Zomia’s vestiges

Abstract

Opium poppy cultivation in Thailand fell from 12,112 hectares in 1961 to 281 hectares in 2015. One outlier exists: Chiang Mai Province’s remote southwestern district, Omkoi. Ninety percent of the district is a national forest reserve where human habitation is illegal. However, an ethnic Karen population has lived there since long before the law that outlawed them was created, unconnected to the state by road, with limited or no access to health, education and other services. Omkoi’s Karen increasingly rely on cash-based markets. Their lack of citizenship precludes them from land tenure that might incentivize them to grow alternative crops, and their statelessness precludes them from services and protections. Nor is the Thai state the singular Leviathan that states are often assumed to be; it is a collection of agencies and networks with divergent interests, of whom one of the most powerful, the Royal Forestry Department, has purposely made Omkoi’s population illegible, and has consistently blocked the attempts of other state actors to complexify Omkoi beyond the simplicity of its forest environment. These factors make the state illegitimate to Omkoi’s Karen just as Omkoi’s Karen are illegitimate to the state, and make the cultivation of short-term, high-yield, high-value, imperishable opium a logical economic choice for poor Karen farmers, especially given the historical lack of law enforcement presence. However, that presence is growing, as Omkoi becomes one of the last areas of Thailand to experience the historical extension of lowland Padi state power into an ungoverned, untallied highland.