Burma: catch all thread

[Backwards Observer]

Here's some background on the tragedy playing out in Burma:

While the work of French clandestine services in Indochina enabled the opium trade to survive a government repression campaign, some CIA activities in Burma helped transform the Shan States from a relatively minor poppy cultivating area into the largest opium-growing region in the world. The precipitous collapse of the Nationalist Chinese (Kuomintang, or KMT) government in 1949 convinced the Truman administration that it had to stem "the southward flow of communism" into Southeast Asia. In 1950 the Defense Department extended military aid to the French in Indochina. In that same year, the CIA began regrouping those remnants of the defeated Kuomintang army in the Burmese Shan States for a projected invasion of southern China. Although the KMT army was to fail in its military operations, it succeeded in monopolizing and expanding the Shan States' opium trade. (excerpt from The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy)

Secret War In Burma: The KMT

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia - Wikipedia

The Politics of Heroin - Amazon

Alfred W. McCoy - Wikipedia

Some other players:

‘’Chevron and its consortium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labour, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of their operations,’’ revealed the 76-page report, ‘The Human Cost of Energy’.

Chevron should act on ‘’its moral and legal obligations to human rights rather than profit from human rights abuses,’’ the report added of this project that earned the Burma’s junta about 1.1 billion US dollars in 2006, over half of its total earnings from the sale of gas to neighbouring Thailand, which was 2.16 billion dollars that year.

‘’Chevron can be sued by villagers from Burma if it does not stop the human rights violations,’’ Naing Htoo, EI’s Burma Project coordinator, said during a press conference at the launch of the report. ‘’The violations are happening every day.’’

Burma: US Oil Major Complicit in Abuses - Rights Lobby - IPS News

BANGKOK, Apr 29, 2010 (IPS) - When shareholders of the multinational company Chevron gather for their annual meeting in the U.S. city of Houston in late May, they will come face to face with Naing Htoo, whose community has suffered due to the exploits of the energy giant in military-ruled Burma.

"I want to expose what has gone on as a result of Chevron’s investments in Burma," says the 30-year-old from the Karen ethnic minority. "The shareholders need to know where their money is going and the suffering it is causing."

Pressure Mounts On Energy Giant Chevron To Disclose Revenue - IPS News

I had planned tonight to read from my last interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, but I decided not to – because of something Suu Kyi said to me when I last spoke to her. "Be careful of media fashion," she said. "The media like this sentimental version of life that reduces everything down to personality. Too often this can be a distraction."

The Hypocrites Who Say They Back Democracy In Burma - John Pilger - antiwar.com

A sad state of affairs.

[Backwards Observer]

A couple more things that may be of interest from Alfred McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade:

PD: How does the CIA's policies affect drug interdiction? I've spoken for example to former Drug Enforcement Administration officer Michael Levine, who has expressed anger that he was pulled off cases because he got too close to someone who, while being a big trafficker, was also an asset of the CIA.

AM: Mike Levine speaks from personal experience. In 1971 Mike Levine was in Southeast Asia operating in Thailand as an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]. At the same time I was conducting the investigation for the first edition of my book.

Mike Levine said that he wanted to go up country to Chiangmai, the heroin capital of Southeast Asia at that point, the finance and processing center and hub of an enterprise. He wanted to make some major seizures. Through a veiled series of cut outs in the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, instructions were passed to his superiors in the DEA, who told him he couldn't go up and make the bust. He was pulled off the case.

$$$

That meant that when the CIA was running one of its covert action wars in the drug zones of Asia, the DEA would stay away. For example, during the 1950's the CIA had this ongoing alliance with the nationalist Chinese in northern Burma. Initially mounting invasions of China in 1950-51, later mounting surveillance along the border for a projected Chinese invasion of Southeast Asia. The DEA stayed out of Southeast Asia completely during that period and collected no intelligence about narcotics in deference to the CIA's operation.

Let's take two more examples that bring it right up to the present. [First] the Afghan operation: from 1979 to the present, the CIA's largest operation anywhere in the world, was to support the Afghan resistance forces fighting the Soviet occupation in their country. The CIA worked through Pakistan military intelligence and worked with the Afghan guerilla groups who were close to Pakistan military intelligence.

In 1979 Pakistan had a small localized opium trade and produced no heroin whatsoever. Yet by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan had emerged as the world's leading supplier of heroin. It became the supplier of 60% of U.S. heroin supply and it captured a comparable section of the European market. In Pakistan itself the results were even more disastrous.

In 1979 Pakistan had no heroin addicts, in 1980 Pakistan had 5,000 heroin addicts, and by 1985, according to official Pakistan government statistics, Pakistan had 1.2 million heroin addicts, the largest heroin addict population in the world.

McCoy Interview, 11/9/91

Military Misadventure: Present Situation

Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.

Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle. In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be slaughtered in Sicily. In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000 soldiers to be massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco.

