Blood, Dreams and Gold by Richard Cockett

Author:Richard Cockett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300204513
Publisher: Yale University Press

The ghost town of Hpa-An – and the catastrophe of drugs

If the Karen civil war fatally wounded the early post-independence Burmese state, it eventually did far more damage to the Karen themselves. Kayin State was turned into a war zone, with the seven-brigade-strong KNLA, the armed wing of the KNU, at times exerting military control over much of the south of the state, especially in the more remote hills pressed up against the Thai border. From bases in Thailand, principally around Three Pagodas Pass, they received supplies and support from their fellow Karen, and were joined by well-wishers and soldiers of fortune, motivated by religion, anti-communism or just a simple love of adventure.

The war ravaged the once-thriving Karen hill economy, as the Burmese army clearly intended. There was massive depopulation as hundreds of thousands fled the fighting, many of them braving the arduous journey through the jungle to scores of refugee camps around Mae Sot in Thailand. These camps contained about 145,000 people by 2010. Many who fled were the young and better educated, as there were no more jobs available in Kayin State. Much of the land became off limits due to landmines, laid by both sides, rendering it impossible to cultivate.

As normal administration broke down completely in the state, so over the decades it became one of the poorest in Burma, itself the second-poorest country in Asia. Increasing malnutrition, disease, displacement and the stress of war contributed to a steady and marked decline in the Karen peoples’ health, so much so that they now have some of the worst such statistics in the world. Dr Cynthia Maung and the remarkable Backpack Health Worker Team in Mae Sot have been tracking this deterioration. By 2010, they and other such groups had found that 41.2 per cent of children under five were acutely malnourished in the hills of eastern Burma, and that 60 per cent of deaths in children under five were from preventable and treatable diseases. Child mortality rates were nearly twice as high as in the rest of Burma, and the maternal mortality figure three times the national average.7

The terrible consequences of all these decades of conflict, military, political and cultural, are all much in evidence in the city of Hpa-An. Road access to it is rigorously controlled by Burmese army checkpoints. And like in Myitkyina, the central Burman authorities are confined to a small enclave, where they occupy the choicest buildings leading down to a lake that gives on to some memorable views of the local limestone outcrops. It is the only part of town that could vaguely be described as picturesque. For the rest, Hpa-An is mainly a depressing collection of shabby concrete and corrugated iron houses, sagging electricity wires and crumbling masonry.

Everyone agrees that the main social problem here and throughout the hill areas, is drugs. The monk San Dar Wara was too pained to talk about it much with me, but he reckoned that 60 per cent of young people are either taking drugs, or pushing them.

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