Myanmar might be the second largest opium producer in the world but it is not a threat to stability in the north east of India. This announcement by the United Nations ought to be gleefully cheered by the Indian administrators who have often failed to combat the insurgency in Assam and other neighbouring areas in India’s northeast.
Although the tension has been eased in regard to the funding of the insurgents by Myanmar’s drug dealers, the problem surrounding opium production still remains. Myanmar has failed to contain its opium production rate and there is every danger that it might soon burst. It is a nation where the poor and deprived farmers have no source of income other than the production of opium.
The United Nations Office for Drug and Crime (UNODC) has underlined the danger that opium production in Myanmar poses. But the achievements of the agency too cannot be ignored. The so-called Golden Triangle comprising of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand has been somewhat tempered with Thailand not making anywhere to the list of opium producers for almost 20 years and Laos having trimmed opium production by 94%.
Myanmar’s military regime has hardly been able to take control of the situation. Although it doesn’t participate in the production or the export of opium, the military government has failed to stretch its claws to the eastern part of the country. Opium production in battered Myanmar is concentrated in this part where insurgents reign supreme.
The fact that there’s no threat to India’s security in the northeast ought at the moment ought not to blindfold the Indian government. There was a sharp increase in opium production in Myanmar last year and with the military regime in the nation not bothering about the miserable condition of the people, there is a likelihood that the dark shadows of opium trade could rush over India’s sensitive northeast before long.
Image Source: Rawa
Source: The Hindu
