0003160 G.F. 316
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The main field force of the Burmese Army is three Divisions. It is a hard, loan Army very much a rifle, bayonet and light machine gun affair of World War II vintage. There are few supporting arms while the Air Force is substantially grounded for want of spare parts. Two of the three Divisions are engaged in containing the Communist White Flag insurgents in the north east of the Shan State and are likely to be so engaged for a lengthy period. Given the small size and obsolete, minimal equipment of this Army in relation to the vast, wild and mountainous areas it is required to pacify, there can be little hope that the Central Government will be able to gain control of the Shan State or the Kachin Hills, or its frontier with Laos and Thailand in the foreseeable future. Thus, short of the Burmese Government accepting substantial assistance from the United Nations, or other countries, which it is unwilling to do except in a very limited innocuous way, or some form of outside intervention, illicit opium growing and trafficking for export are likely to continue virtually unabated in Burma for a long time to come.
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The Burmese view of the illicit traffic in opium and its derivatives is that if the markets in Hong Kong, America and elsewhere did not exist, then there would be no incentive for the tribesmen in Burma to grow opium to meet the demands of those markets and the traffickers would automatically go out of business. Therefore it is up to Hong Kong and others to solve their own problems themselves. This view is somewhat glib and oversim- plifies what is a very difficult and complex clandestine operation with closely interrelated multi-national involvement all along the line from producer to consumer a problem which must be attacked everywhere simultaneously. No one would deny that victim countries must strain every effort to solve their own drug problems, but countries producing opium illicitly outside the provisions of the 1961 Single Convention and the supervision of the International Narcotics Control Board also have a responsibility to the world community, particularly when they have ratified the Single Convention as is the case with Burma.
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There have been encouraging signs of a modification and some change in attitude on the part of the Burmese Government during the past six months in as much as visits by Sir Harry Greenfield, President of the International Narcotics Control Board, and Ambassador Carl Schurmann, Head of the United Nations Fund for Drug Abuse Control, were well received by the Burmese due mainly to the understanding and low-key approach they adopted. Arising from the latter the Burmese Government now has under consideration a U.N. pilot project aimed at opium crop substitu- tion. It will be many years, however, before this can make any impact on the problem, but it is a start assuming that it receives
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