Obstacles in Myanmar Government’s Crackdown on Illicit Drug Trade

Yesterday, The Irrawaddy released an article describing the Burmese Home Affairs Ministry’s difficulties in controlling the illicit entry of drugs into Myanmar. The article focuses on the Ministry’s inability to fully regulate its borders as well as to completely quash distribution and sale of illegal drugs within Burmese borders themselves. This piece was particularly interesting to me especially in light of my previous article on the crackdown carried out by the Burmese government on the journalists who reported on the Rohingya crisis. I’m not sure if this indicates an imbalance in priorities on the government’s perspective leading to their preferential treatment of differing social issues, or if they generally do not have the resources to fully carry out their intended measures across the board.

Something else that was interesting to me was the fact that the deputy minister Aung Thu reportedly told Parliament that their inability to crack down more strongly on this issue is because they find it “difficult to fully control the border gates”. This seemed to tie in with some of our class discussions on the more archaic mandala model of states (as compared to the modern nation-state) as well as definitions of national boundaries in general, as it seems that the Burmese government is struggling to maintain a consistent enforcement of its state power within the its borders. 

It’s really interesting to me observing (in general, but also through the recent examples from Myanmar I’ve seen) the negotiation that a state makes in the way it enforces national policies and laws on its population, whether this is through intimidation and threat of incarceration for ‘improper’ journalism or incentivizing the public to help with the anti-drug campaign. One really does wonder how the harsher top-down tactics compare to the gentler, more community-oriented campaigns, and if governments are most effective utilizing these mechanisms in pure forms (of one or the other) or through some combination of the two spread over different types of legal matters and governmental concerns.