Indian opium farmers now are harvesting large crops in the country’s northern area, a new development in the regional drug problem. (Photo by TNI)

CHIANG RAI – Poppy cultivation has rapidly expanded in the Myanmar and Laos parts of the Golden Triangle, to feed new demands for heroin, chiefly in China, according to a report released Monday.

“After a decade of decline, Southeast Asia is now once again a major opium growing region,” it claims

The report said opium production has spread into northern India for the first time, and that chances of a “drug free Asean” by next year are slim at best.

The Transnational Institute (TNI), a Dutch-based NGO active in the region, said in a new 115-page report that new markets in China and India have created fresh demand for heroin. But it noted that cross-the-board attempts to ban opium cultivation have “driven hundreds of thousands of families deeper into poverty”.

One conclusion of this “relapse in the Golden Triangle” is that attempts by China to replicate Thailand’s crop substitution programmes have failed.

Until regional governments and the international community properly addresses poverty, conflict and rising demand for heroin in China, opium bans and eradication will continue to fail,” said Tom Kramer, lead author of the report.

He echoed his report, saying that crop substitution in the region has so far failed to support farmers forced or attracted back to opium farming.

“Alternative livelihood options need to be firmly in place before communities can be expected to abandon illicit cultivation,” he said

If the findings of the TNI report are confirmed in coming months, it will mark a major setback for efforts to end the decades-old opium growing and heroin manufacture in areas next to Thailand.

TNI recommended Monday a complete reform of the anti-narcotics policies by all regional governments, up to and including the UN.

Policies must be “more humane, with a focus on health, development and human rights rather than on repression and law enforcement,” the report said.

TNI has long been a leader in calling for such reform, with a strong emphasis on elimination of the death penalty for any type of drug trafficking.

According to the group, the Thai part of the Golden Triangle is not involved in the recent resurgence in poppy production.

Tiny plots used to grow opium poppies in Thailand itself have stayed at around 200 to 300 hectares (1,250 to 1,875 rai), mostly for local consumption and medical use, “opium cultivation … overall has more than doubled from an estimated 24,000 hectares in 2006 to some 58,000 hectares in 2013,” according to the TNI figures.

In Thailand especially, anti-drug measures in recent years have focussed mainly on the methamphetamine trade, in an effort to interdict more of the estimated one billion ya baa tablets that flow from Burmese pill factories into Thailand.

Almost unnoticed, the opium and heroin revival in the rest of the Golden Triangle, has spread east to India. That was so unexpected that the chief agency involved, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) does not even measure opium production in India.

TNI said that growing regions have shifted in Myanmar and Laos because local warlords, under central government pressure, banned growing poppies in traditional areas.

The main poppy growing areas in Myanmar, says the report released Monday, are in the southern Shan State, close to the Thai border. Laos production is centered in Phongsali and Houaphan provinces, which border China and Vietnam respectively.

Embellishing English

by Barry Evans

CHIANG RAI – Once when the world was young — 1978 to be more precise — I headed out alone from the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai, fancying myself an anthropologist on the verge of discovering new peoples in the mythical “Golden Triangle” region. So much for the hubris of youth.

Turned out I was walking into a well-established tourist trap where even the romantic name “Golden Triangle” (the region in which Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet) had been bestowed by the US State Department in reference to what had been a thriving opium industry.

I did spend a few happy days in the highlands with Akha people, many of whom (following the linguistic conceit of a surprising number of Star Trek aliens) spoke excellent English. The hill-tribe Akha are comparative newcomers to the region. Originally from the Yunnan region of southern China, they migrated south into mainland Southeast Asia (aka Indochina) over a century ago. About 100,000 of them live in the Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai provinces of northern Thailand today.

The Akha are often mentioned in popular books on linguistics for their curious use of adjectives, specifically how “very” takes different forms depending on what they’re referring to. Very deep, for instance, is “kha” deep. Very big is “lo” big. In the same vein, and lacking an actual word for “very,” the Akha say “tio” clean, “dù blue and “d” white for very clean, very blue and very white.

Which isn’t quite as exotic as it may sound at first blush, when you consider the many variants of “very” in English. We routinely and automatically add playful little baroque emphases to many of our most common adjectives. We typically don’t say, “The hitchhiker was very wet,” we say, “He was soaking wet.” After the long hike, I wasn’t “very tired,” I was “dog-tired.”

Similarly: bone dry, drop-dead gorgeous, brim full, pug ugly, goddam awful, piping hot, scot-free, feather light, dead quiet, pencil thin, pitch black, snow (lily, pearly) white, brand new, dirt cheap, sky high, freezing cold, crystal clear, fighting fit … I’m sure you can come up with some of your own.

These examples are all the easy one-word add-ons, excluding such full-blooded metaphors we characteristically employ. When’s the last time you said, “She’s very sharp”? Didn’t you really say, “She’s sharp as a tack”?

Note that these embellishments don’t really add to the meaning: “very ugly” and “pug ugly” mean pretty much the same thing, the latter being slightly stronger perhaps. It’s just that we all love language — it’s our primary social medium, so we do more than express “just the facts, ma’am” when we want to add emphasis. We’re not just language speakers, we’re language players.

Barry Evans ([email protected]) hopes you didn’t find the above deadly dull.

CHIANGRAI TIMES – Lindsay Hawdon and her two boys swap Thailand’s beaches and cities for Lanjia Lodge, a tribal hill village in the Chiang Rai province.

We awoke on our first morning to a sheet of mist, pale as milk, hanging over the valley below. Slowly it dissipated to reveal the brown swirling waters of the Mekong River and the surrounding hills.

Lanjia Lodge sits halfway up the hillside in the village of Kiew Karn in northern Thailand. It is made up of four bamboo houses, built and run by local people with the aim of attracting travellers looking for a more insightful experience beyond Thailand’s beaches and cities. I was staying there with my two boys, eight-year-old Dow and five-year-old Orly, as part of a year-long trip around Asia and Australia.

“Are we above heaven?” Orly asked from our comfortable king-size bed, cocooned by mosquito nets. “It feels like we’re in the clouds.” All around us were the sounds of Kiew Karn stirring: a cockerel crowed, a piglet squealed, a cow groaned. In the village live the Hmong and Lahu tribes who fled to Thailand from Laos during the “Secret War” of 1968-73. They have a school, a temple, a village hall and a scattering of mud-brick houses.

After a breakfast of noodle soup on our cushion-strewn veranda, served by Ling, a pretty, delicate girl who smiled at everything we said, we trekked up the hill to the far end of the village. We had arranged to meet Mr Laogee, a Hmong shaman, and found him lying on a bed, in the darkest corner of his windowless hut, as he escaped from the noise of his four children next door. He stood up and greeted us with a low bow.

We were invited to sit on the bamboo mats on the damp earth floor and offered cups of steaming miang leaf tea. The role of the shaman in the Hmong tribe is not inherited as it is with the Lahu. To qualify for the role, the Hmong shamans, of which there are several, must have recovered from a coma, whether caused by illness or accident. The Hmong believe that only those who have done this can help others to recover from serious illness. To that end, a pig is sacrificed; and a buffalo horn is dipped in blood and stamped on the sick person’s back. “I’d rather stay sick,” muttered Dow.