phr
Bluelighter
Myanmar Drug Trade Surges Along Thai Border
Thomas Fuller
NY Times
9.30.09
DOI CHANG MOOB, THAILAND — For more than half a century heroin has been carried over the jungle-shrouded hills here, the first leg of a journey that delivers the drugs to cities as far off as Sydney and Vancouver, Canada. But anti-narcotics officials are rubbing their eyes at the spectacle they are now witnessing: a flood of heroin and methamphetamines is spilling across from Myanmar as traffickers slash their inventories in a panicked sell-off.
“It’s a clearance sale,” said Pornthep Eamprapai, director of the northern branch of the Thai Office of Narcotics Control, who has nearly three decades of experience tracking illicit drugs from Myanmar. “Some dealers at the border are buying on credit. They don’t even need to pay in cash. This is the first time I’ve seen this.”
Heroin seizures by the police in northern Thailand have increased more than 2,100 percent from last year: in the 10 months to August, the authorities seized 1,268 kilograms, or 2,795 pounds, of heroin, up from 57 kilograms a year earlier, according to the Office of Narcotics Control.
The main reason for the rise in trafficking, officials say, is the deteriorating political situation in the northernmost regions of Myanmar. Ahead of the introduction of a new constitution next year, Myanmar’s military government is cracking down on armed ethnic groups arrayed along the borders with Thailand, Laos and China. The ethnic groups, many of which have a long history of producing a range of illicit drugs, are steeling themselves for battle with the Myanmar junta and rushing to convert their stocks of heroin and methamphetamines into cash to buy weapons.
“Various traffickers are liquidating their stockpiles,” said Pamela Brown, an agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “They are trying to get large shipments of heroin out, and some have been successful.”
The ethnic groups are obscure to most outsiders — the Wa, Kachin and Shan, among them — but the fate of these groups is crucial to the future of the world’s heroin supply, experts say.
In the rugged northern hills of Myanmar, manufacturing drugs is sometimes the only reliable way to generate cash.
The standoff in northern Myanmar between ethnic groups and the central government is an anomaly in modern Asia, a throwback to much more unstable times. The Wa and Kachin have large, well-equipped armies and administrations akin to the small kingdoms that existed in Asia before European colonial powers introduced the concept of the nation state.
Now, in a desperate bid to protect their fiefdoms, the ethnic groups are casting a wide net for more weapons, according to Col. Peeranate Katetem, the deputy commander of a Thai special anti-narcotic unit based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai. Three months ago, he received a call from a Wa representative who said he was looking to spend about $25 million to purchase M-16 assault rifles and “anything capable of exploding.” Colonel Peeranate said the group appeared eager to barter heroin for the weapons. He said he declined to help.
The Myanmar junta and its proxies beat back ethnic Karen rebels in June and attacked and defeated an ethnic-Chinese group, the Kokang, in August. This has left the leadership of other ethnic groups wondering if they are next.
The Golden Triangle, as this region is known, was once the world’s pre-eminent source of heroin. In recent years, it has produced around 5 percent of the world’s supply of the drug, eclipsed by Afghanistan, which now produces the lion’s share.
That could change, experts warn, if Myanmar’s dormant civil war re-ignites.
“The drug trade would flourish,” said Ko-Lin Chin, a criminologist at Rutgers University and author of a book on the Golden Triangle published this year. Mr. Chin believes the planting of opium poppies, now suppressed in many areas, could resume on a wider scale. “They would flood the world with opium.”
Heroin, which is refined from opium, typically travels through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and ends up in Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan, anti-narcotic agents say. Heroin is also directly exported to China, where use of the drug increased dramatically in the 1990s, creating a huge new market for traffickers. The heroin sold in the United States mostly comes from Colombia, according to U.S. officials.
Stopping drug traffickers is particularly difficult along Myanmar’s borders, which are mountainous and criss-crossed by jungle footpaths. The Thai military has about 1,500 troops dedicated to the interdiction of narcotics along the northern stretch of border with Myanmar, but it says it needs better equipment, including night vision goggles.
Trafficking in recent years has become atomized: Drug runners once crossed the border in heavily armed groups of a dozen men. “Now it’s like a small parade of ants,” Colonel Peeranate said. “They disperse to different points.”
At the Doi Chang Moob military outpost here, Second Lt. Rungrot Lobbamrung says he goes to sleep knowing that the hills below his sleeping quarters will be humming with traffickers nearly every night.
