Ironically, relief efforts by the World Food Program under the United Nations have given a leg up to opium cultivation in Burma’s northern Kachin State, said local sources.

As of early 2008, the WFP has been distributing free rice to people in former civil war torn areas around Kachin State. However, the agency’s supply of rice has helped people to cultivate opium more easily, said local sources connected to opium fields.

Especially, in Sadung, also spelled Sadon areas and former New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K) controlled areas in east Kachin State, bordering China’s Yunnan province, most villagers are using the agency’s rice as ration while cultivating opium, according to sources among them.
A woman in opium field in Sadung in east of Kachin State's capital Myitkyina.
By using the free rice from the WFP, villagers cultivate opium privately. They also cultivate hundreds of acres of opium fields for other local and foreign Chinese businessmen as hired cultivators, added the sources.  

A Kachin Baptist preacher in Myitkyina told KNG today, “People in Sadung areas can survive with the help of traditional hillside paddy cultivation without the WFP’s rice.  The agency’s rice for development of people in former war torn areas has led to an increase in opium cultivation”.

This way, people in former NDA-K controlled areas and Sadung are earning money from opium cultivation, said local sources.

Opium cultivation in former NDA-K controlled areas have increased significantly soon after the group’s leader Zahkung Ting Ying officially stopped the annual drug eradication programme since early this year, said sources close to the NDA-K.

Drug eradication by the rebels was stopped because the NDA-K annually spent Chinese 300,000 Yuan to 400,000 Yuan on individual drug eradication programmes. However, it has failed to stop the increase in opium cultivation only wasting the money, added NDA-K sources.

Most opium fields in Sadung are owned by Chinese-Burmese and Indian-Burmese businessmen in Myitkyina and Bhamo, the two main cities of Kachin State, and businessmen from neighbouring China, said sources close to those businessmen.

All opium field owners have to grease the palms of the Burmese military authorities and Kachin rebels who control the areas, said local sources.

In the largest opium fields in Kachin State in Hukawng Valley and Sadung areas, the authorities like military affairs security unit (military intelligence), police, the special police and narcotic police occasionally drop in and demand money from the owners of all opium fields, said sources close to field owners.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported on December 14 that opium cultivation in Burma increased in the third straight year even as ethnic Kachin and Wa rebels sell drugs to buy weapons.

The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) based in Kachin State and Northeast Shan State, which is resisting pressure to disarm by the Burmese ruling junta, has rubbished the UNODC report.
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