Buddha Never Said Yes to Drugs, fro

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Subject: Buddha Never Said Yes to Drugs, from the Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail
Saturday, May 10, 1997

Buddha Never Said Yes to Drugs

FOREIGN POLICY
Why won't the West take a stronger stand on Burma?

The Rangoon regime is not a government in either the Western or in the Asian
sense. It
violates both democratic and Buddhist ideals and it trades in heroin. And
yet we remain
surprisingly passive

BY JOHN RALSTON SAUL 
Special to The Globe and Mail Ottawa

BURMA frustrates moderate people. Sometimes we win small battles -- getting
Petro - Canada to pull out, for example. But in our heart of hearts we feel
we're not getting anywhere with Burma.

Thank God for the astonishing courage of pro-democracy leader and Nobel
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and of the members of her party, the elected
members of the legal government of Burma, who are willing to continue
risking their lives even though many have been imprisoned, tortured and killed.

However, those of us who support the cause of legality in Burma have not
found the levers to make a real difference on the global front.

U.S. President Bill Clinton recently made a gesture against Burma, which
goes by the official name of Myanmar, by forbidding new American investment
there. At first glance it looks like a step in the right direction; however,
it leaves the most important of foreign investments in place - a U.S.-French
pipeline project. In reality, the ban is more bravura than policy. There is
nothing in it to discourage the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) from regularizing relations with Burma. What's the West's problem, then?

We are blocked by two fundamental misunderstandings. First, the West feels,
quite properly, that an Asian government can't be made to conform to Western
standards and ideals. This is a leftover from the period of the empires, a
reversal of the old superiority complex. However, it now takes the form of
hypocritical humility on ethical questions: We feel we can't impose Western
standards on an Asian country. However, we are delighted ff they adopt the
worst of Western economic policies of the 19th century and are complacent if
a violent hand is used on the population.

The combination of this regional view of ethics with an international view
of economics and violence is that we are intellectually and emotionally
blocked from taking a strong stand in Asia.

And whenever we do try to take a stand ASEAN says, how dare you Westerners
stand up and tell us how to act in Asia?

We in the West don't seem to be able to deal with that.

The second obstacle is that we continue to act as though we believe that
Burma's State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) can be brought to
reason, to use an old cliche. There's an official international phrase --
"constructive engagement" -- which suggests that we're all engaged in an
effort to bring SLORC back to the main path, of civilized behaviour. There
is, however, no "constructive engagement." SLORC is not a body that is open
to any form of negotiation in good faith, or even to self-interested
compromise. We've been at it formally now since 1990, and nothing has happened.

More precisely, it is impossible to engage a group of rogue soldiers who are
not the government of Burma. It is a fundamental error to imagine they
constitute a government -- they don't govern, except by force of arms. They
don't have the title of government by any standards. Not by the Western
ethical standards, of which we're afraid to speak in Asia.

But more important, they don't exist as the government of Burma by Asian
standards. Not by Asian ethical, historical, spiritual, political or even
economic standards. 

Around the world there are many traditions of legitimate government. Some
involve what we might call benign dictatorships; there are various sorts of
benign monarchies that in many ways resemble democracy. These have within
them a social contract. The point is that all of these governmental
traditions contain the idea of legitimacy, which is tied to the idea of a
social contract, which is both particular to the place and related to the
universal idea of a social contract.

And when that particular social contract is broken, legitimacy is lost. At
that point, they are no more than rogue governments and, sooner or later,
collapse.

They cannot survive because without the social contract or the legitimacy,
they are mere bandits and hostage-takers.

Let me be pedantic for a moment. What are basic Asian standards?

The Confucian idea of government plays a role throughout Asia. Singapore is
still in part a Confucian state. The Confucian ideal of government is one of
Jen, which is to say a government that so cares for the basic needs of its
people that it does not have to use coercion to maintain order.