He and his team of 23 soldiers set ambushes for traffickers, analyze footprints along remote paths and cultivate intelligence sources among the hill tribes that populate the area. They are paid bonuses for the drugs they seize. But Lieutenant Rungrot guesses that they catch only a small fraction of the drug traffic.
So far this year, he has stopped 14 traffickers, compared with 5 last year.
The monetary temptations for traffickers are great: Small-time traffickers, often teenagers, can buy a fingernail-size bag of heroin for about $1.50 on the Myanmar side of the border, trek a few hours and sell it for up to $30 on the Thai side, Lieutenant Rungrot said.
Anti-narcotics officials say ethnic groups appear to be stocking large quantities of drugs near the Thai border and sending a series of smaller packages across.
The Myanmar military, which in the past has sometimes turned a blind eye to trafficking because it benefited its allies or was profitable for certain military officers, now has added incentive to crack down on the drug trade: the prospect of meeting ethnic groups equipped with drug-financed weapons on the battlefield.
Anti-narcotics officials based in Thailand say the Myanmar authorities have reported enormous drug seizures in recent months, including one in August of 760 kilograms. Several million methamphetamine pills were also seized in the Myanmar border town of Tachilek.
“There was nothing on that scale last year,” said Leik Boonwaat, the representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime based in Laos. “This year has been quite unusual.”
Also, in what would be a major shift in the global heroin trade, Thai anti-narcotics officials say they have become aware of a new heroin trafficking route that may help to explain the increase in heroin coming through the Golden Triangle.
Low-grade heroin produced in Afghanistan is being shipped through Pakistan and India to the area controlled by the Wa in northern Myanmar, where it is further refined and re-exported.
This possible link between the world’s two largest heroin producing regions — Afghanistan and Myanmar — combines the vast scale of Afghan poppy fields with the distribution networks and technological expertise of the Wa, whose chemists are renowned for producing high-quality heroin.
In recent years the Wa have been concerned about their international image, especially in light of an indictment four years ago of eight Wa leaders by a U.S. court that described the Wa army as “a criminal narcotics trafficking organization.” Under pressure from China, the Wa banned farmers in their territory from cultivating opium. (It is now principally grown in adjacent territories controlled by other groups.)But the concern about public relations could quickly dissipate in crisis, Mr. Chin said. “If there’s war, nobody cares about a good international reputation,” he said. “Survival will take over.”
Link!
Thomas Fuller
NY Times
9.30.09
DOI CHANG MOOB, THAILAND — For more than half a century heroin has been carried over the jungle-shrouded hills here, the first leg of a journey that delivers the drugs to cities as far off as Sydney and Vancouver, Canada. But anti-narcotics officials are rubbing their eyes at the spectacle they are now witnessing: a flood of heroin and methamphetamines is spilling across from Myanmar as traffickers slash their inventories in a panicked sell-off.
“It’s a clearance sale,” said Pornthep Eamprapai, director of the northern branch of the Thai Office of Narcotics Control, who has nearly three decades of experience tracking illicit drugs from Myanmar. “Some dealers at the border are buying on credit. They don’t even need to pay in cash. This is the first time I’ve seen this.”
Heroin seizures by the police in northern Thailand have increased more than 2,100 percent from last year: in the 10 months to August, the authorities seized 1,268 kilograms, or 2,795 pounds, of heroin, up from 57 kilograms a year earlier, according to the Office of Narcotics Control.
The main reason for the rise in trafficking, officials say, is the deteriorating political situation in the northernmost regions of Myanmar. Ahead of the introduction of a new constitution next year, Myanmar’s military government is cracking down on armed ethnic groups arrayed along the borders with Thailand, Laos and China. The ethnic groups, many of which have a long history of producing a range of illicit drugs, are steeling themselves for battle with the Myanmar junta and rushing to convert their stocks of heroin and methamphetamines into cash to buy weapons.
“Various traffickers are liquidating their stockpiles,” said Pamela Brown, an agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “They are trying to get large shipments of heroin out, and some have been successful.”
The ethnic groups are obscure to most outsiders — the Wa, Kachin and Shan, among them — but the fate of these groups is crucial to the future of the world’s heroin supply, experts say.
In the rugged northern hills of Myanmar, manufacturing drugs is sometimes the only reliable way to generate cash.
The standoff in northern Myanmar between ethnic groups and the central government is an anomaly in modern Asia, a throwback to much more unstable times. The Wa and Kachin have large, well-equipped armies and administrations akin to the small kingdoms that existed in Asia before European colonial powers introduced the concept of the nation state.