McCoy Article, 1/8/11

[Backwards Observer]

A link to an article by some human rights outfit concerned about possible excessive use of force by Royal Thai Police during drug crackdowns:

A deafening silence

Its not as if the Bush Administration didn't know what was going down in Thailand. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights special repporteur Asma Jahangir expressed "deep concern" about the "extra-judicial executions" in the spring of 2003. Before Prime Minister Thaksin came to the U.S. for the first time as a head of state in June 2003 Human Rights Watch sent the White House a letter detailing the drug war atrocities taking place. The June 911 letter mentioned the over "2000 killings" and quoted Thai government officials including Thaksin himself on the drug crackdown. "In this war drug dealers must die." (Letter to U.S. President George Bush: Press Thaksin on Extrajudicial Executions, Burma. Human Rights Watch June 9, 2003). It also quoted Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha referring to the drug crackdown. "They will be put behind bars or even vanish without a trace ... who cares?" (ibid) The Human Rights Watch report politely mentioned that the U.S. reputation may be "sullied by association with a bloody and murderous campaign in the name of the war on drugs" due to our on going anti narcotics training and money to the Thai police. (ibid)

The Royal Thai Massacres by Roger White

An interesting link to the elite Thai Border Patrol Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit who as far back as the late Fifties were receiving Ranger training at Benning:

As part of this support, the newly opened CIA station in Bangkok worked with the Thai government to form contingency plans in case of a Chinese invasion. Part of these plans involved the creation of a local guerrilla force. A choice was made to use the Thai Police as the source for these guerrilla fighters since the Thai Police were viewed as more flexable than the Royal Thai Army. In addition, Thai Police were already distributed around the country and could provide a faster reaction to events than the Thai Military. Strong support for the plans was given by the Director-General of the Thai National Police Department, General Phao Siyanon.

The CIA assigned James William 'Bill' Lair to work with the Thai Police on the project. An American front company, Southeast Asia Supply Company, or Sea Supply, was also created to administer the training programs.

PARU - nationreligionking.com

[anonamatic]

I am not about to try to tie up the heroin problem by casting blame at the CIA. I've certainly looked at the situation closely enough in Afghanistan & Pakistan to be completely convinced that it's a problem there that is wholly derived from Pakistani tolerance of the traffic because it's the same insurgents who're using it to finance their imperialist agenda.

Worse, every time someone tries to talk about the problems in Burma, there's always some pinhead who goes off on a rant trying to blame the US for the problems. That by focusing only on the drug trade, and again tying it to poorly substantiated allegations of CIA involvement.

Since it's sure as hell not heroin dealers forcing the Thai government to treat refugees so badly, or forcing the Burmese military to engage in mass rapes, slavery, and broad amounts of wanton slaughter of civilians *today*, attempting to curtail discussion with a tired out "blame the USA" argument simply isn't going to cut it here. The countries where the heroin trade flourishes are almost uniformly pseudo-communist dictatorships, and nearly every one of them shares a border with China.

Also, antiwar.com is not at all a credible news source. It makes Fox News look fair & balanced, and Glen Beck look level headed and rational. It's the other side of coin of extremist propaganda nuttery in that respect. If you really believe that stuff, I suggest you FOIA the CIA for disclosure of related material, or contact the National Archives to see if they've got material related to it since it would now be over 20 years from the end of the Viet-Nam war & overdue for mandatory declassification.

In any case, I sure didn't post any of this stuff to give you an opportunity to go off on some jackass poorly sourced leftist rant that has nothing more going for it than your disdain for the USA.

[Steve Blair]

In any case, I sure didn't post any of this stuff to give you an opportunity to go off on some jackass poorly sourced leftist rant that has nothing more going for it than your disdain for the USA.

Let's leave the personal attacks out of this, shall we? Thanks.

[anonamatic]

Let's leave the personal attacks out of this, shall we? Thanks.

I was out of line. My apologies to everyone.

I won't retract my observation about Chinese border nations however. There's a very clear pattern there, and there's been one for quite a long time. Not a single one of the communist border states, much less some of the quasi-failed non-communist ones, are in any danger of becoming the next Hong Kong.

I think Tim Heinemann nailed this better than I could. It's part of why I wanted to focus on the conflict issues rather than narrowly on the drug trade issues. I think it's safe to say that in any modern failed state situation that it's going to be highly likely that organized crime and drug traffic will opportunistically take hold if there's an opening for it. To focus only on those issues in Burma, which has been all too common in the past, is to miss the boat.

[Backwards Observer]

I was out of line. My apologies to everyone.

Well, as you apparently intended to insult "everyone", I feel much better now.

[Dayuhan]

I won't retract my observation about Chinese border nations however. There's a very clear pattern there, and there's been one for quite a long time. Not a single one of the communist border states, much less some of the quasi-failed non-communist ones, are in any danger of becoming the next Hong Kong.

The Vietnamese aren't doing all that badly, in their own way. They won't be the next HK, but they've stepped out of the basket and have a functioning economy. Still a ways to go, but that's common enough in the world. India might also be cited as a Chinese border state that has made a bit of progress.

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.

[Dayuhan]

The countries where the heroin trade flourishes are almost uniformly pseudo-communist dictatorships, and nearly every one of them shares a border with China.

Isn't something over 90% of the world's opium grown in Afghanistan and shipped through Pakistan? There are borders with China in both cases but neither can be credibly called a "pseudo-communist dictatorship" and any attempt to attribute the opium trade in these countries to Chinese machinations would be taking sinophobia to hitherto unheard of heights... quite an accomplishment given the heights sinophobia has reached in the past.

The US has a bit of a past in Burma, as do Britain, China, and others; companies from the US, France, China and others are involved to various extents today. None of these escape some level of complicity and responsibility for current conditions. It would certainly be unreasonable to blame it all on the US, the CIA, or Chevron/Total/PTT, just as it would be unreasonable to blame it all on China.