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.
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”.
He says he regrets growing the substance -- the core ingredient in heroin -- but said the income is the only thing separating him from starvation.
Displaced and desperate
But after the Taliban government launched a crackdown, Myanmar overtook Afghanistan as the world's biggest producer of opium in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Between September and February each year, dozens of workers toil in Pekon's fields, slicing immature poppy seedpods, which ooze a small amount of sticky brown resin.
Before the coup, which ended a brief experiment with democracy, Aung Naing was a reformed opium farmer. But wartime hardship forced him back to the crop.
“Most of the farmers who plant poppy are displaced,“ he said. “Residents who can’t live in their villages and fled to the jungle are working in poppy fields.”
Aung Naing says poppy earns only a slightly higher profit than food crops like corn, bean curd and potatoes, which are also vulnerable to disease when it rains.
And the crop is more costly to produce than rice -- more labour intensive, requiring expensive fertilisers and with small yields.
'Unsafe'
But fleeing conflict zones to farm opium does not guarantee safety.
Opium cultivation and production in Myanmar decreased slightly between 2023 and 2024, according to the UNODC -- in part due to ongoing clashes between armed groups.
Aung Hla agreed. With the war, he said, “we don’t have any choice”.
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