Opium (47 page)

In response to international criticism SLORC, which promotes compliant narcotics-dealing tribal chiefs as ‘national leaders', has insisted its policy is merely giving the tribes – especially the Wa – time to establish other cash crops to replace opium poppies. A SLORC spokesman stated in May 1995, ‘the national leaders have given us pledges that they will try to stop (growing poppies) in six to ten years time. They need time to switch to other crops otherwise they will starve'. Experts point out the Wa tribe have probably become the main producers of opium in recent years, also increasing their heroin production along the Chinese border and on the periphery of Khun Sa's territory at his expense, leading to fighting between the Wa and the MTA. Other developments in 1995 had the Karen rebels' headquarters captured with other insurgent groups considering making peace on similarly flexible political and economic terms. The sincerity of their pledges to halt opium growing remains to be seen.

SLORC has argued that if the Americans really wanted to stop Khun Sa's activities, it would have to provide military support: the American response pointed out that of the thirty-two aircraft and helicopters supplied by them in the 1980s for anti-narcotic operations not one had ever been used against Khun Sa. Rumour has it there were occasional deals struck between him and the Burmese government. For example, in October 1988, it was alleged the MTA was offered a free hand in its heroin business in exchange for anti-Communist support and the safe passage of government-felled teak being sold to Thailand. It is also thought that Khun Sa for long bought off local army commanders in exchange for being left alone to get on with his drug trading.

The rise to power again of Lo Hsing-han and his brother led to speculation that the Burmese, in supporting the Los, were becoming willing to capture Khun Sa in exchange for foreign aid and an end to criticism of its human rights record and socio-political policies: from late 1993, the tide started to turn against Khun Sa as Burmese forces began to launch a sustained offensive against him.

Thailand, long censured for its toleration of heroin producers, also began to take steps against Khun Sa who, in 1994, proposed the Shan states become a province of Thailand. This proposition was rejected and Khun Sa rebuffed by the Thai authorities although MTA troops have frequently been permitted to escape into Thailand to avoid Burmese forces. Under heavy American pressure, Thailand finally sent troops to seal off infiltration routes to and from Burma, closing a new road which Khun Sa had been using for supplies, although Thai authorities permitted mule caravans to use jungle paths for, as they put it, humanitarian reasons. Yet the border turned out to be more permeable than expected and Khun Sa's guile under-estimated. To escape the Thai forces, he moved groups of 600 and 800 men through Thailand on chartered tourists buses in March 1995. According to Burmese intelligence sources, Khun Sa's men made substantial cash payments, of $26,000 on one occasion, to Thai border police to ensure passage. However, this situation created trouble for Khun Sa by making him once more reliant upon mountain trails and reports indicated even rice was in short supply amongst his men.

Some DEA/Thai joint operations were successful and many of Khun Sa's traffickers were arrested in northern Thailand including, in 1993, Lin Chien-pang, a close associate of Khun Sa who was captured and extradited to the USA. At the beginning of 1995, ten of Khun Sa's senior aides were apprehended in northern Thailand.

The Burmese authorities knew any attempt to crush Khun Sa generated good publicity: in May 1995, they gave foreign journalists a junket in the Bakyan Mountains, displaying a captured Khun Sa base taken the month before and plugging their anti-narcotics image. In order to impress American public opinion, the Burmese military have reverted to referring to Khun Sa's army as the ‘Loimaw bandits', a name by which they were known in their early days in the 1960s.

Khun Sa seems to have fallen victim to a mixture of international pressure, military attack, the growing strength of rivals – especially the Wa faction – and defections from his ranks. Whereas at some times in the past, Khun Sa and his family were to be seen in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, in recent times Khun Sa has hardly dared stray from his jungle headquarters. In June 1995, there was even a mutinous mass departure of several thousand of his fighters led by young Shan nationalists who complained he was more committed to the drug trade than Shan independence.

