An Open Secret, an Illicit Trade without End

Myanmar is at the heart of a flourishing illicit drug industry that is poisoning societies around the region and beyond

By SAW YAN NAING

FANG, Thailand — It was about 7 pm when the sun set and darkness descended on northern Thailand. A group of teenagers, aged 13 to 17, approached our car as we stopped at a market of an ethnic hill tribe village on the road to Fang District in Chiang Mai Province.

rolling down the car window, the teenagers asked without hesitation: “Brother, do you want some? how many?”

“What do you have?” I asked. One took out a small pack of methamphetamine pills, known locally as yaba.

Feigning interest, we asked: “how much?” A boy quickly answered: “150 baht per pill,” seemingly oblivious to the illegality of the sale he was trying to make.

Traveling many times through several border towns in northern Thailand, I have learned from local communities that drug trafficking is an open secret—and a lucrative trade—in the region.

In conversations with several sources from narcotics circles, including drug dealers, addicts and former drug convicts, all said the drug business here is hardly hush-hush, and despite drug eradication efforts, there is no end in sight for the illicit trade.

Thai drug addict Aie Chai (not his real name), who lives in Fang, said he makes good money selling yaba.

“Some buyers are teenagers. People here know who is selling yaba and where to get it.”

Many dealers are arrested, some of them repeatedly. Several small-time sellers are also regularly jailed, then released.

Aie Chai said he too was once arrested and temporarily detained. A bribe paid to police by his mother and sister was his ticket to freedom, he said. his neighbor, Channat, who also requested that her real name not be used, agreed with Aie Chai. Pointing to several houses near her home, she said the owners also sold yaba.

“Many of them get rich and own property and businesses because they sell yaba,” Channat said. “My aunt also got rich because of this [the drug trade]. her husband is a big dealer.”

For Channat, it is something of a family trade.

“My uncle met with Khun Sa in Myanmar. Now, he can’t stop doing this business. If he stops, he will be killed by his associates because he knows the drug network well.”

Khun Sa, a former warlord from Shan State who died in 2007, was also known as the “Opium King” due to his opium trade empire in the Golden Triangle, a trading point where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet. The area is one of Asia’s two main opium-producing regions.

Golden Triangle, Golden Land

One dealer, Suyout (not his real name), said methamphetamine pills came from neighboring Myanmar. Drugs are secretly trafficked through the jungle into border territories and towns such as Mae Ai, Doi Ahkang, Mae Swe and Fang, which border eastern Shan State.

The drugs enter from Myanmar through Thailand’s north before making their way down to Chiang Mai, Bangkok and southern Thailand.

The director of the Narcotics Law enforcement Bureau in Bangkok, who asked to be identified only as Siripong, said Thai border towns are the main routes used by drug traffickers.

While some of the drugs are also trafficked into Malaysia from southern Thailand, most will stay in Thailand.

“Yaba [methamphetamine pills] mostly sell out in Thailand. But for ice [crystal methamphetamine] and heroin, sometimes they go down south, to Malaysia and other third countries,” Ms Siripong said.

In August 2011, Thailand’s Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) hosted a bilateral meeting on narcotics law enforcement cooperation, attended by both Thai and Myanmar delegations.

“We have very close cooperation [with Myanmar’s government],” Ms Siripong said. “And we share the information. We join hands to press them [drug traffickers]. We can’t say that we will succeed very soon. It may take time.”

She said Thailand is used as a transit country by drug traffickers from Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia and the Golden Crescent—Asia’s other major opium-producing region in the border territories of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

Siripong said armed ethnic Wa and Kokang groups from Myanmar’s Shan State were the region’s main drug producers, operating heroin refineries and methamphetamine laboratories.

Veteran journalist Bertil Lintner, who wrote “Burma in revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948,” said the reason for the illicit drug trade’s stubborn endurance was the prevalence of these yaba and heroin labs, run by operators who pay the United Wa State Army (UWSA) a protection fee to be allowed to set up labs inside the UWSA- controlled territory.

