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The flower fields stretch out from the mountain village along most every road — fluttering patchworks of white and pink and purple.
The beauty in this corner of Shan State, in northeastern Myanmar, might seem a respite from the country’s brutal civil war. Instead the blooms are a symptom: It is all opium poppy in these fields, and Myanmar again ranks as the world’s biggest exporter of the raw material to make heroin and other opiates. And that’s just the beginning.
Since descending into a full-blown civil conflict nearly four years ago, after the military overthrew the elected government, Myanmar has cemented its status as a hotbed of transnational crime. It is a playground for warlords, arms dealers, human traffickers, poachers, drug syndicates and generals wanted by international courts.
Myanmar is now the biggest nexus of organized crime on the planet, according to the Global Organized Crime Index.
Source: U.N. Myanmar Information Management Unit
By Agnes Chang
The criminality flourishing in Myanmar’s fertile soil carries disastrous consequences for its 55 million people. It is also spreading the fruits of transgression across the globe. With more than half of the country battle-struck following the military coup in February 2021 that unseated the civilian authority of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar is racking up dubious superlatives.
