Border Lab community member John Buchanan recently published an article, “Opium Pathways: Mountains, Mules and Resource Extraction in Shan State, Myanmar”, in the journal Development and Change. The article appears in a special issue on The Politics of Passage: Checkpoints and Authority amidst Conflict.
His article looks at the impact of natural resources on civil wars by examining the opium trade in Myanmar’s Shan State during the first three decades of its post-World War II opium boom. Drawing on the concept ‘politics of passage’, he examines the varied challenges faced by armed groups attempting to profit from the opium trade as it moved from opium fields along pathways to border-based markets. The disparity in opium revenue among armed groups indicates that revenue generation by armed groups was far more difficult than suggested by economic theories of civil war and policy analysis. The article highlights the need to move beyond a focus on the presence and value of a resource and instead pay closer attention to the mundane, yet formidable, challenges armed groups face in profiting from it.
Link https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.70066