In Myanmar, a poisoned pill fuels a ruthless conflict

KARENNI STATE—The first time Captain Agga stumbled upon a massive stash of methamphetamine was in 2016. The discovery came in the remote hills of northern Shan State, where his Myanmar military infantry column had been skirmishing with a Shan militia. After the militia retreated, abandoning their trucks, Agga’s team moved in. Unlatching the heavy steel doors of one vehicle, they were met with an astonishing sight—bag after bag, filled with thousands of tiny, bright red tablets. After some brief deliberation on what to do with the drugs, it suddenly became a free for all. From low-ranking troops to officers, the men loaded up with as much meth as they could carry. With each bag containing 200 pills, they were hauling huge quantities of the illicit substance back to their base. Some of the troops kept the drugs for their own personal use, while others gifted them to their commanders. This was not the only time that Myanmar soldiers had laid their hands on huge caches of drugs. Across Shan State, this went on openly for years, according to Agga. But the situation has only gotten worse since the military seized power nearly four years ago, he told Myanmar Now. In post-coup Myanmar, meth use by the army’s rank and file, and by the wider public, has reached every state and region of the union. “Yaba use is widespread across the entire country, across every battalion,” said Agga, referring to a tablet form of methamphetamine combined with caffeine. (As a former senior officer who has defected from the military, “Captain Agga” uses a pseudonym to protect himself and his family from reprisals.) Among Myanmar’s soldiers, he says, yaba use has become a grim necessity—a response to the relentless toll of a war they appear to be losing. Surrounded by hostile forces, and with comrades dying daily, fear runs rampant through junta ranks. “When they have to clear these battlegrounds, when they hear that a whole column has been killed, they get scared,” he said. “So they use drugs in order to fight this fear.” But not all of this drug use is a matter of choice. Allegations have surfaced that the military is using meth to fuel the rampages of its frontline troops. According to testimony collected by three recently defected junta officers, informants in Yangon, and resistance leaders in Karenni State, there is growing evidence that the regime is pushing soldiers to abuse yaba in order to foster fearlessness, aggression, and obedience. “You can say that drug use is compulsory now,” Agga said. “They need the drugs, because after the coup, the military has been forced to fight across the whole country.”‘More capable of causing chaos’ A KNDF soldier stands at attention at a military base in Demoso (Photo: Caleb Quinley / Myanmar Now) The widespread availability and cheap cost of yaba have long made it the drug of choice among ordinary soldiers. During his time as a senior officer stationed in infantry battalions across the country, Agga often saw for himself how uniformed troops openly sourced, distributed, and abused narcotics on a mass scale. But while this reliance on narcotics has been common for years, current conditions within the military have made it absolutely indispensable, says Agga. With few troops left in the barracks, “everyone is deployed to the front,” where sleep deprivation and other hardships have made drugs the soldiers’ only respite. Yaba is even more essential when it comes time to fight. The night before a mission, select soldiers deemed “brave and willing to fight” are given 8-12 tablets to ensure that they will be hyperactive and ready for combat by morning. While superior officers don’t explicitly order drug use, Agga said, they provide the drugs and strongly encourage consumption, creating an unspoken mandate. This practice serves a strategic purpose. Meth emboldens soldiers, making them more willing to leave their safe zones and lead others into battle. Commanders know this and take full advantage of it to overcome their subordinates’ natural fear of death and injury. Drugs can also be used to artificially boost morale in the face of failure, according to Agga. “After defeats, they [senior officers] would convene meetings and discuss forming specialised teams composed of the most capable fighters—those who could fight well under the influence,” he said. As demand for yaba continues to rise in war-torn Myanmar, supply has also reached an all-time high, with experts warning that production and distribution of the drug are now “beyond out of control.” Produced in labs in northern Shan State, the drug generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually, sustaining both the junta and powerful ethnic armed groups. