La agencia de la ONU dice que Myanmar, afectado por la guerra, es ahora el principal productor de opio del mundo, superando a Afganistán.

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar, a firm with a brutal civil war, now stands as the largest opium producer in the world, according to a U.N. agency report published on Tuesday.

The Southeast Asian nation has surpassed Afghanistan as the top producer, a country where the Taliban imposed a ban on its production, as stated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in its “Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023.”

The Taliban’s initiatives led to a 95% drop in the planting of opium poppies, stated the UNODC last month. Opium, the raw material for morphine and heroin, is harvested from poppy flowers.

Between 2022 and 2023, the estimated extent of land used to cultivate the illegal crop in Myanmar increased by 18% to 47,100 hectares (116,400 acres), as reported by the new UNODC report.

“Although the crop area hasn’t fully returned to the historical peak of almost 58,000 ha (143,300 acres) cultivated in 2013, poppy cultivation in Myanmar is expanding and becoming more productive,” the report stated.

The estimated opium yield expanded by 16% to 22.9 kilograms per hectare (20.43 pounds per acre), topping the previous record set in 2022. This increase is attributed to “increasingly sophisticated means of cultivation, including increased plot density, improved organization of plants, and enhanced practices, such as the use of irrigation systems and potentially fertilizers.”

The violent political turmoil in Myanmar has contributed to the opium production increase.

“The economic, security and governance disruptions that followed the military takeover of February 2021 continue to drive farmers in remote areas towards opium to make a living,” said UNODC Regional Representative Jeremy Douglas.

According to the report, “opium poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia is closely linked to poverty, lack of government services, challenging macroeconomic environments, instability, and insecurity.”

For farmers, the bottom line is simple economics.

UNODC stated that the average price paid to opium growers increased by 27% to about $355 per kilogram ($161 per pound), demonstrating the attractiveness of opium as a crop and commodity due to strong demand.

The figures mean farmers earned around 75% more than in the previous year, said the U.N. agency.

Douglas stated that armed conflict in the Shan state in Myanmar’s northeast, a traditional growing region, and in other border areas “is expected to accelerate this trend.” A recent offensive launched in late October by an alliance of three ethnic armed groups against Myanmar’s military government further destabilized the remote region.

Northeastern Myanmar is part of the infamous “Golden Triangle,” where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet. Historically, opium and heroin production has flourished there due to the lawlessness in the border areas and the limited control exercised by Myanmar’s central government over various ethnic minority militias, some involved in the drug trade.

In recent decades, methamphetamine in the form of tablets and crystal meth has supplanted opium. It is easier to produce on an industrial scale than the labor-intensive cultivation of opium, and gets distributed by land, sea and air around Asia and the Pacific.

UNODC stated that the region’s growing drug production “feeds into a growing illicit economy … which brings together continued high levels of synthetic drug production and a convergence of drug trafficking, money laundering and online criminal activities including casinos and scam operations.”

Cyberscam operations, particularly in Myanmar’s border areas, have come under the spotlight for employing tens of thousands of people, many lured by false offers of legitimate employment and then forced to work in conditions of near slavery.

The recent fighting in Shan state is linked to efforts to eradicate the criminal networks running the scam operations and other illegal enterprises.