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This is a remote area at
bordering Thailand and Laos
in the north east of the
country. Until a couple of
years ago most opium
produced in the world was
produced via poppy
cultivation and opium flower
there, now most is produced
in Afghanistan. The golden
triangle is a very
mountainous piece of land
difficult to access not even
by a regular tour.
Tachilek is the main
city of the area where opium poppies are raised.
Since a couple of years people moved a bit to cash
crops and synthetic drugs which are smuggled into
Thailand. Almost every month a shipment of
pill is seized on the way to Bangkok, usually the
police find 2-3 million of this pills per shipment,
this drugs
are sold locally and
exported worldwide
A remote area covering
northern parts of Shan State and north east of
Kachin State plus smaller, adjacent areas conveys
mystery and intrigue. This is a thickly forested and mountainous region beyond
government control.
In resent years the drug
production moved more to synthetic drugs and
millions of pills are carried to Thailand every week
where, now the drug production is mainly under the
control of Chinese drug lords who have even their
own army
The golden triangle Myanmar
has been a haven for various groups
since the end of World war 2
including: the
Kuomintang or KMT,
Nationalist Chinese troops who escaped to the south after their
defeat by the Chinese communists;
Shan and Kachin
insurgents and the Communist Party of Burma, CPB,
who established a base among the Wa people at the
Chinese
border.
The town of Tachilek
at the map to the right is about 100km south of
the golden triangle center.
These groups financed
their needs by raising poppies and opium production
and trafficking it into Thailand.
The fear of
spreading communism even spurred American and French
involvement in the region’s nefarious and lucrative
business, in order to pay local mercenaries fighting
in
Southeast Asia. Local
hill tribes including the Wa, Kokang, Lahu, Lisu, Lu and Akha
have also been drawn
and producing
opium, armed ethnic insurgents use the money to fighting the
government and were supported by the US government,
independent opium
warlords with private armies held sway over much
of the area. Law Hsin Han and Kung Sa, for
example, have been notorious for posed
difficulties to successive regimes and
western countries in which their illicit drugs
are sold, read more.
After operating
for some two decades,
Law Hsin Han was arrested in
Thailand,
extradited to Myanmar and sentenced to death. His sentence was
commuted in 1980 and subsequently he took up residence in Taunggyi.
Kung Sa backed by
his own Muang Tai Army of some 20,000 fully
armed troops, carried on when Law Hsin Han was
arrested. His army even had the temerity to make
occasional forays into government controlled
territory.
Opium poppy raising
is actively prevented to get this
problem under control. Including a one million dollar
reward for Khun Sa’s capture put up by the
United States - Khun Sa has already died some
time ago in his bed in Yangon.
In 1996, the
government was able to persuade Khun Sa
to give-up his army of more than 14,000 men and
almost 9,000 heavy and small arms. He was once
variously known in the international press as
Prince of Death, Scourge of Mankind and Drug
Kingpin, was on good terms with the
government and was even accorded the honorific
prefix U or Uncle.
The government has
refused to extradite him to the U.S. on
grounds that there is no extradition treaty
between the countries.
For hundreds of
years the main commodities traded here were tea, jade and teak. Drugs
were introduced by the English colonists
they encouraged poppy cultivation in order to
produce opium for the Chinese market, the
profits of which enriched the British East India
Company and the British crown.
The U.S. financed the KMT or Kuomintang
to pressure the Chinese communists under Mao.
After Nixon and Kissinger established stronger
relations the U.S.
withdrew support from the KMT who then turned to
raising poppies to finance their activities.
Some argue that the
United States Government could have put a stop
to poppy cultivation years ago. In 1991, Khun Sa
welcomed a crop substitution plan proposed by
the United Nations.
Earlier, in 1989, Khun Sa
had indicated to President Bush that he would
cease planting poppies and in 1975 Law Hsin Han
offered to sell the complete opium crop to the United
States in exchange for another cash crop.
All suggestions to
stop the stuff and
get something in return have been arrogantly
rejected by the United States who blame
Myanmar for not solving the problem
there, Khun Sa " died in October 2007 peacefully
in his house in Yangon.
The United States
government does not seem to understand the
demand and supply principles of the economic
system they have sought to introduce all over
the world ! Those who supply drugs are simply
responding to the demand of drug users in the
United States and Europe.