Under Confucian thinking, a "king" is one who is morally worthy and
politically effective because his words and deeds are all kingly. When a
ruler fails to be a kingly ruler, he is no longer a king, and people have
the right to resist him and, if necessary, to kill him. In other words, what
Confucius said is that tyrannicide is not regicide.

What we are dealing with in Burma is tyranny.

The great Thai thinker Sulak Sivaraksa is a good source for a contemporary
understanding of Asian ethics. He constantly goes back to look at the
sources of Buddhism. He explains that Buddhism is neither antisocial nor
restricted to personal salvation. There is a common misunderstanding in the
West which sees Buddhism as a way to separate yourself from society. That
isn't what Buddhism is about at all. It is not antisocial.

SLORC and the Ne Win dictatorship before it have always used Buddhism as
though Buddhism were antipolitical. Embrace Buddhism, they say, and let us
run the country. But Buddhism was never meant to be like that.

"For Buddhism to survive according to scriptures," Sulak Sivaraksa writes,
"it must be supported by a just ruler, who turns the wheel of state in the
name of justice, a universal monarch who rules for the well-being of all."

Buddhism has five precepts.

1. I vow to abstain from taking life: SLORC, an allegedly Buddhist regime,
actually sends troops into the street to open fire with machine guns.

2. I vow to abstain from stealing: By serving only themselves, they have
brought the country to its knees financially.

3. I vow to abstain from sexual misconduct: Prostitution. is an important
issue in Burma. Young Burmese girls are being sent to Thailand as
prostitutes, and then go home with AIDS. AIDS is an exploding problem in the
poorest villages of Burma as a result. Already 400,000 Burmese are infected
with AIDS; this is almost entirely the result of the prostitution brought on
by poverty. And SLORC is the master of poverty in Burma.

4. I vow to abstain from false speech: Well, that's obviously not even worth
commenting on.

5. I vow to abstain from intoxicants that cloud the mind and to encourage
others not to cloud their minds.  Burma is capable of supplying the total
world demand for heroin.  Since 1962, production has continually grown so
that it generally supplies somewhere between 50 and 80 per cent, with the
direct collusion of SLORC, which gets a percentage of the money.  Since the
creation of SLORC in 1988, drug production has more than doubled.


 LAST year, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International
Narcotics and Law- Enforcement Affairs said there are 300,000 Burmese
addicts, 70 per cent of whom are HIV-positive, and about 500,000 new addicts
in Thailand, most of them young. China, with another 500,000 addicts, is
SLORC's ally and increasingly the main transit country for Burmese heroin.
There are 200,000 new addicts in Vietnam. The Buddhist precept says one must
abstain from intoxicants that cloud the mind, yet SLORC remains the leading
clouder of minds in the world.

What do all of these ethical, religious and social standards mean for
Western diplomacy? They mean that the Burmese government does not meet any
of the basic Asian standards, that when ASEAN talks of Asian ways, they're
not talking about Asian ways at all. More often than not, they're just
talking about the unfettered marketplace in the East. In other words they
are advancing a deformed version of a Western idea.

And if they don't meet their own standards, we should be attacking them on
that basis, without Western guilt.

As for heroin, police and customs officials have never managed to seize more
than 10 per cent of the quantities being shipped -- in other words, they
have failed. There are only two ways to stop the movement of heroin: at the
beginning of the process or at the end. The end is inside Canada, the United
States, Europe and increasingly, inside Asia. To tackle the problem at the
end of the process means tackling the social problems which encourage
consumption. We refuse to do this. To tackle it at the front end means
getting at the drug production in the poppy fields before it becomes heroin.
Anywhere in between these two stages is a waste of time.

SLORC boasts about peace treaties it has signed with various rebel armies in
the Shan states in northern Burma. In reality these deals have been aimed in
large part at the regularization of the drug business. 

The United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia are all pretending
that we're in a drug war, when in reality we're perfectly happy to go along
with a rogue government being allowed to export drugs to us without being
treated as an enemy.

Remember that the United States has a law called the Trading with the Enemy
Act, which it used to great effect against Vietnam. That's why Vietnam now
has a market economy. They have used it to reasonable effect against Cuba.
They used it against Cambodia. Interestingly enough, however, they have
never used the act against Burma.

