Dan Levin has an excellent long article in the New York Times – “Searching for Burmese jade, and finding misery”. As a bonus feature, Jonah M Kessel has a superb accompanying 11-minute documentary video – “Jade’s deadly journey”. Both focus on jade mining in Hpakant, Kachin State, and on pervasive heroin addiction and very high rates of HIV infection in mining and linked communities, including state capital Myitkyina. The chief culprits? Myanmar military elites, Chinese financiers and, to a lesser degree, Kachin rebel leaders. The major victims? Young males and, by extension, families throughout the state. It’s sobering material, and the argument made by a local aid worker that opium war is part of an ethnic cleansing strategy cannot be wholly dismissed.