Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
Your observation on opium production being focused in Chinese border states is accurate enough, though it's not clear what conclusion you intended to draw from it. It would be equally accurate, for example, to observe that the vast majority of the world's opium is grown in places that were once colonies or occupied territories of a European power noted for having once run history's most successful state-sponsored drug trafficking operation. Again, drawing conclusions from that observation would be risky.

Easy to make observations; harder to move from observation to legitimate conclusion.

Certainly Burma is a conflicted place, and it's an ugly conflict. Almost seems a slice of Africa transported to SE Asia, or a throwback to the bad old days in SE Asia. The degree to which outside parties are responsible, or might be capable of forcing resolution, is debatable.
I agree with you about Viet-Nam, & while they have some distance to go with governance etc. I think they're headed in the right direction.

Part of the reason why I'm making these observations is it's difficult to come to solid conclusions, more difficult to come up with potential solutions. It's also not quite that easy to see some of the patterns, and even when you can get past origins & past causality to current origins & causes, those things are only of limited use to trying to come up with solutions as they exist today. Trying to fix these problems, my god it's just not easy. When considering opium for example, one thing I try very hard not to forget is the antipathy China has towards the opium trade. It's a safe bet they dislike it more than anyone else in the area as a nation.

I think it's worth it to work on these problems. They're hard ones, and developing strategies isn't easy. It's difficult to pay attention to them amidst the drowning roar of whatever fancy the global media is piddling around with in the passing moment. I've had gnats chase me with a higher attention span than some of the major media sites seem capable of producing.