1 For an analysis of the unintended negative consequences of counter-narcotics strategies, see Jelsma, Martin and Kramer, Tom, ‘Downward spiral: Banning opium in Afghanistan and Burma’, in Drugs and conflict, debate papers, no. 12, ed. Aronson, David and Dove, Fiona (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2005), pp. 3–23Google Scholar; McCoy, Alfred, ‘The stimulus of prohibition: A critical history of the global narcotics trade’, in Dangerous harvest: Drug plants and the transformation of indigenous landscapes, ed. Steinberg, Michael, Hobbs, Joseph and Mathewson, Kent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Tullis, LaMond, Unintended consequences: Illegal drugs and drug policies in nine countries (London: Lyne Rienner Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar.

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3 Ballentine, Karen and Sherman, Jake, ‘Introduction’, in The political economy of armed conflict: Beyond greed and grievance, ed. Ballentine, Karen and Sherman, Jake (London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2003), p. 1Google Scholar; see also, Collier, Paul, ‘Doing well out of war: An economic perspective’, in Greed and grievance: Economic agendas in civil wars, ed. Berdal, Mats and Malone, David (London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2000), pp. 91–112Google Scholar; and Keen, David, ‘The economic functions of violence in civil wars’, Adelphi Paper, 320 (Oxford: IISS/Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

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8 Goodhand, ‘Corrupting or consolidating the peace?’, p. 413.

9 Waal, Alex De, ‘Mission without end? Peacekeeping in the African political marketplace’, International Affairs, 85, 1 (2009): 99–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Ibid., p. 8.

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14 Tilly, Charles, Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1992 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1990)Google Scholar. It should be noted that Tilly's work was confined to European state formation and the author himself has questioned the wider applicability of his conclusions.

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17 Cited in Bertil Lintner, ‘The Golden Triangle opium trade: An overview’, Asia Pacific Media Services (Mar. 2000): 7–8, http://www.asiapacificms.com/papers/pdf/gt_opium_trade.pdf (last accessed on 11 Aug. 2011).

18 Ibid., p. 8.

19 McCoy, Alfred, ‘Requiem for a drug lord: State and commodity in the career of Khun Sa’, in States and illegal practices, ed. Heyman, Josiah (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 136–8Google Scholar.

20 The CPB, founded in 1939, was one of the first political parties to go underground (in 1948) in opposition to the Burmese government. Throughout its history it remained deeply committed to Maoist principles and the party received financial and military support from China during from the mid-1960s until Mao's death. Following Mao's death China's patronage dwindled. See Lintner, Bertil, The rise and fall of the Communist Party of Burma (London: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

21 Lintner, ‘The Golden Triangle opium trade’, p. 17.

22 Ibid., p. 15.

23 Chin, Ko-lin, The Golden Triangle: Inside Southeast Asia's drug trade (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 88–9Google Scholar.

24 ALTSEAN-Burma, ATS: A need for speed (Bangkok: ALTSEAN-Burma, 2006)Google Scholar; Kramer, Tom, Jelsma, Martin and Blickman, Tom, Withdrawal symptoms in the Golden Triangle: A drugs market in disarray (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2009), pp. 52–66Google Scholar; Chin, The Golden Triangle, pp. 129–31.

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26 Chin, The Golden Triangle, p. 242. In many hill areas rice harvests provide food for only 4–8 months of the year and opium is grown as a cash crop allowing families to buy imported Thai or Chinese rice for the rest of the year. The fact that alternative development strategies followed rather than pre-empted the opium bans greatly increased food insecurity.

27 UNODC, Opium poppy cultivation in South-East Asia – Lao PDR, Myanmar (UNODC, Dec. 2010), p. 11Google Scholar.

28 Lintner, Bertil and Black, Michael, Merchants of madness: The methamphetamine explosion in the Golden Triangle (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009), p. 93Google Scholar.

29 Goodhand, ‘Bandits, borderlands and opium wars’, p. 9.

30 Smith, Martin, Burma: Insurgency and the politics of ethnicity (London: Zed Books, 1991), p. 39Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., p. 42.

32 However, it must be noted that even before Aung San's death there were clear signs that relations between Rangoon and the ethnic minority regions were already strained and the Panglong Conference, designed to allay the fears of ethnic minority groups, contained no Karen, Karenni, Arakanese or Mon delegates.

33 Scott, James C., ‘Stilled to silence at 500 metres: Making sense of historical change in Southeast Asia’, IIAS Newsletter, 49 (2008): 12Google Scholar.

34 James C. Scott, ‘Hill and valley in Southeast Asia … or why the state is the enemy of people who move around … or … why civilizations can't climb hills’, paper presented at Symposium on Development and the Nation State (Washington University, St Louis, 2000), p. 19.

35 Callahan, Mary, ‘Political authority in Burma's ethnic minority states: Devolution, occupation, and coexistence’, in Policy Studies 31 (Southeast Asia) (Washington, DC: East-West Center; Singapore: ISEAS, 2007), p. 17Google Scholar.

