US embassy cable - 02RANGOON1547

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 RANGOON 001547 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR INL, EAP AND EB/ODF 
TREASURY FOR OASIA AND FINCEN 
NSC FOR BEERS 
DEA FOR OF, OFF 
MANILA ALSO FOR USED/ADB 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SNAR, EAID, BM, Ethnics 
SUBJECT: OPIUM ERADICATION AND THE DECIMATION OF VILLAGES 
IN THE WA TERRITORIES 
 
1.  Summary: The fate of Song Keh, a village that was 
forcibly relocated in 1999 as part of the Wa opium 
eradication program, illustrates what may happen more broadly 
in the Wa territories as the Wa push forward with their 
program.  Left to fend for itself with only minimal supplies, 
almost one-quarter of the village's population died within a 
period of less than 3 years.  Picked up by UNDCP as emergency 
case when it was on the verge of returning to opium farming, 
Song Keh is now slowly recovering from the trauma of the 
experience.  However, UNDCP does not have the resources or 
the mandate to deal with the thousands of villages and 
hundreds of thousands of villagers who will be affected by Wa 
efforts to fulfill their pledge to make their territories 
opium-free by 2005.  As matters stand now, many villagers 
will pay for that program with their lives -- a fact that has 
caught the attention of Aung San Suu Kyi, among others in 
Burma. End Summary. 
 
2.  Nothing illustrates the human cost of the Wa opium 
eradication programs so well as the fate of Song Keh, a Wa 
village that was forcibly relocated to the Nam Lwe valley (in 
northern Shan State, near the border with China) in 1999.  A 
village of about 480 mostly Christian Wa, Song Keh was 
originally located north of Pang Sang near Mong Maw in one of 
the thickest opium growing regions of the Wa territories. 
Relocated to Nam Lwe, the villagers were given essentially 
the same support given all resettled villagers by the United 
Wa State Party -- a stretch of wooded bottom land, 6 months 
of food, building materials for their houses, some basic 
medicines, and, in the case of Song Keh, 10 buffalo to help 
with the initial plowing. 
 
3. However, in Song Keh's case, as in the case of many 
relocated villages, the supplies proved sadly inadequate, 
leaving the village at the close of 2001 on the verge of 
collapse.  By October 2001, when Poloff first visited the 
village, the population had dwindled to only 373 as death had 
claimed almost ten percent of villagers each year since the 
time they were relocated.  Forty-two died in 1999, 36 in 
2000, and 30 in 2001, with most deaths coming from 
malnutrition, complicated by severe anemia, chest infections, 
and intestinal diseases.  Village food production amounted to 
only about 10 percent of the village's annual needs and, even 
supported by income from other jobs, villagers faced a food 
deficit equivalent to four to six months of annual 
consumption.  In short, they were condemned to starve.  The 
original buffalo had all been slaughtered, there was no clean 
water source or sanitation facilities for the village and, 
out of desperation, most had moved back into opium 
cultivation.  Virtually all of the village's 67 acres had 
been seeded in opium for the 2001/02 crop year in an effort 
to generate cash for food. 
 
4.  That decision, in turn, nearly proved to be the death 
knell for the village.  As it turned out, Song Keh's fields 
lay exactly in the middle of an area that the Wa and UNDCP's 
Wa Alternative Development Project had designated as an opium 
free area.  Consequently, when the village's crop blossomed, 
it was quickly felled by a joint Wa/UNDCP eradication program 
in February and March 2002. 
 
5.  Fortunately, UNDCP did not leave the matter there, but 
put together a program for the critically stricken village. 
This included deployment of a mobile health team, child 
immunization, the distribution of mosquito nets, and the 
construction of new water points and toilet and sanitation 
facilities.  Clothes and rice (about 19 tons) were handed out 
on an emergency basis.  Seeds for summer and winter crops 
were also distributed.  A school was built, classes started, 
and plans laid for the installation of three low-lift pumps 
for irrigation, as well as a new rice storage facility. 
 
6.  The entire program cost less than $20,000, but the 
effects were immediate.  By November 2002, when Poloff 
visited again, village deaths had dropped by two-thirds to 
only 11 in the year to date; 42 children are in school; all 
the village children have been vaccinated; and there is no 
opium.  All of the villages 67 acres have been seeded in food 
crops for the 2002/03 winter season. 
 
7. Song Keh is, of course, an extreme case.  It was only one 
of 13 villages that were relocated from areas north of Pang 
Sang to areas around Mong Hpen in 1999 and 2000 and, while 
there was suffering in all, none of the others ended up in 
the desperate straits that developed in Song Keh.  That said, 
Song Keh is as vivid example as one will ever find of what 
can happen when villages are forced out of opium production 
without sufficient economic support. 
 
8.  For the Wa territories, of course, this is critical. 
Over the next three years, the territories as a whole are to 
complete a transition to opium-free status, essentially as a 
result of Burmese and Chinese political pressure.  Several 
thousand villages with a population of between 300,000 and 
400,000 people will be affected.  As of now, however, only 
those resident in the Wa Alternative Development Project area 
(about 40,000 people) will receive any support at all (and 
that only to the end of 2003).   The rest will essentially be 
left to fend for themselves or to the mercies of the Wa's 
relocation program.  In either case, many will die. 
 
Comment 
 
9. Two points are worth stressing about this situation, 
First, the risks that the Wa are taking with their own 
population gives some sense of the pressure they are under 
from both the Burmese and the Chinese to get out of opium. 
While the Wa have never been cautious about spending lives 
for the sake of real strategic objective, the fact that they 
are willing to spend lives in this cause gives a sense of its 
importance to them. 
 
10.  Secondly, someone will pay for the elimination of opium 
in the Wa territories and Burma more generally.  It is not a 
cost-free exercise. As matters stand now, most of those costs 
will be borne by upland villagers who have few options other 
than opium production. (Aung San Suu Kyi made this exact 
point to the Chief of Mission and Poloff on December 2.)  The 
Wa authorities and the Government of Burma may kick in some 
support, but, as Song Keh's experience demonstrates, it is 
hardly likely to be enough.  The international community, 
which will benefit most from the elimination of opium here, 
could also help. However, as yet, there is no sign that the 
international community will act on a scale sufficient to 
prevent a tragedy, essentially because of sensitivities about 
work with the Wa in Burma. 
Martinez