The Golden Triangle, this space nested
in the highlands of northern Indochina, is known to be
a historical place of illicit opium production. It overlaps
the three states whose mountainous peripheries constitute
it: Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos and Thailand. The emergence
of the Golden Triangle from the tropical mountains of
northern mainland Southeast Asia is an altogether recent
phenomenon, and the opium production that exists there
is frequently and erroneously thought as being an old
traditional activity.
Indeed, it is only at the end of 19th century
that the tribal populations, which at this time had been
producing opium for only one hundred years in the mountains
of southern China (Sichuan and Yunnan inter alia),
began their southernmost forced migration towards the highlands
of mainland Southeast Asia. There, they scattered and settled,
having brought with them the practice and techniques of
farming the opium poppy or Papaver somniferum.
As World War II drew to a close, with the
Southeast Asian opium economy still in its infancy, the
ruptures of the Indian and Chinese supplies had forced the
area to become self-sufficing in opium for the very first
time. What was not yet the Golden Triangle, was then producing
less than eighty tons of opium per annum; the production
in Indochina having previously known an 800 percent increase
in four years, passing from eight tons in 1940 to sixty
in 1944.
In fact it is the 1949 radical Chinese political
change which really initiated the dynamics in the development
of the Golden Triangle. Following the escape to Burma of
Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) - Chinese nationalist
troops - in front of the Communists' People's Liberation
Army (PLA), the facts were going to be drastically transformed.
Since 1950, the PLA had indeed launched programs of substitution
crops in southern China, and, thus, any opium export towards
Southeast Asia, legal or illegal, had quickly ceased.
If China were to regulate its problem of opium
addiction in a very drastic way, Southeast Asia was going
to replace the production within the Cold War's conflictual
framework. All financing means seemed indeed acceptable
in the context of these anticommunist wars, as it was then
the case with the CIA covert operations in Laos. The CIA
had also been implied in the development of Burmese opium
production when it supported the KMT attempts to reconquer
China from within its Burma sanctuary. The sudden 1955 opium
production suppression in Iran only happened to reinforce
the effect of transfer already inaugurated towards Southeast
Asia; but, it was also going to stimulate Afghan and Turkish
productions. A scheme altogether identical to that of the
Golden Triangle was to be reproduced in the eighties in
the Golden Crescent, i.e. Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan,
and there again, with the hazardous hand of the CIA.
It is only in 1971 that the expression "Golden
Triangle" appears, apparently coined by the U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State Marshall Green who, in making reference
to a triangle's shape, took care not to include China which
President Nixon was just about to visit. As for the gold
of the triangle, it is most probably that which the first
opium merchants of the "three borders area" used in exchange
for their cargo at the actual checkpoint of Tachileck -
Mae Sai, on the Thai-Burma border.
Later, the Golden Triangle's opium production
literally exploded to exceed 3000 tons in 1989, with Burma
alone producing more than 2500 tons in 1996. The opium and
heroin trade connected a marginal and isolated Southeast
Asian area of production with the principal large cities
of the Western world. The United States became the principal
destination of the Golden Triangle's heroin, the so-called
China White, or heroin N°4, renowned for its 98 percent
purity.
Now the Golden Triangle is also characterized
by a new production of illicit drugs. Those are far from
appearing as traditional as opium and represent the most
recent consumption tendencies of our century. The "Amphetamine-Type
Stimulants," or ATS, experience a recent and disproportionate
development, their production having exploded in the Golden
Triangle since 1996.
The whole of mainland Southeast Asia seems
affected by methamphetamines, which one names ya ba, or
"mad pill," in Thailand. Here again, Burma places itself
as their very first producer, and Thailand, where many laboratories
have also been established, is the principal consumer of
these substances. This is not really a new phenomenon, and
1920's Japan for example had already experienced a significant
wave of amphetamine consumption. But the great innovation
lies in the reconversion and diversification operated by
producers who had hitherto limited themselves to the opiate
trade.
In addition, Southeast Asia's strong economic
growth furthered the recourse to the consumption of these
stimulants. Indeed, the lengthening of the working days
on one hand, and a certain neglect of children by their
overworked parents on the other, increased the need for
excitants and stimulants. A similar phenomenon has already
taken place in Great Britain and in the United States when
the industrial revolution, and the new work rhythm that
it implied, induced a strong increase of tea, coffee, and
sugar consumption.
But the nineties are also characterized by
the global diffusion of new trends, among which the so-called
recreative uses are beginning to take more and more importance
in some nocturnal entertainment places. In Thailand for
example, the phenomenon is considered alarmist by the authorities,
and many measures are taken in night clubs as in schools,
where amphetamines, ecstasy and LSD are readily available.
It thus seems that one witnesses a radical switch of the
production and consumption patterns in Southeast Asia, even
if the two aspects of the problem still particularly concern
Myanmar and Thailand.
In 1999, Myanmar will have produced between
two hundred and three hundred million methamphetamine pills,
mainly in its eastern frontier areas, along the Thai border.
Methamphetamine can indeed be produced from a very simple
process, starting with ephedrine, the principal alkaloid
of Ephedra, a shrub which grows wild on vast expanses
in nearby Chinese Yunnan. The deep modifications which followed
the fall of Khun Sa in January 1996, the former "king of
opium," are actually revealing themselves through a diversification
of illicit productions that is mostly undertaken by the
United Wa State Army (UWSA). The UWSA is partly at the origin
of Khun Sa's fall since it subjected him to a very strong
military pressure following agreements made with the ruling
junta.