Now, in a desperate bid to protect their fiefdoms, the ethnic groups are casting a wide net for more weapons, according to Col. Peeranate Katetem, the deputy commander of a Thai special anti-narcotic unit based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai. Three months ago, he received a call from a Wa representative who said he was looking to spend about $25 million to purchase M-16 assault rifles and “anything capable of exploding.” Colonel Peeranate said the group appeared eager to barter heroin for the weapons. He said he declined to help.
The Myanmar junta and its proxies beat back ethnic Karen rebels in June and attacked and defeated an ethnic-Chinese group, the Kokang, in August. This has left the leadership of other ethnic groups wondering if they are next.
The Golden Triangle, as this region is known, was once the world’s pre-eminent source of heroin. In recent years, it has produced around 5 percent of the world’s supply of the drug, eclipsed by Afghanistan, which now produces the lion’s share.
That could change, experts warn, if Myanmar’s dormant civil war re-ignites.
“The drug trade would flourish,” said Ko-Lin Chin, a criminologist at Rutgers University and author of a book on the Golden Triangle published this year. Mr. Chin believes the planting of opium poppies, now suppressed in many areas, could resume on a wider scale. “They would flood the world with opium.”
Heroin, which is refined from opium, typically travels through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and ends up in Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan, anti-narcotic agents say. Heroin is also directly exported to China, where use of the drug increased dramatically in the 1990s, creating a huge new market for traffickers. The heroin sold in the United States mostly comes from Colombia, according to U.S. officials.
Stopping drug traffickers is particularly difficult along Myanmar’s borders, which are mountainous and criss-crossed by jungle footpaths. The Thai military has about 1,500 troops dedicated to the interdiction of narcotics along the northern stretch of border with Myanmar, but it says it needs better equipment, including night vision goggles.
Trafficking in recent years has become atomized: Drug runners once crossed the border in heavily armed groups of a dozen men. “Now it’s like a small parade of ants,” Colonel Peeranate said. “They disperse to different points.”
At the Doi Chang Moob military outpost here, Second Lt. Rungrot Lobbamrung says he goes to sleep knowing that the hills below his sleeping quarters will be humming with traffickers nearly every night.
He and his team of 23 soldiers set ambushes for traffickers, analyze footprints along remote paths and cultivate intelligence sources among the hill tribes that populate the area. They are paid bonuses for the drugs they seize. But Lieutenant Rungrot guesses that they catch only a small fraction of the drug traffic.
So far this year, he has stopped 14 traffickers, compared with 5 last year.
The monetary temptations for traffickers are great: Small-time traffickers, often teenagers, can buy a fingernail-size bag of heroin for about $1.50 on the Myanmar side of the border, trek a few hours and sell it for up to $30 on the Thai side, Lieutenant Rungrot said.
Anti-narcotics officials say ethnic groups appear to be stocking large quantities of drugs near the Thai border and sending a series of smaller packages across.
The Myanmar military, which in the past has sometimes turned a blind eye to trafficking because it benefited its allies or was profitable for certain military officers, now has added incentive to crack down on the drug trade: the prospect of meeting ethnic groups equipped with drug-financed weapons on the battlefield.
Anti-narcotics officials based in Thailand say the Myanmar authorities have reported enormous drug seizures in recent months, including one in August of 760 kilograms. Several million methamphetamine pills were also seized in the Myanmar border town of Tachilek.
“There was nothing on that scale last year,” said Leik Boonwaat, the representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime based in Laos. “This year has been quite unusual.”
Also, in what would be a major shift in the global heroin trade, Thai anti-narcotics officials say they have become aware of a new heroin trafficking route that may help to explain the increase in heroin coming through the Golden Triangle.
Low-grade heroin produced in Afghanistan is being shipped through Pakistan and India to the area controlled by the Wa in northern Myanmar, where it is further refined and re-exported.
This possible link between the world’s two largest heroin producing regions — Afghanistan and Myanmar — combines the vast scale of Afghan poppy fields with the distribution networks and technological expertise of the Wa, whose chemists are renowned for producing high-quality heroin.
In recent years the Wa have been concerned about their international image, especially in light of an indictment four years ago of eight Wa leaders by a U.S. court that described the Wa army as “a criminal narcotics trafficking organization.” Under pressure from China, the Wa banned farmers in their territory from cultivating opium. (It is now principally grown in adjacent territories controlled by other groups.)But the concern about public relations could quickly dissipate in crisis, Mr. Chin said. “If there’s war, nobody cares about a good international reputation,” he said. “Survival will take over.”
Link!
