of the country to Myanmar, has used its campaign against narcotics to win international praise and assistance.

Burma’s armed forces, which number over 400,000, have played a decisive role in crushing the country’s political environment. The military has also waged campaigns against the country’s many ethnic rebel movements, some of whom are based in the Shan state.

The anti-opium drive in the Shan state began in 1999 following an agreement between the junta and Shan ethnic groups, some of whom were former separatist rebels, to make the area free of poppy cultivation by 2014.

These plans received a shot in the arm in 2005, when Burma’s drug barons and former rebel leaders from the ethnic Wa community, immediate neighbours of the Shan, announced plans to eradicate the poppy fields in the areas they control.

That year, the UNODC revealed that poppy cultivation across the hilly terrain in the Shan area was spread over 32,800 ha, down from 44,200 ha the previous year.

UNODC has been working in tandem with the World Food Programme (WFP) to help communities who joined forces in this anti-narcotics drive by trading the cultivation of poppy for another crop or livelihood. This shift away from growing poppy has seen some families losing 60 percent of their income, causing economic hardship and a spread of poverty.

The U.N. food relief agency’s programme in the Shan state is part of a country-wide aid effort in border areas, covering over one million people. Yet the WFP does not enjoy a free hand is distributing food and working with the local communities. ‘’The difficulty in the Shan state is that we can only operate in areas the government permits us to do so,” says Paul Risley, spokesman for WFP’s Asia division.

The situation on the ground is far from hospitable for local farmers who have begun cultivating crops other than poppy, he added during an interview. ‘’The checkpoints and roadblocks make it very difficult for the passage of food and this affects farmers who are trying to sell a new product.”

For its part, the UNODC conceded that a restrictive climate and the absence of peace in Burma combine to undermine a successful programme. ‘’There is no possibility of eradicating opium poppy cultivation unless there is peace and security in Myanmar,” says Xavier Bouan, the regional illicit crop-monitoring expert at the U.N. agency’s office in Burma.