Basically, the agreement consisted in the
UWSA getting rid of Khun Sa, who from an international diplomatic
standpoint, was becoming an embarrassment for the junta.
In exchange, the UWSA obtained the government authorization
to conduct and develop their own traffic, for example openly
using the country's communication infrastructures. The surrender
of Khun Sa in 1996 clearly caused heroin prices to rise
in Thailand, and thus supported the amphetamine consumption
increase. Indeed, amphetamines are much less expensive and
easier to produce. The UWSA then largely benefited from
conditions which it had itself largely contributed to set
up, while judiciously exploiting the geographical proximity
of Yunnanese Ephedra vulgaris.
From now on, the UWSA is Myanmar's main drug
trafficking group, and they deal with opiates as well as
amphetamines. Many methamphetamine laboratories are disseminated
along the Myanmar - Thailand border, and the trafficking
activities manifest themselves on the Thai side through
a very clear increase in armed violence.
If the Thai anti-drug services are mobilized
along the border permanently, the events of the first half
of 1999 and the production and trafficking explosion caused
a hardening of the Thai position through an intensification
of anti-drug operations. Thus, in April 1999, some traffickers
likely to be related to the Wa ethnic group killed twelve
Thai villagers.
This marked the beginning of a new anti-drug
policy orientation in Thailand, when it was estimated that
more than one hundred million methamphetamine pills had
penetrated in the country in 1998. The closing of many border
posts is now becoming a very seriously considered alternative
to this situation. In fact, the one of San Ton Du, in Chiang
Mai's province, the main methamphetamine gate from Myanmar's
UWSA stronghold towards Thailand, has been closed in early
August.
Indeed, in July, some eight hundred men of
the Thai armed forces were deployed on fifty kilometers
of Chiang Mai's border area. The Wa drug traffickers, principal
targets of this ambitious operation, are supposed to already
have redirected their traffic's flows towards a former road
used by the Communist Party of Thailand when it conducted
its guerrilla operations. The closing of the San Ton Du
checkpoint is in fact thought to have instigated a redirecting
of the traffic through more than one hundred hill paths
across the Thai-Myanmar border area. The Thai army is actually
estimating that some fifty-seven methamphetamine laboratories
are established around Myawaddy, the Myanmar border town
facing Thailand's Mae Sot, and that the Democratic Karen
Buddhist Army (DKBA) - the pro-junta karen faction opposed
to the Karen National Union's resistance (KNU) - takes part
directly in the export of methamphetamine towards Thailand.
Thai intelligence services mention also that
the Burmese junta could actually be conducting a new agreement
with the UWSA so that the latter keeps the control of areas
lying between Moulmein and Mae Sot, thus preventing a resurgence
of KNU's ethnic resistance. In exchange, the Wa would obtain
the authorization to develop several bus lines in the area,
a privilege already granted to Khun Sa at the time of his
surrender, as well as to set up some methamphetamine laboratories.
This is confirmed by the August attack of the allied UWSA
and junta against the KNU.
As for Wei Hsueh-kang, the head of the UWSA
Southern Command, a notorious heroin and methamphetamine
trafficker and Khun Sa's former treasurer, the reward of
two million U.S. dollars offered by Washington for his capture
still holds; in spite of the fact that its long awaited
conviction is henceforth compromised by the natural death
in the United States of one of the lawsuit's principal witnesses,
and the release of another.
The major methamphetamine production area,
around Mong Yawn valley, is controlled by Wei Hsueh-kang
and Ta Kap, respective commanders of the UWSA's 361 and
894 brigades. The latter estimates that they gained the
area in exchange of the assistance that they provided to
the junta against Khun Sa. Now, a very significant developmental
program is in progress there: dams, roads, schools, dispensaries,
running water and electricity made their appearance there
and some six thousand Thai workmen are currently hired on
different building sites. The Myanmar junta had granted
the control of the Mong Yawn area to the UWSA in 1995 and
was seeking, since 1996 and unsuccessfully, to restore its
authority there. It has however just renewed its "special
administration zone" status for five additional years, which,
of course, does not keep Thai anti-drug services from worrying.
The Golden Triangle thus seems to be undergoing
massive changes, be it a reconversion or a simple diversification
of the activities of production. The phenomenon is also
discernible on the diplomatic level since the considerable
increase in methamphetamine traffic from Myanmar towards
Thailand spurred severe statements from certain Thai officials.
As a matter of fact, the head of the National Security Council
declared that drug traffickers were to be shot when crossing
the border, while a highly ranked official of the National
Narcotics Operation Center denounced that the Myanmar junta
supported and encouraged the production and the export of
methamphetamine by the UWSA. This last declaration did not
avoid provoking a sharp denial from the Myanmar authorities
who refuted at the same time the strongly suspected renewal
of Khun Sa activities.
Thus, the Golden Triangle is no longer limited
to only opiate production; and, if it is estimated that
two hundred million methamphetamine pills are produced annually
by the UWSA, there also exist production centers in Cambodia,
in Laos - where the UWSA would have established several
laboratories - and of course, in Thailand.
There is hardly a doubt that the production
trends are more of a matter of diversification than of simple
reconversion. Eventually, it is the policies of alternative
development, and especially the setting up of substitution
crops, which are susceptible to be challenged by the production
of synthetic drugs. Indeed, if the Golden Triangle's heroin
production is tributary of opium poppy growing, and can
be affected by the spread of substitution crops, that of
methamphetamine does not know any similar agricultural constraints
at all, Ephedra growing wild in China. Therefore the new
drug production in the Golden Triangle no longer depends
directly on the farming communities of the concerned countries.