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the scale of drug production and profits in Shan State has become so immense that it eclipses the region’s formal economy, embedding itself at the core of its political system. Inshik Sim, the UNODC’s regional coordinator for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, told Myanmar Now that drugs, particularly stimulants like meth, have long played a role in conflict in Asia. “Drugs and conflict have a long history in Asia and other regions, and there have been many documented instances where military and armed group personnel have used or been encouraged to use drugs and in particular stimulants like meth—for energy, to encourage risk taking and aggression,” Sim said. “Given the scale of production, trafficking and use in Myanmar, it is not surprising there are allegations and reports of soldiers or armed group fighters using, but how they get it is unclear,” he added. Similar questions were raised in 2021 when officers within the junta’s anti-drug task forces started noticing an obvious increase in meth use. “I found that many soldiers in the army were using drugs. But at first we didn’t know where they were getting them from,” said Kaung Khant, another defected junta officer who worked in an anti-drugs task force for years. In time, he said, he learned that the meth was being provided by senior officers to military personnel cracking down on young democracy protesters. The result was a force unhinged—irrational, hyperactive, and unrestrained. “Now I know the superiors were giving [drugs] to lower-ranking officers to do cruel things and carry out unlawful orders,” he said, noting that the soldiers committed acts of violence that shocked even seasoned observers. “Without the drugs, it would have been difficult to implement those things. After the coup, during the early crackdowns, suddenly they became more capable of causing chaos.” ‘It’s hurting our communities’ Maui, the deputy commander-in-chief of the KNDF, sits with a group of his troops at an undisclosed location in Karenni State (Photo: Charles Rosser / Myanmar Now) A senior Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) commander told Myanmar Now that many junta prisoners of war (POWs) have confessed to becoming addicted to meth since the coup, with their chain of command systematically supplying them with yaba. “They use it before they go on a mission or before they fight. We know they are given the drugs by their senior officers first, and then many of them become addicted,” Maui, the KNDF’s deputy commander in chief, told Myanmar Now. “Recently, we captured four POWs near Loikaw. When they surrendered, we also seized around 30 meth tablets,” he added. “When we asked them who was using this, the guys said: ‘We are all using it in the army, this is not a problem.’ They openly and proudly admit to using these drugs.” But it’s not just the combatants who are using and abusing meth. Civilian populations across the nation are also being devastated by drug addiction. The Karenni State Police, a civilian-led law enforcement body, continues to seize large amounts of yaba throughout the state (Photo: Karenni State Police) In Karenni State, the scourge of yaba use has become one of the key concerns of the civilian authorities in areas now controlled by resistance forces. On the outskirts of Demoso, the road to Loikaw is dotted with checkpoints where men and women clad in the black uniforms of the Karenni State Police (KSP) wave down vehicles in an effort to maintain law and order. Stemming the flow of meth through the state is high on their list of priorities. The KSP serves as the law enforcement wing of the Karenni Interim Executive Council (IEC), the de facto government in resistance-held Karenni territory. Day after day, week after week, KSP officers intercept young men carrying yaba, making arrests that lead them to mid-level dealers who have embedded themselves in communities across the region. “Because there is so much yaba in this area, it’s creating a lot of problems for families,” Khu Poe Reh, a senior KSP officer in Demoso, told Myanmar Now. “It’s particularly impacting households with women and children, even impacting their education. So it’s hurting our communities.” In a modest jail house under his watch, Khu Poe Reh shows how the KSP is dealing with the problem. Inside a cramped cell, inmates sit in a meticulous row—cross-legged, backs rigid, eyes fixed forward—in the dim light. Their heads are newly shaved, and as he nears the steel bars, they acknowledge his presence with a formal, synchronised greeting. “All of these men are locked up because they were dealers,” he said. “They will stay here until they are ready to go back to society.” Meanwhile, resistance groups are also policing drug use within their own ranks, trying to prevent it from poisoning their forces the way it has Myanmar’s military. “Some resistance groups here in Demoso have had meetings to try to keep the drug from infiltrating the ranks of the resistance,” said Khu