Title 3--The President ficking activities and its support for the repatriated victims of trafficking remains scant. The government's cooperation with international NGOs con- cerned about human trafficking has also been minimal. While it appears that the government has finally begun to recognize the significance of its human trafficking problems, it is equally obvious that it has not yet put to- gether programs that can deal with all aspects of those problems. Given its current economic circumstances, we do not anticipate the emergence of ef- fective programs in the near term. Counternarcotics The ethnic majority areas of Burma make it one of the world's largest pro- ducers of illicit opium, heroin, and amphetamine-type stimulants, despite the fact that its overall output of opium and heroin has declined sharply in recent years, partly as a result of improved Burmese government coun- ternarcotics efforts. Opium production in Burma has now declined for five straight years and, in 2002, Burma produced an estimated 630 metric tons of opium, less than one-quarter of the 2,560 metric tons of opium produced six years earlier. Unfortunately, Burma's success in reducing the produc- tion of opium and heroin has been partially undercut by rapidly increasing production of amphetamine-type stimulants, particularly in outlying re- gions governed by former insurgents. According to some estimates, as many as 400 to 800 million methamphetamine tablets may be produced in Burma each year, although verification of this estimate is difficult due to the mo- bile, small-scale nature of the methamphetamine production facilities. The policy of the SPDC central government is to end narcotics trafficking, but the SPDC realizes that this will be a long-term process as it has been elsewhere. There are reliable reports that individual Burmese officials, par- ticularly in outlying areas, may be involved in narcotics production or traf- ficking, but we do not have evidence that the government is complicit in the drug trade. While the government has consistently urged former ethnic insurgents to curb narcotics production and trafficking in their self-admin- istered areas along the Chinese border, it has only recently, with the sup- port and assistance of China, begun to crack down on these groups. Since September 2001, it has begun to enforce pledges elicited from each former insurgent group to make their self-administered areas opium-free and, in March 2002, pressured each group (including the Wa and the Kokang Chi- nese) into issuing new decrees outlawing narcotics production and traf- ficking in areas under their control. However, the Wa have not committed to eliminating narcotics production until 2005. The government has improved its cooperation with neighboring states, par- ticularly China. In 2001, Burma signed Memoranda of Understanding on narcotics control with both China and Thailand. The MOU with China es- tablished a framework for joint operations, which in turn led to a series of arrests and renditions of major traffickers in 2001 and 2002, many of whom were captured in the former insurgents' self-administered areas. Altogether, over the past 18 months, Burma has returned to China 22 fugitives from Chinese justice, including principals from one group that China described as "the largest armed drug trafficking gang in the Golden Triangle." Bur- ma's MOU with Thailand, similarly, committed both sides to closer police cooperation on narcotics control and to the establishment of three joint 322
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