Which Is Really
The ‘Failed State’?
by Mike Billington
5,000 6,000
Afghanistan OTHER
4,500 Myanmar (production)
Afghanistan
5,000
4,000 Myanmar
3,500
4,000
3,000
2,500 3,000
2,000
2,000
1,500
1,000
1,000
500
0 0
1982 1992 2004 1982 1992 2001 2004
re-open relations with its neighbors (after the self-imposed tive network, was a leading light in the International Republi-
isolation of the Ne Win era), and to defeat or pacify the many can Institute (IRI), a U.S. government-funded institution
ethnic war-lords who controlled the mountainous border re- which conducts political subversion against Myanmar
gions of Myanmar, the heart of the “Golden Triangle.” (among other nations) under the guise of promoting “democ-
As the armed conflicts between the national army and the racy.” As to mega-speculator George Soros, who finances
ethnic drug armies have been almost entirely successfully Burmanet, The Burma Project, and numerous other organiza-
eliminated, establishing peace and national unity for the first tions promoting regime change in Myanmar, he is the primary
time since the British invasions of the 19th Century, the op- financial sponsor of every state referendum in the United
portunity arose, also for the first time, to end the scourge States to legalize drugs. The fact that this Wall Street “drug
of drugs—another British legacy. The British-orchestrated lobby” is leading the campaign to overthrow the Myanmar
Constitution which was forced upon the nation in exchange regime is not accidental.
for independence in 1948, included the right of each ethnic In 1995, the Yangon government negotiated the surrender
entity to declare independence from the central government of Khun Sa, and the pacification of his Shan United Army,
in Yangon—an intentional prescription for disunity and con- the largest insurgent army and drug operation in Myanmar.
tinual conflict. As independence negotiations were proceed- Government troops moved into Shan State in force, breaking
ing in London under nationalist leader Aung San, the British the back of the drug structure. Khun Sa revealed several of
Conservative Party’s wartime governor of Burma, Reginald his foreign contacts, including U.S. intelligence operatives
Dorman-Smith, set up an organization called “Friends of the Theodore Shackley (the deputy director of CIA covert opera-
Burma Hill People,” to foster such perpetual conflict—and tions under then-CIA director George H.W. Bush) and Rich-
assure the continued “free trade” in opium through the regions ard Armitage, a former Defense Department official.
not under the control of the central government. As numerous other drug-lords were defeated, or surrend-
There are several modern-day “Reginald Dorman- ered to the central government, serious anti-drug forces in the
Smiths” who have obstructed every effort by the Myanmar West took notice, and called upon the United States to change
government to defeat or pacify the ethnic drug-lords. These its policy and support Myanmar’s anti-drug campaign. The
include especially George Shultz and George Soros, who are National Narcotics Intelligence Consumer’s Committee
not coincidentally two of the leading promoters of legalizing (NNICC), an interagency committee in the United States rep-
drugs internationally, including even the heroin extracted resenting the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and
from opium. George Shultz, who personally put together the other law enforcement agencies, released its report for 1996
first George W. Bush Administration from his neo-conserva- praising the pacification of Khun Sa’s drug army and the