Boom times for Myanmar opium farmers amid internal conflict

PEKON, Myanmar - In a remote corner of Myanmar, a line of farmers move through a field of nodding poppies, making small cuts in the greenish-purple pods to release opium resin.

The next morning, they will collect the residue that has seeped out overnight and parcel it up into bundles of sticky opium – the building blocks for manufacturing heroin.

Myanmar became the world’s biggest opium producer in 2023, according to the United Nations, overtaking Afghanistan after the Taliban government launched a crackdown on the crop there.

The flowers have long flourished in Myanmar’s rugged borderlands, where ethnic minority armed groups and criminal outfits refine them into heroin, and law enforcement turns a blind eye to the billion-dollar trade, analysts say.

After the military seized power in 2021, sparking social and economic turmoil and armed conflict across the country, the cash crop has become more important to some farmers struggling to get by.

“I planted poppies in recent years, but only a few,” said Mr Aung Moe Oo, speaking from the vast field enclosed by hills on the border of Shan and Karen states.