Poe Reh, adding that both ethnic armed groups and the People’s Defence Force, under the National Unity Government, are trying to tackle the issue. ‘As long as there is war, the drugs will spread’ A Karenni State Police officer displays a weekly catch of methamphetamine seized from drug dealers from Shan State (Photo: Caleb Quinley / Myanmar Now) For some, there are fears that the regime is weaponising yaba in more ways than one. According to Wahkushee Tenner, director of the Karen Peace Support Network, many in Karen State believe that the junta, officially known as the State Administration Council (SAC), is deliberately flooding local communities with drugs as a way to weaken them. “They say that many young people are addicted to drugs, and that they’re available everywhere,” she said. “And this is the strategy of the SAC. The Burma army is bringing drugs into the Karen area to destroy younger generations, to destroy young people’s futures.” While others hesitate to make such claims, it is apparent to most that the drugs are coming from, or through, areas still under regime control. “It’s hard to say that the drugs are coming from the SAC, because we don’t have enough evidence,” said Banya Khung Aung, director of the Karenni Human Rights Group and secretary 2 of the IEC. “But we clearly know the dealers are bringing the drugs from southern Shan State.” Indeed, drug use is not confined to conflict areas. Far from the frontlines, 25-year-old Zaw Htet spent years fighting a different battle, having made it his mission to combat addiction in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon. As a community leader and researcher, he has been tracking the spread of drugs across urban areas since before the coup. What he has observed is a disturbing surge in use under the current regime. Driving this steady increase, he says, is Myanmar’s deepening poverty under junta rule. Like soldiers, many ordinary citizens are turning to drugs to cope with their growing desperation. “A tablet of yaba costs less than a trip on the bus. Anyone can afford it,” he said, adding that the daily struggle to survive has created fertile ground for addiction to take root. Citing his extensive network of contacts, he also noted that regime authorities play a key role in propagating drug use. “In Yangon, there is a captain of the special anti-drugs task force who is dealing. So it’s the junta officers who are doing a lot of the distribution,” he told Myanmar Now. As a former political prisoner, Zaw Htet was able to gain unique access to Myanmar’s criminal underworld, with its ties to corrupt officials and lawless armed groups operating under the wing of the country’s military. During his incarceration in two notorious prisons—Insein and Thayarwaddy—he befriended a captain from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army who was also imprisoned. Upon Zaw Htet’s release, the captain handed him the phone number of an associate. What he discovered was that the number belonged to a senior junta officer deeply entrenched in Yangon’s drug distribution network. Through his network of close sources, Zaw Htet was able to monitor drug activity in the city. He uncovered consistent links pointing back to this junta captain. Over time, they began socialising outside, where alcohol loosened the captain’s tongue. “So eventually we got close, we went drinking, and when he was drunk he talked about confiscating drugs and how much he earns selling them,” Zaw Htet said. “And then I heard his name from other sources as one of the distributors in Thayarwaddy Prison.” When asked if he knew anything about the junta’s involvement in drugging their troops, his response was blunt. “Yes, it’s the truth,” he said. “I heard when I was in prison, many prisoners were in jail from running away from the army. I heard that many of them share drugs among each other.” Zaw Htet has since escaped to resistance territory, where he continues to monitor high-ranking officials while working to rehabilitate civilian addicts. “As long as there is a civil war, the drugs will spread, because the junta and ethnic armies are both reliant on the funds to buy weapons,” he said. “So for now, we’re trying to help users break away from addiction.” But within the ranks of Myanmar’s military, drug addiction is likely to become one of the lasting legacies of the coup and the conflict it has unleashed, according to former junta officer Kaung Khant. “The generals act solely in their own self-interest, using drugs not only to create profits, but also as a means to maintain power,” he said, explaining why the regime is making no effort to bring the problem under control. “Even after the revolution, these soldiers, exploited by their superiors, will remain victims of the drugs. They will carry the pain of this long after the fighting has ended.”

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