Opium farming takes root in Myanmar s war wracked landscape

PEKON, Myanmar – Scraping opium resin off a seed pod in Myanmar’s remote poppy fields, displaced farmer Aung Hla describes the narcotic crop as his only prospect in a country made barren by conflict.

The 35-year-old was a rice farmer when the junta seized power in a 2021 coup, adding pro-democracy guerillas to the long-running civil conflict between the military and ethnic armed groups.

Four years on, the United Nations has said Myanmar is mired in a “polycrisis” of mutually compounding conflict, poverty and environmental damage.

Mr Aung Hla was forced off his land in Moe Bye village by fighting after the coup.

When he resettled, his usual crops were no longer profitable, but the hardy poppy promised “just enough for a livelihood”.

“Everyone thinks people grow poppy flowers to be rich, but we are just trying hard to get by,” he said in the rural Pekon township of eastern Shan state.

Mr Aung Hla says he regrets growing the substance – the core ingredient in heroin – but said the income is the only thing separating him from starvation.

“If anyone were in my shoes, they would likely do the same.”

Displaced and desperate

Myanmar’s opium production was previously second only to that of Afghanistan, where poppy farming flourished following the US-led invasion in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.

But after the Taliban government launched a crackdown, Myanmar overtook Afghanistan as the world’s biggest producer of opium in 2023, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Myanmar’s opiate economy, including the value of domestic consumption as well as exports abroad, is estimated at between US$589 million (S$785 million) and US$1.57 billion, according to the UNODC.

Between September and February each year, dozens of workers toil in Pekon’s fields,