ABSTRACT
Insecurity in economic matters, food, health, environment, personal insecurity, community insecurity and political insecurity – the vectors designated as ‘the seven horsemen of the apocalypse’ – have diminished the opportunities to enhance both the material and non-material aspects of human security and well-being for the people of Myanmar. The dynamic of poverty and insecurity extends well beyond the localized state-centric discourse of intra-communal conflict which has marred the modern history of Burma/Myanmar. Poverty and poppy farming in the mountainous border regions of Myanmar go hand in hand, the one indicative of the other. The indigenous ethnic minority peoples in Burma/Myanmar who fuelled the insurgencies 1948–89 have embraced marginalization as a means to maintain their own cultural identity, political autonomy, and economic independence, removed from the administrative reaches of the central government. In recent years, Myanmar has been cooperating with Australia in training programmes for officials and police engaged in drug-suppression and enforcement operations.