In November 1995, as the Burmese military inexorably advanced on him, Khun Sa announced his retirement from all positions in the Shan state following the mutiny and other large scale defections, reported to total up to 6000 men: he stated he had lost heart, presumably in the national cause rather than opium production. He said he wanted to retire to tend his chickens. Observers believe that Khun Sa had few options left other than to reach an agreement with the Burmese government.

At the beginning of January 1996, Khun Sa surrendered to Burmese government forces at Ho Mong. He was said to have welcomed senior Burmese military officers with a party which lasted throughout the night. Burmese troops occupied Ho Mong without a fight and Khun Sa's forces began handing over their bases in the mountains to Burmese troops.

The situation is, as ever, confused and Khun Sa's future uncertain. Many believe he is seeking a deal with the Burmese government to turn his fighters into a government militia. Some disaffected Mong Tai Army members who fled to Thailand say they believe Khun Sa had cut a deal with the authorities before his surrender in return for an amnesty, in which case he might be allowed to ‘retire' and live peacefully for the rest of his life.

Whatever happens, it seems unlikely Burma will turn Khun Sa over to the USA which has requested his extradition and announced a $2 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. The Burmese government declare he will be put on trial in Rangoon and dealt with according to their law. This decision for a local trial may not be a mere flexing of political muscle and a statement of sovereignty: many observers believe such a decision has been reached because the Burmese authorities are frightened of what Khun Sa might tell the Americans of their narcotics involvement.

If tried and convicted in Burma, Khun Sa could face a mandatory death sentence but in this predominantly Buddhist nation it would most likely be commuted. With the country's periodic amnesties and further time off for good behaviour, Khun Sa could still end his days a free man. It is even conceivable that the world has not seen the last of Khun Sa: he has been down before and made a comeback against long odds.

Khun Sa's political downfall, therefore, has not affected the flow of opium out of the Golden Triangle. As he predicted to the
Bangkok Post
after his retirement in November 1995, ‘Opium production will continue with or without me.' American fears of a deal between Khun Sa and the Burmese government now seem validated and could lead to substantially increased poppy cultivation. Any power vacuum left by Khun Sa will soon be filled for, although as a drug lord, he may have had the highest international profile, there are many other players on the scene. Lo Hsing-han may seize the day. The Kokang group which has allied itself to him, an alliance which dominated the opium market in 1992 when Khun Sa was said to be temporarily starved of cash, is also well positioned to succeed him. Others such as Lin Mingxian, the powerful former Red Guard and one-time Burmese Communist Party commander and the Wei brothers, former colleagues of Khun Sa who operate with the Wa and are now said to be the region's biggest dealers, wait in the wings.

Matters are further complicated because whatever the government of Burma has said, or whichever faction is dominant, it also seems the government itself is substantially connected to the heroin trade and that poppies are now also being grown in areas controlled by the Burmese military. A recent billion dollars' worth of arms purchased from China is alleged to have been paid for from heroin profits. As a spin-off from this deal, Chinese entrepreneurs have been allowed into the country where they are investing heavily in property, the tourist trade and the timber industry.

Whoever is in control, heroin continues to transit through Burma to Thailand which, although it remains the primary route to world markets, is losing some of its trade to India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and, more importantly, China. Heroin is now going overland to Hong Kong or other Chinese seaports whence it goes to Taiwan for onward shipment to the USA, the route begun in 1989 by Lo Hsing-han. The newest routes are through Laos, Cambodia and, once more, Vietnam, partly operating along sections of the legendary Ho Chi Minh trail set up by the Vietcong to supply their troops during the Vietnam War.

The situation in South-east Asia is always, to a greater or lesser degree, in a state of turmoil and change. In Laos, which has a huge area of land under poppies, senior government and military officials remain corrupt and profit substantially from opium despite some reduction in poppy cultivation due to a crop substitution project funded by the US State Department and the United Nations International Drug Control Program: unfavourable weather conditions in 1993–94 somewhat aided the situation by destroying much of the poppy crop. Large scale eradication programmes are, however, side-stepped for fear of political unrest from hill tribes. Since UN troops pulled out from Cambodia in 1993, senior members of the government there are rumoured to have built up strong ties with international drug smugglers, Cambodia developing into such a major drug trafficking centre that law enforcement agents are starting to wryly refer to the country as ‘Medellin on the Mekong', a tongue-in-cheek comparison with the Colombian cocaine city of Medellin.

