FEATURE - War on Opium Gives Golden Triangle a Different Hue
Date: 08-Mar-06
Country: LAOS
Author: Ed Cropley
In their stead, small plantations of tea, peach trees and even asparagus are springing up in the heart of the "Golden Triangle", the lawless opium-producing region at the junction of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
"In 2001 at this time of year, those hills would have been a sea of pink and white," said Clifford Heinzer, a US anti-drugs official, with a sweep of his hand across a lush - and entirely green - valley in the northernmost Lao province of Phongsali.
"I'm not going to kid you that if you walk into the jungle, you won't find a single poppy," said Heinzer, who works in the US embassy in the capital, Vientiane. "But it would only be one of a few plants grown by an addict for personal consumption. Commercial cultivation is over."
In concert with donors and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Laos has gone from being the world's third biggest producer of heroin, which comes from opium resin, in 1998 to declaring itself free of poppy cultivation in February 2006.
The announcement leaves military-ruled Myanmar as the only member of the Golden Triangle trio with a heroin habit.
"LAND OF THE LOTUS EATERS"
Although the landlocked southeast Asian nation has never rivalled the likes of Afghanistan, which had an estimated 131,000 ha (324,000 acres) under cultivation in 2004, or neighbouring Myanmar, opium has nevertheless been a part of life for generations.
As it spread from China in the early 19th century, Laos's laid-back population took to the drug with such relish - both for medicinal and recreational purposes - that French colonialists dubbed the country the "Land of the Lotus Eaters".
More recently, during the Vietnam War, the CIA's infamous 'Air America' airline teamed up with anti-communist Hmong hill tribesmen to smuggle opium out of the jungle to help fund America's "secret war" in Laos.
However in 1999 its communist rulers declared war on a drug that was exacting a heavy toll on many of the country's 5.7 million people, with thousands of families enslaved to the drug habits of opium-addled husbands and fathers.
"Many women and children are happy that they no longer need to endure daily hardships to earn money to buy opium for the head of the family," the government's top drug-buster, Soubanh Srithirath, told a recent drug eradication conference.
"Many ethnic children now have the opportunity to attend school, many families that used to grow opium poppy and had become addicted are living healthy lives," he said.
HOW TO KICK THE HABIT
With a multi-pronged approach ranging from slashing poppy fields to hunting down known traffickers, the government has managed to cut opium cultivation from 27,000 ha (67,000 acres) eight years ago to effectively nil today.
Over the same period, education campaigns among the remote hill tribes where opium had its deepest roots, as well as treatment programmes claiming only 20 percent relapse rates, have seen the number of addicts drop from 63,000 to just 12,000.
To make the change lasting, the government, UNODC and donors such as the United States, have followed up with "crop substitution projects" to give ex-opium farmers - many of whom made less than $1 a day - a livelihood in a mountainous region unsuitable for rice.
"Weaning people off the opium here was not that difficult, because it only yields about 8 kg (18 lb) per hectare," said Heinzer on a recent helicopter trip into the mountains to visit villages now growing fruit and vegetables instead of opium.
By comparison, the UNODC estimates that yields in Afghanistan are over 40 kg (88 lb) per hectare, making it a far more lucrative cash crop and making the Lao route to kicking the habit unworkable in the harsher climate and terrain of central Asia.
Despite the success, some aid groups have privately accused Vientiane of using opium as an excuse to force ethnic minorities, many of whom fought the communists in the Vietnam
