1.
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FACTS THAT BEAR ON THE S.S.A'S PROPOSALS
No Permanent Solution.
From what we saw there seems to be no answer to the opium problem other than the standard one followed elsewhere in the world. In many villages west of the Salween, opium is the only cash crop and acts as a cushion against a bad rice harvest or pays for such simple things as knives and cloth. Few households grow more than 1 viss (3.6 lbs), and in 1973 1 viss sold for 250 kyatts (roughly $20) representing the total cash income of many farmers. In the mountain areas east of the Salween where the land is poor, many villages have to grow between 3 and 5 viss per household to buy enough rice to live. If the trade in opium were stopped abruptly, these people would starve.
There therefore seems no alternative to the usual programme of crop substitution. And if this has raised problems in Thailand of new crops, new markets, and of the roads and trucks to transport the crops, in Burma these issues are infinitely more complex. The road system is probably 20 years behind Thailand, and many of the roads we walked on saw a truck a week at the most. The Burmese garrisons are sited in fortified camps along these roads and there is virtually no administration outside the towns and the larger villages. In the area where we spent most of our time, there had once been Burmese schools and co-operatives, but the S.S.A. has closed these down and not even the census officials ventured into the countryside with less than a hundred men.
Obviously there can be no permanant solution until there is some sort of political settlement which provides a government capable of administering the countryside. Until that time there is not much point in considering anything but temporary measures which is all that the S.S.A. proposals are.
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2.
Military Stalemate
The military position of the Burmese Army is worse than it was when we were in Kengtung in 1965. The Communists hold Kokang and Wah State with a force of about 20,000 men and the Burmese have not heen able to enter these areas for almost a year. The armies of the Shan, Karen, Kachin and Ba O are not much larger than before, but they are better trained and organised with younger men
many from the universities in charge. And though there seems no likelihood of the Resistance Armies becoming strong enough to win a military victory, the Burmese Army has completely lost the initiative. Every year it seems thinner on the ground struggling to hold more land with less soldiers, and every year the economy appears more stagnant, weighed down by the burden of the army and the insurgency.
The guerillas believe that time is on their side and are waiting for the day when a Burmese government will be forced to negotiate with them. Publicly most of the national groups are demanding independence, but privately many of the leaders admit that they would settle for the old constitution before Ne Win's coup d'etat.
This guaranteed democracy and a form of internal self-government for the different national groups in the different states, and was the condition on which the minorities joined the Union of Burma, at Independence.
It is therefore more than a possibility that when peace and order return to Shan State it will be in the form of a locally elected Shan government.
3. Burmese Use of the Opium Trade
a. From our viewpoint in the 'jungle', it looked as though the government of General Ne Win disapproved of the opium trade but is