With the cooperation of the Myanmar and Laotian governments, Bangkok put drug eradication on the national agenda. The government launched a war on drugs in 2003, killing about 3,000 people allegedly involved in the drug trade. But the campaign failed to fully eliminate the narcotics scourge.

As to the transnational nature of the effort, Mr Lintner has his doubts.

“I don’t think there’s much actual cooperation between those countries

[Myanmar, Thailand and Laos], just a lot of talk because they really don’t trust each other. They have meetings and seminars, but little or no cooperation on the ground.”

An Age-old Trade

Most observers and analysts say it is impossible to completely eliminate drug trafficking, an ages-old trade.

A Thai drug dealer in the town of Chai Prakan, Fang District, described the nature of the drug trade as a slippery slope.

“If you get involved into [taking a] big step, you can’t stop it because the richer you get from the drugs, the bigger drug connections you get,” he said.

“And it is highly risky for you to stop the trade when big drug gangs know you. e ven if you want to stop, they won’t let you go because you know all their trade connections. They will hunt you until they kill you,” he added.

A former Shan rebel who was with Shan State Army-South (SSA-South), an ethnic Shan militia with strongholds along the Shan State-Thailand border, said that when he patrolled in Shan State, his militia often clashed with armed drug trafficking gangs in the jungle transporting methamphetamine pills into Thailand. he said armed drug gangs killed anyone they encountered on the trafficking route to eliminate the risk that the route and network might be compromised.

“No matter whether they are villagers, farmers, men, women or children—they kill all,” the former Shan rebel added.

Thierry Falise, a Bangkok-based photojournalist who has covered

Asia and the Pacific, said in the report, “These transnational criminal activities are a global concern now.”

Several huge drug seizures were reported in 2012 in Thailand. In january last year, Thai police seized 3.8 million methamphetamine tablets worth over 1 billion baht ($34 million) in Bangkok, the largest drug bust in years.

Khunsai jaiyen, the editor of the Thailand-based Shan herald Agency for News, linked the drug trade to political affairs in Myanmar.

Because of the Myanmar government’s failure to reach political settlements with armed ethnic groups,

Myanmar for more than 20 years and gained access to opium plantations in Wa territory, said the Wa have been producing opium for generations.

“A yaba factory is just a wooden or a bamboo hut, easy to conceal in the jungle. A heroin factory is built along a stream or a river but it’s also limited infrastructure, easy to hide,” Mr Falise said.

Big Money

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced on April 16 that organized crime in the AsiaPacific region, which includes human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and the illicit drug and wildlife trades, is a US $90 billion-a-year business—twice the GDP of Myanmar.

The report said drug trafficking accounts for an estimated one-third of that. It found that an estimated 65 metric tons of heroin worth $16.3 billion flowed within the region in 2011, of which two-thirds was produced in Shan State.

An additional $15 billion worth of methamphetamine within the region was also manufactured in eastern and northeastern Myanmar.

j eremy Douglas, the UNODC regional representative for Southeast the minority groups are forced to recruit militia members and fund their operations, he explained. The need for an army and arms leaves the ethnic groups few options but to get involved in border trading, including the illicit but profitable drug business.

“It is necessary to reach a political settlement,” said the veteran Shan journalist, who reports regularly on drugs in the region.

Mr Falise, the photojournalist, said the entirety of Thailand’s border with Myanmar has been used for decades by drug traffickers.

“There are thousands of trails, tracks and roads in the forest and hills marking the border. It’s impossible to control them all,” he said.

Mr Douglas of the UNODC spoke to the broader implications of the region’s drug trade, reaching far beyond addicts in Fang District.

“Illicit profits from crimes in East Asia and the Pacific can destabilize societies around the globe,” he said. “Dollars from illicit activities in east Asia can buy property and companies and corrupt anywhere.

“We need to talk about this, and organize a coordinated response now,” Mr Douglas added. “It takes a network to defeat a network.”