And yet Burma is the only one of the four actually attacking the United
States in its own streets. They are engaged in a successful and vicious
invasion of the United States, aimed at the civilian population.

In the Far Eastern Economic Review of Nov. 21, 1996, Robert Gelbard, U.S.
assistant Secretary of State for international narcotics and law
enforcement, describes in detail the relationship between all the drug lords
and SLORC. He concludes: "From a hard-headed drug-control point of view, I
have to conclude that SLORC has been part of the problem, not the solution."

This is the U.S. government speaking.

On Nov. 26,1996, Mr. Clinton spoke at Chulalonghorn University in Bangkok.
Near the end of his speech he mentioned drugs. He dipped and weaved, hinting
at what he knows, but never drawing a clear conclusion.

"Burma has long been the world's number one producer of opium and heroin....
The role of drugs in Burma's economic and political life and the regime's
refusal to honour its own pledge to move to multiparty democracy are really
two sides of the same coin, for both represent the absence of the rule of law."

Why couldn't he simply say what he meant? Because clarity would require
action. The real question is: Why doesn't the U.S. government want to take
the basic essential action, which is the application of the Trading with the
Enemy Act?

Are we to conclude that Washington prefers doing a bit of trade to dealing
with the catastrophe in its own streets? Surely not.

As for Burma, we know what provoked its return to a free market. After Sept.
18, 1988, when hundreds of unarmed demonstrators were gunned down by SLORC
troops, the world cut off aid to protest the massacres. Until then the Ne
Win regime had essentially lived from two sources of income: heroin and aid.
(There was also the ruby market and the teak market, but they weren't very big.)

All SLORC had to do was replace the approximately 30 per cent of their
income that came from international aid. They did it quite simply by opening
up the market place. In other words, we in the developed world cut off the
aid, and we promptly sent the money back in via investment.

The Thais next door have played a key role in all of this. By the late
1980s, Thailand had cut down most of its own teak trees. Abruptly the Thai
government declared a moratorium on cutting teak. In a glorious conversion,
they went over to the green movement. The next week, they signed a whole
series of agreements to massacre the teak forests of Burma.

The dirty-clothes campaign, which Friends of Burma is using to make the
developed world aware of the conditions under which Burmese garment-makers
work, is another clear example of what happens with the kind of trade
liberalization that we're getting. A spokeswoman for Sears Canada, Penny
Kitsen, defended the dirty-clothes garment trade as follows: "There's the
human-rights issue, but if we back away, we could be risking the workers'
future employment income."

This is the standard argument. Western corporations wish to defend the
workers' right to a 60 hour work week at eight cents an hour. I have seen
Burmese factories -- or rather tin shacks -- in the middle of the summer,
when it is more than 35 degrees inside, the doors are closed and there are
no windows. And there are children, working away. Little children:

That's not what you call economic progress. That's not what you call future
employment income. That's what you call exploitation of little children.
It's what we in the West did away with in the 19th century.

To collaborate is to pretend that we didn't decide 100 years ago that this
was illegal, immoral, impossible or unacceptable in the West.

To turn around now and have garments produced in other countries, in
conditions which we refuse for ourselves, is the depths of hypocrisy,
whether it is done by our corporations or by our governments.

One of the major economic projects undertaken since the economic
liberalization is a 670 kilometre pipeline being built by Total SA, a French
company, and Unocal, of Los Angeles. It represents an investment of
$1.2-billion (U.S.). It's worth quoting spokeswoman Carol Scott: "We believe
our presence in the region is a force for progress for economic and social
development."

But we know that we are really dealing with drugs, child prostitution, AIDS,
the exploita tion of cheap labour and forced labour. We are not dealing with
economic and social development. Is it this U.S.-French pipeline project
which held Mr. Clinton back from a clear statement and action?

