OVERALL OPIUM SUCCESS IS A PIPEDREAM

Clearing Laos' hills of poppies has created major social and health problems
for traditional farmers

The Lao government's headlong rush towards its 2005 deadline for total opium
eradication is hailed by drug control agencies as a remarkable success. But
many Lao people have little cause to celebrate.

International NGOs and development specialists have issued warnings about
the looming humanitarian disaster inflicted on hilltribes people, cajoled
and coerced to abandon their traditional opium livelihoods without any
alternatives in place.

The cold statistics of the Laos Opium Survey 2004 and the triumphalist
comments of Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office of
Drug and Crime, or Undoc, about the end of opium in the Golden Triangle,
ignores the human costs and suffering for the Hmong, Akha and other
hilltribes ravaged by disease in resettlement zones.

More than 30,000 Hmong, Akha and other tribes have been uprooted from their
traditional homes and mountain habitats and resettled in the valleys. Undoc
admits that crop substitution, international aid projects and government aid
cover only a few areas.

Some Western diplomats have been shocked to learn the costs of the
donor-driven policy of total opium eradication by the year 2005 without the
necessary alternative amenities in place.

According to one NGO survey of resettlement areas, people from all age
groups are dying of malaria and dysentery. Mortality rates from diseases
triggered by poor sanitation and lack of medicines soared to 4% on average
where the national average is 1.2%. An NGO survey showed that is about twice
the mortality rate of hilltribe farmers in their former mountain habitat,
with no access to the supposed benefits of development promised by the
government in its resettlement programme.

These appalling findings have been confirmed by a separate United Nations
Development Programme report by development consultant Dr Charles Alton. He
observed that hilltribe people moving to new villages ''not only lack
sufficient rice, but they faced fresh diseases _ malaria, gastro-intestinal
problems, and parasites'' that were seldom experienced up in the mountains.

Some of the embassies that have endorsed the Undoc and US (Drug Enforcement
Administration, or DEA) narcotics programmes to wipe out all opium
cultivation are now beginning to entertain serious doubts.

''There is mounting evidence that large numbers of hilltribes people have
died as a result of being moved down to the valleys,'' said one senior
Australian diplomat formerly based in Vientiane. ''There has been a lack of
preparation.''

If the government insists on total opium elimination by 2005, another
Western diplomat in Vientiane concluded, ''such a deadline can only be met
by more and more draconian measures'' which could trigger a humanitarian
catastrophe.

Hmong and Akha people are dying like flies _ not because of any insurgency
or displacement caused by a shooting war _ but rather because of an
overzealous implementation of global anti-narcotics war. Can anyone with a
conscience seriously claim that with so many casualties in the drug war that
Laos represents a ''success story''?

Mr Costa is not unaware of the growing humanitarian problem. In his July
report on Laos, the Undoc director admitted: ''We have the collective
responsibility to ensure that the poorest of the poor are not the ones who
pay the price for successes in drug control'', urging donor nations to
''extend a compassionate hand to destitute farmers''.

Some observer think this sentiment is a bit late. A number of Laos-based
development specialists who prefer to remain anonymous argue that Undoc has
put the cart before the horse, and that development must come before, not
after, the cutting back on opium cultivation. Perhaps the UN drug control
agency should have checked first into the number of alternative crop
projects in place before convincing the Laos government to destroy the only
livelihood the hilltribes had, and in many cases their major source of
medicine.

Up to the late 1990s, the Laos government, mindful that more than 40% of its
population were hilltribes and that opium was an important cash crop and
medicine, displayed a sensible reluctance to ban opium poppy cultivation
until the international community could guarantee alternative crops and
livelihoods were in place. However, Pino Arlacchi, former director of Undoc,
and the US DEA pushed zealously for UN member states to accept deadlines
adopted in 1998 for ridding the world of narcotics supplies..Laos was
pressed to fall into line and drop all its caveats with clearly disastrous
results.

But some opium-growing nations are exempt from narcotics repression.
Australia, France, India, Spain and Turkey are all members of a licit opium
growing club of nations based on pharmaceutical demand. A number of Lao
government officials have queried why no consideration has ever been given
to providing their poor poppy farmers with the same deal as Tasmanian
farmers in Australia.

A Vientiane-based international consultant thought it ridiculous that
Tasmanians should benefit from growing opium while Laos was penalised. ''Why
has no one carried out a feasibility study on the legalisation of opium for
pharmaceutical purposes in Laos?'' he asked.

Given that Laos' contribution to the international heroin market has never
been more than marginal, and narcotics agencies accept that around 40% of
production is consumed domestically, what is left of current opium output
could readily be absorbed by the pharmaceutical demand for pain-killing
drugs provide by opiates.

A Western diplomat formerly based in Vientiane conceded that the real
obstacle to accepting an alternative approach to the opium crop is all tied
up with the psychology generated by the global war on drugs.

According to her assessment: ''Anyone who advocates a new field of
legalisation, even if it is for medicinal purposes, there is a strong
mindset against it. This is an issue which brings a lot of emotional baggage
with it.''

Tom Fawthrop has reported from this region for British and regional media
for more than 20 years, and is the co-author of ''Getting Away With
Genocide?'' (Khmer Rouge Tribunal) to be published in October.