Scraping opium resin off a seedpod in Myanmar’s remote poppy fields, displaced farmer Aung Hla describes the narcotic crop as his only prospect in a country made barren by conflict.
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The 35-year-old was a rice farmer when the junta seized power in a 2021 coup, adding pro-democracy guerillas to the long-running civil conflict between the military and ethnic armed groups.
Four years on, the United Nations has said Myanmar is mired in a “polycrisis” of mutually compounding conflict, poverty and environmental damage.
Aung Hla was forced off his land in Moe Bye village by fighting after the coup. When he resettled, his usual crops were no longer profitable, but the hardy poppy promised “just enough for a livelihood”.
“Everyone thinks people grow poppy flowers to be rich, but we are just trying hard to get by,” he said in rural Pekon township of eastern Shan state.
He says he regrets growing the substance – the core ingredient in heroin – but said the income is the only thing separating him from starvation.