Large-scale logging along the Thai-Burmese border has been widely reported. Yet a much less well-understood story has been unfolding along the Chinese-Burmese border. Logging along Burma's 1,780-km border with China is best understood in relation to the collapse of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the largest and best armed of the opposition groups.
On April 19, 1989, the CPB's 15,000 troops mutinied and split along ethnic lines into five regional resistance armies, four in Shan State and one in Kachin State. The regime, concerned that the thousands of political activists who fled Rangoon in August 1988 would be armed by the insurgents, reacted quickly. Rangoon took advantage of the CPB's collapse to negotiate a deal whereby in exchange for promises not to arm the activists and not to attack government forces, the CPB mutineers were granted unofficial permission to engage in any kind of business deal needed to sustain themselves.
As part of the cease-fire agreements, the leaders of the ethnic armies were awarded logging concessions and received saws and milling machinery. The regime also promised development assistance and initiated a Border Areas Development scheme under the Ministry of Border Areas and National Races in 1993. Although the immediate military threat from the rebel armies was neutralized, the environmental consequences have been severe as timber and opium production, especially in Shan State, has expanded.
Extensive environmental damage, as a result of both logging and forced relocation, has been observed in Shan State. A member of Green November-32, a Thai NGO, who traveled throughout the Shan plateau and Chinese border region in 1993 reported that (Green November-32, 1996):
". . . there were no forested hilltops left in the region. Every vantage point had been cleared for occupation by troops. Logging [serves] as an effective means of strategic defoliation in areas controlled by ethnic armies. Logging companies are usually also asked to build roads to their sites which are subsequently used in military operations. All these activities again result in both the relocation of ethnic communities and disruption of natural habitats."
It is paradoxical that the regime should support the logging and other commercial activities of some of the ethnic groups. However, the U.S. Embassy reports that much of the revenue from the timber, gem, and opium trade is invested in the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings. This organization is controlled and wholly owned by the Defense Ministry's Directorate of Defense Procurement and by military officers, including SLORC members. The union, which is a popular joint-venture partner for foreign investors, serves two purposes. It allows revenue from drug exports to be laundered (and taxed) in foreign-funded projects (particularly real estate, hotels, and tourism) and provides a long-term source of revenue for the military. In the words of Martin Smith (1994):
"The Burma logging trade has become a desperate business in which few parties emerge with their reputations intact. Though on a lesser scale, many of the country's armed opposition groups have also become increasingly active in logging deals since 1988 as one of their major sources of revenue to buy arms and ammunition. The most serious cases of over-felling have reportedly taken place in areas where insurgent armies have signed cease-fires with the SLORC."
The opportunities for personal enrichment, the absence of alternative income generating activities, and de facto collusion between some of the ethnic minorities and Rangoon suggest that the current "free for all" in natural resource exploitation in the border areas will continue. Efforts to document the rapidly changing economic, security, and environmental conditions in these areas are seriously hampered by the limited amount of information available. Information about conditions along the Indian border is even more fragmentary.
Copyright © 1998. Logging Burma's Frontier Forests: Resources and the Regime (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute). This posting does not use the adopted name "Myanmar," given to Burma by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1988. The name Burma is used in accordance with the Burmese National League for Democracy, the United States Government and many other countries, and leading publications including The Washington Post, Bangkok Post, The Nation, and The Far Eastern Economic Review.