36 Although initially a vociferous critic of the Burmese government in the aftermath of the 1988 protests, the Indian government has also gradually sought to improve its political and economic ties with the SPDC, hopeful that greater cross-border trade will stimulate economic development in its landlocked north-eastern territories and lured by the promise of joint co-operation against India's own insurgency groups, located on the India–Burma border. India's attitude was therefore not decisive in the late 1980s but has become increasingly important over the past 20 years. See Egreteau, Renaud, Wooing the generals: India's new Burma policy (Delhi: Authorspress, 2003)Google Scholar.

37 Renard, Ronald, The Burmese connection: Illegal drugs and the making of the Golden Triangle (London: Rienner Publishers, 1996), p. 108Google Scholar.

38 Grundy-Warr, Carl and Wong, Elaine, ‘Geopolitics of drugs and cross-border relations: Burma–Thailand’, International Boundary and Security Bulletin, 9, 1 (2001): 108–21Google Scholar, here 108 and 116.

39 It is difficult to ascertain precise details regarding the ceasefire agreements since they were oral agreements that have never been written down. However, it is widely believed that they are underwritten by the points outlined here.

40 Callahan, ‘Political authority in Burma's ethnic minority states’, p. xiv.

41 Ibid., p. 24.

42 Kramer, Tom, ‘The United Wa State Party: Narco-army or ethnic nationalist party’, in Policy Studies 38 (Southeast Asia) (Washington, DC: East-West Center; Singapore: ISEAS, 2007), p. 54Google Scholar.

43 ALTSEAN-Burma, ATS: A need for speed, p. 114; Lintner, ‘The Golden Triangle opium trade’, p. 187.

44 Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), Showbusiness: Rangoon's ‘war on drugs’ in Shan state (Chang Mai: SHAN, 2005), p. 54Google Scholar.

45 Lintner, Bertil, ‘The politics of the drug trade in Burma’, Indian Ocean Centre for Peace Studies, The University of Western Australia, Occasional Paper, 33 (1993), p. 31Google Scholar; Lintner and Black, Merchants of madness, pp. 150–1.

46 Lintner, Bertil, ‘Drugs and economic growth: Ethnicity and exports’, in Burma: Prospects for a democratic future, ed. Rotberg, Robert (Washington, DC: The World Peace Foundation, 1988), p. 175Google Scholar.

47 ALTSEAN-Burma, Special report: Ready, aim, sanction (Bangkok: ALTSEAN-Burma, 2003), p. 87Google Scholar. The Government-controlled UMEH has developed an increasingly pervasive control over the Burmese Economy with all major foreign investors having to enter into joint ventures with UMEH. The report also found that ‘private companies can only export under the authorization of Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEH) or Myanmar Agriculture Produce Trading (MAPT), which receive an 11% commission on transactions’ (Ibid., p. 80).

48 Snyder, ‘Does lootable wealth breed disorder?’, p. 961.

49 Lintner, ‘The Golden Triangle opium trade’, pp. 18–19.

50 Evidence of this attitude was shown most clearly by an SPDC Colonel, Win Maung, in 2005, who is quoted in a 2006 report by the Shan Herald Agency for News as stating that ‘ceasefire groups are merely enemies who have taken a break in the fighting against us’. Cited in Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), Hand in glove: The Burma Army and the drug trade in Shan State (Chang Mai: SHAN, 2006), p. 37Google Scholar.

51 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, ch. VII, Clause 338.

52 Euro Burma Office (EBO), ‘The Kokang clashes – what next?’, EBO Analysis Paper No. 1 (2009): 1–7Google Scholar.

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54 PWO, Poisoned hills, p. 10.

55 Fah, Hseng Khio, ‘Burma's druglords become lawmakers’, Shan Herald Agency for News (10 Nov. 2010)Google Scholar.

56 Snyder, ‘Does lootable wealth breed disorder?’, p. 961.

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58 Kudo, Toshihiro, ‘Myanmar's economic relations with China: Who benefits and who pays?’, in Dictatorship, disorder and decline in Myanmar, ed. Skidmore, Monique and Wilson, Trevor (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2008), pp. 96–7Google Scholar.

59 Sean Tunnell, ‘Myanmar's economy in 2006’, in Skidmore and Wilson, Dictatorship, disorder and decline in Myanmar, p. 113.

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61 Snyder, ‘Does lootable wealth breed disorder?’, p. 959.

62 Leander, Anna, ‘Wars and the un-making of states: Taking Tilly seriously in the contemporary world’, in Contemporary security analysis and Copenhagen peace research, ed. Guzzini, Stefano and Jung, Dietrich (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 69Google Scholar.

63 McCoy, ‘Requiem for a drug lord’, pp. 136–8.

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65 Van der Veen, Hans, ‘The war on drugs in the creation of the new world (dis)order’, in Shadow globalization, ethnic conflicts and new wars: A political economy of intra-state war, ed. Jung, Dietrich (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 104Google Scholar.

66 Goodhand, ‘Corrupting or consolidating the peace?’, p. 405.

67 Callahan, ‘Political authority in Burma's ethnic minority states’, p. 4.

68 Goodhand, ‘Corrupting or consolidating the peace?’, p. 418.

69 Sherman, ‘Burma: Lessons from the cease-fires’, p. 247.

70 See, for example, International Crisis Group, ‘Myanmar's post-election landscape’, ICG Asia Briefing, no. 118 (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2011)Google Scholar.