The Laotian Government’s headlong rush towards their 2005 UN
deadline for total opium eradication has been hailed by
international drug control agencies as a remarkable success. The
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in July
that the achievement in Laos, together with a parallel decline
in opium cultivation in Burma, could potentially lead to the end
of more than a century of opium production in the so-called
Golden Triangle region if it can be sustained. But there is
mounting evidence of the drug war’s forgotten casualties. More
and more Hmong and Akha hill people are dying – not because of
any insurgency or displacement caused by a war – but rather
because of an overzealous implementation of the global anti-
narcotics campaign. With few alternative income-streams in
place, development specialists have warned of a looming
humanitarian disaster for those who have been cajoled and
coerced into abandoning their traditional opium livelihoods.
More than 30,000 have been uprooted from their tradi