Foreigners need local partners. Most of the available local firms are
controlled by SLORC. Thus 70 per cent of foreign investors are in business
with SLORC, many through a holding company controlled by the defence
department. In other words, foreign investment is not about economic and
social development, but about propping up SLORC.

What would be a sensible approach for Canada and other Western countries? In
fairness, it must be said that the Canadian government has been grasping for
a stronger foreign policy in Burma. There is obviously a desire to do
something, but they haven't found out what that policy should be.

This is not a case on which highly sophisticated policies will have any
effect. What's required is blinding clarity. Burma does not have a
government by Asian or Western standards. It is a tyranny by all standards.
SLORC is actively at war with the West through its export of drugs. SLORC
has hijacked Burma. It holds power by violence, by drug money and by foreign
investment. Without those three, it's not in power.

Canada's response on many ethical issues in Asia has been that trade comes
first and that as a small country we don't have much influence. But we
actually do have a great deal more influence that we think. If a few
countries, with good reputations -- usually small to- medium- sized
countries -- take a clear, strong stand, an astonishingly solid reflection
of reality is created. Other countries are then obliged to consider
themselves in light of this reality.

Next, we must stop treating SLORC as though it were the government of Burma;
this action will have a serious impact. SLORC will no longer be able to get
the benefit of the doubt or the respect due to governments. It will be seen
for what it is -- no more than a bunch of rogue criminals.

Then we have to move to a total blockage in trade. It is not that difficult
to accomplish; the mechanisms that cut off investments and trade are easy to
put in place. This sort of boycott would be far easier than it was when
dealing with South Africa, which was a major economy. Burma is not, except
for its sale of heroin.

Then we can begin seriously pursuing Burma in all of the international
institutions out of which it is still getting money -- some of it
indirectly, from the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. Once we take
a firm stand, it will be almost impossible for those institutions to go on
giving money to Burma.

Next, we have to pursue SLORC actively,. over the question of their
involvement as participants in the heroin trade. Nothing prevents us from
indicting the members off SLORC in our courts as drug dealers. I don't know
whether we can take them to the international court, but we could certainly
deal with that to some extent inside Canada and we can certainly push the
U.S. in that direction -- they love indicting foreigners.

The more we go out there and say that  SLORC is the principal supplier of
heroin to Americans, the more the U.S. government is  going to have to act.
And the way they can act is through the Trading with the Enemy Act. 

We have to go to ASEAN and say that on the basis of the fact that SLORC is
not a government, even by Asian standards, we consider it to be a criminal
activity. And that the normalization of ASEAN's relationships with Burma is
unacceptable to us. In fact, it is incomprehensible given the explosion in
heroin addictions among their own young -- heroin sent to them by SLORC.

Finally, rogue juntas fall because they fail. If you take a tough stand, you
will create dissension inside the rogue government. As in all long-lived
single-party states, the party contains all sorts. If SLORC is allowed to
manoeuvre its way toward international respectability, -- the junta will
hold. If it is blocked abroad, it will fail economically at home.

Suddenly moderates in the Burmese army will emerge; there are some fairly
decent, mid level officers who are just trying to have a career and wish
that they weren't involved in all of this. They will respond to a need for
change when the need for change becomes apparent inside Burma.

These are the sorts of people who would be happy to see the legal government
of Burma, the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, in power. I'm sure that many
members of the Burmese army are actually for Aung San Suu Kyi. But because
we in the West and in ASEAN are propping up SLORC, those moderates are not
getting a chance to play their role as the supporters of a future legal
government. 

We're all so sophisticated that we think there are complex, manageable
approaches to every problem. In some cases, there aren't. Some cases need
simplicity. We need to be tough. 

This is one of those cases. That's the only way that we'll be able to
unleash the various forces that can bring down SLORC. 

John Ralston Saul is a Toronto writer. He won the Governor-General's Award
for his most recent book, The Unconscious Civilization, a transcript of his
1995 Massey Lectures. This article has been adapted from his speech to the
Conference of the Canadian Friends of Burma on Nov. lo 1996, in Ottawa.
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