In northern Thailand, although traditional hill tribal poppy farmers have been joined by commercial growers financed by heroin traffickers, there has been a reduction in poppy acreage to half that of the mid-1980s. Yet Thailand remains the key conduit for drugs. It has also become the major destination of ‘brat packers' – young, poor, Western travellers, the modern descendants of the Sixties hippies. These itinerants gather around such places as Khao San Road in Bangkok or Haad Rin on the island of Kho Phan Gan off the south coast, where they party, dance, engage in moon raves (night-time naked orgies which have become internationally famous amongst brat
cognoscenti
), snort, smoke and shoot anything from heroin to designer drugs and generally live self-indulgent existences. To finance their life-style, some are tempted to try smuggling. Of the 1200 foreigners in Thailand's gaols, over 900 are held on trafficking charges.

Not only brat packers head for the country. In northern Thailand, mainstream tourism has become established, with hotels and excursions blossoming in what even tourist brochures refer to as the Golden Triangle, using the name for just the small area up against the borders with Laos and Burma which they describe as ‘an exotic, colourful region of jungle-clad hills, mighty rivers, magnificent temples and fascinating hill tribe villages with some of the best shopping in Thailand.'

It was hoped Thailand's rapid economic growth in the late 1980s would have discouraged the heroin trade but the new infrastructure has only proved to serve it and some high-level corruption continues. A Thai general, Thanat Phaktiphat, has been accused of being involved in trafficking and plotting to import heroin into the USA in recent years. He was arrested in transit through Kai Tak airport, Hong Kong, in December 1993 with two empty suitcases which, it was alleged, he was using to collect $4 million in narcotics earnings. He lost his third attempt to prevent his extradition from Hong Kong in May 1995. Another twist occurred in July 1995 when the Chart Thai Party, the largest group in the former opposition, was victorious in the elections and formed a coalition government. The Americans, who have for years been accusing the Thai opposition parties of involvement in the narcotics trade, have found them in power. Members of the new government include Narong Wongwan and Vatana Asavahme, both accused by Washington of having links with drug trafficking.

The use of Vietnam as a transit nation is under way again and it looks as though the country is set once more to become an important route out of the Golden Triangle. It is feared international organised crime syndicates are targeting and exploiting the new open economy and relaxed frontier controls. In northern Vietnam, in the border trading area of Lang Son, just a few kilometres from China, trade in general and contraband in particular have soared since late 1992. Heroin is increasingly moved through the region
en route
from the Golden Triangle and China to ports such as Haiphong and Danang, thence out to international markets.

Along the Sino-Vietnam border, special Vietnamese police teams working with the military and customs officers patrol the all-but impenetrable jungle, often for days at a time, attempting to close supply routes but without any major success: in the environs of Lang Son, heroin addiction is rapidly growing, some addicts being of primary school age.

A report released in March 1995 by the Vietnam National Drug Control Programme, claims a national opiate addict population of 170,000, many long-term users amongst the poppy-growing hill tribes. Officials claim there are no heroin processing plants in Vietnam but that is immaterial. The rise in smuggling alone will feed the growing domestic market in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City where, in 1994, 2750 opium den landlords were arrested and where a rise in heroin injection is rapidly spreading AIDS. To combat the mounting threat, death sentences are being handed out to traffickers, customs manning levels are being greatly increased, officers are being trained in Britain with the latest American detection equipment on order: for the first time, Vietnam is to have sniffer dogs.

Not only the Vietnamese are worried: so is the DEA. It has acknowledged all the ingredients are in place for smugglers to take full advantage of the situation to develop new routes. In 1995, the US government placed Vietnam on the list of twenty-nine countries which now serve as major conduits for drugs destined for North America. The DEA also records poppies being grown commercially in the Son La province of Vietnam, between China and Laos, although the quantity of opium produced is unknown.