US Calls on Burma (r)

[strider@xxxxxxxxxxx]

/* Written 11:58 pm  May  7, 1994 by strider@xxxxxxxxxxx in igc:soc.cult.burma */
/* ---------- "US Calls on Burma" ---------- */
Just a guess here but I suspect Wirth's motive is to drum up business for 
the DEA.  The DEA provided anti-narcotics aid to Rangoon for many years 
before it dawned on them that Rangoon was the problem, not the solution.
It is only fairly recently that the US has cut off aid and for a long 
time before that, you had a running fight between the DEA and the State 
Department over Burma.   State was saying "cut them off" while DEA was 
coaching Burma on how to stage drug-burning ceremonies so that Washington 
would see that they were doing something.

I'm a bit surprised to see that the State Dept. in the person of Tim 
Wirth has suddenly gotten dumb.  As for the argument that giving money to 
SLORC to fight drugs is effective, well, as the old saying goes, "that 
dog just won't hunt."

Here's something from Bertil Lintner on the past wisdom of U.S. drug 
policy on Burma:

 [From a conversation with a US narcotics official in Bangkok]
 He had suggested, apparently in all seriousness, that drugs leaving 
Burma via the southern Tenasserim coast in route for Malaysia and 
Singapore, were transported on bamboo rafts down the Salween River.  I 
remarked that this was surprising given that the river was far too 
hazardous to risk transporting ordinary goods, let alone a commodity as 
valuable as opium.  The key to success for any opium trader, I added, was 
to hold the few points at which it is possible to cross the Salween.  As 
far as commerce went, the river was navigable for only 150 kilometers 
upstream from its estuary at Moulmein on the Andaman Sea--or exactly as 
far as the government controls its banks.

 Evidently taken aback, the official then began interviewing me:

 "But what about the dry season?  Wouldn't it be easier then?"

 "It is even more dangerous then," I replied.  "You'd risk smashing a raft 
against rocks just beneath the surface."

 "But what about the river banks?  Surely, the traffickers can use the 
course of the river and send drugs along its banks."

 In deference to the niceties of diplomacy, I refrained from couching my 
answer in the terms I would have like:

 "Not unless you have especially trained mountain goats as pack animals 
and can direct them by remote control.  No sane person would attempt to 
walk along the banks of the Salween unless he were trying to set a 
long-distance rock-climbing record."

The encounter went to reflect much of the ignorance surrounding 
narcotics suppression activities in the are.  Foreign officials sat in 
air-conditioned offices in Bangkok and Rangoon with a little experience 
of, or feel for, local conditions.  Their information depended largely on 
official contacts with their host countries, who had their own axes to 
grind, and reports from local informers less interested in the War on 
Drugs than in making a quick dollar supplying dubious intelligence that 
foreigners had no means of cross-checking.  And on these uncertain 
foundations conclusions were reached and grand strategies drawn up.  
Little wonder that the volume of heroin flooding Southeast Asia, 
Australasian and the United States continued to grow.

>From "Land of Jade" (p 216-217)  
The reporting is Lintner's, the typos are my own contribution.

-Strider