The United Nations and Myanmar are in the process of proving that a nation on the tipping edge of being controlled by criminals can be rescued and brought back to the road to democracy.
Or maybe not.
Just two weeks ago, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced it had convinced the Myanmar government to sign a partnership agreement, under which the two would team up to fight organised crime and drug trafficking, which in Myanmar are the same thing. Otherwise, the UNODC said in its own statement, criminal activity would continue to undermine development and corrupt government and governance at all levels, by using the huge profits that drugs generate and which Myanmar drug lords have used generously for 22 years to win government influence.
No doubt, Myanmar is burdened by its past. The unchecked dictatorship of the army was effectively wedded to the unchecked corruption and trafficking of drug cartels.
Smoke and flames billow from burning drugs during a destruction ceremony of seized narcotic drugs on the outskirts of Yangon. (AFP photo)
But the past is prologue, and what worries the UNODC and both law enforcement and diplomatic circles in Thailand is not Myanmar's drug-dealing history. It is Myanmar's recent actions in the first days of a new "partnership" with the UN.
If the first few days are any indication, then Myanmar authorities have made a conscious choice to bask in the publicity of deals with the UN, while actually doing nothing. It may be early days, but there is no sign that Myanmar has decided to move against the drug producers, smugglers and traffickers who shelter in the country.
The first Golden Triangle drug kingpin worthy of the title was Lo Hsing Han. In fact, then-US president Richard Nixon coined the very term when he called Lo, correctly, "kingpin of the heroin traffic in Southeast Asia".
Lo organised the drug trade to earn that backhanded title. He engaged the farmers of the Triangle to grow his poppies, and sent agents around every year to collect the resin. He organised the greatest transportation supply chain outside of a world war - mule trains to Thailand, boats to Hong Kong, chemists to turn opium to heroin, couriers and human “drug mules” from Asia into Vietnam, the US, Australia, the UK and Europe.
Lo was succeeded after a power struggle by Khun Sa, whose retirement and death then spawned a number of local drug lords and kingpins. The United Wa State Army was suborned by Wei Hsueh-kang as a new drug force, and the illicit amphetamine trade flourished.
But as new kingpins grew and prospered, the best example of the "Myanmar problem" remained Lo Hsing Han. Lo wasn't forced out of the drug trade, he expanded out of it. He wasn't killed, arrested or exiled, he made a deal.
Drug trafficking makes kingpins rich — filthy rich in the eyes of most people, but rich. When Lo decided in 1989 he had grown too big to be a mere drug trafficker, he already had a line of communications into the Myanmar leadership, specifically through the then-strongman and military intelligence chief (but we repeat ourselves) Khin Nyunt.
So it was Khin Nyunt who Lo approached with a deal that he couldn’t refuse. Lo founded the Asia World Company, “invested” some millions of his filthy drug profits and, hey presto, became a legitimate businessman. He built hotels and tourist centres, founded a bank and an airline and an entire port near Yangon. US warrants, European sanctions and Thailand’s pending legal charges had no effect on the hugely sweet deals that Lo, his son and daughter-in-law concluded with so many of the dictatorship’s top men.
As he did with drugs, so Lo set the standard on turning dirty drug money into clean investment funds, all with the acquiescence - some said the personal profit - of the generals. When the army finally ceded some of its power, and Gen Thein Sein became the president, there was hope that Myanmar would drop its close relations with drug dealers. So far, that has not happened.
And here we are. The Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) under the Prime Minister's Office estimates around two billion ya ba tablets of various potencies will get into Thailand this year, of which maybe 10% will be seized. The seizures will allow anti-drug agents to claim they are doing a great job in suppressing the drug trade and need a bigger budget to end the scourge forever. To the kingpins in Myanmar, the seizures are just leakage and waste, part of the cost of doing their business.
The same thing, thanks entirely and completely to Myanmar, is happening in China and India. It also happens to lesser extents in "second tier" destinations for the Myanmar output such as Vietnam and other neighbours, although it is decidedly un-neighbourly of Myanmar to keep doing it.
Since Lo Hsing Han, which is to say "forever" in Myanmar drug trafficking history, one important drug lord has been brought to real, conclusive justice. And in the hierarchy of drug kingpins, Naw Kham was only a mid-level drug lord when Chinese drones and troops tracked and abducted him, took him to China and executed him two years ago.
All of this led to the visit to Nay Pyi Taw by the UNODC folks, and the signing of their agreement. So, as said, a week or two isn't much of a test. Still, since signing the pact to ally with the UNODC to fight big-time, corrupting drug trafficking, Myanmar’s attitude has been something less than agreeable or encouraging.
To be brief, Myanmar police and the coastguard made a couple of drug busts and claimed they showed how the country was now serious about fighting drug lords. And it was nonsense. The two raids netted around three million ya ba tablets and several kilos of heroin and crystal meth. Myanmar authorities demanded front page banner headlines, but they were the sort of anti-drug actions that get a couple of paragraphs in the Thai newspapers - because they are small busts, because they mean nothing in the effort to hurt trafficking in general, and because the drug kingpins and lords and senior traffickers are laughing and counting their money.
It will be easy to know when Myanmar gets serious about helping neighbours and the world in fighting illicit drug trafficking. It will arrest and even extradite drug lords. Until then, Myanmar is much too close to being a client of the drug traffickers than their nemesis.