Why doesn’t the U S government focus on educating
people not to use drugs instead of blaming poor
Asian countries for
causing the problem' Is it because there are too
many powerful groups in America who
profit from the drug trade' The drug problem is
a problem on the consumer side not on the
supplier side.
Golden Triangle
Poppy and Opium
Opium poppy ncisions are made in the
walls of the green
seed pods, and
the milky exudation is visible, collected and
dried Golden
triangle MyanmarPoppy and Opium
Synthetic Drug Production,
Kuomintang. A latex containing several
important alkaloids is obtained
from immature
opium poppy seed capsules one to three
weeks after flowering
opium poppies
at
Laos,
Myanmar and
Thailand,
Americans living in fine homes and driving
beautiful cars in “God’s own country,” are
demanding that hill tribes in the golden
Triangle who can hardly afford one full meal a
day, give up a key source of income to solve an
American problem.
When US people don't consume
drugs people elsewhere wont raise drugs because
the US are the biggest market for drugs.
Currently the US government
do the same nonsense
with Mexico and people there suffer because of a US
problem.
The
government of Myanmar enacted a Narcotic
Drug Law in 1974 and the Narcotic Drugs and
Psychotropic Substances Law in 1993 to combat
drug trafficking. The Central Committee for Drug
Abuse Control (CCDAC) is charged with the
responsibility of enforcing the laws and
of encouraging crop substitution and
livestock farming. The government also
provides treatment as well as conducting
information and education programs.
Rehabilitation, information and
education have been undertaken in the
golden Triangle . Myanmar is also
actively co-operating with countries in
the region as well as with UN agencies in drug control
work in the golden Triangle. From 1990
to 1997, seized narcotics valued at over
$52 million were publicly destroyed at
11 exhibitions before state,
diplomatic and UN officials. During the
same period 32,777 persons were jailed
for drug abuse offences including 20
sentenced to death and 48 to life
imprisonment.
A typical story of a golden triangle “Drug
Baron”
is the story of Wei
Hsueh-Kang, a ethnic Chinese of the United Wa
State Army which is primarily involved in drug
producing, processing and selling. Since a
couple of years they moved away from opium
production and opium poppy cultivation to
produce synthetic drugs, amphetamine, ice etc.
Synthetic drugs have a big market in Thailand,
around once a month the police catch a major
shipment from that area with destination Bangkok, its
estimated that they only catch around 5% of the
drugs, each shipment usually has around 3
million pills. They travel from the border far
into the south hand over the drugs at Chiang Rai
and Chiang Mai to other gangs who carry them to
Bangkok and further. The other day (2013) they
found a women who smuggled synthetic drugs from
Laos, they just crossed the Mekong River. This
is real trafficking tourism.
The irony is and it tells practically everything
about the mind boggling behavior of the US
administration is, that parallel to this they
have been a good allay to the United Wa State
Army (UWSA) for destabilizing the Myanmar
government since they don’t do what Washington
commands.
The US Americans put
a $2 million reward on his head and hoped that
in this money oriented society they might get a
hit. The guy was caught in Thailand on drug
trafficking charges. Some court processing was
done; he was released on bail and “evaporated”.
As an example, in
2008-2009 poppy harvesting in an area around 15
villages in Shan State was done at 617 hectares,
at 2010-2011 the area was expanded to 1,109
hectares. The army and politicians are heavily
involved into production and transport. In
Myanmar’s Shan State are 55 townships. At almost
all of them is some growing and refining of
opium going on, actually for the local people
poppies are a simple cash crop they have no
local problems with it, it’s a means of
agriculture production if some people maybe
thousands of kilometers away don’t like this,
its their problem, they should educated their
people not to consume drugs after production
will be stopped automatically, but blaming some
poor Asian people who have hardly enough to eat
is the most easy way out instead of solving the
problem. The only 11 township which are somehow
poppy free are along the Chinese border and
Chinese authorities put a lot of pressure on the
locals not to grow them.
Refineries are, among other, at Punako, opposite
Thailand's Chiang Rai.
Opium farmers of the golden triangle
To grow poppies it
needs reasonable soil, no watering needed, there
is enough mist with sufficient moisture in it,
in the area are also tea plantations. They grow
the poppies almost everywhere in the hills of
north eastern Shan state, even just cross the
Thai border. Why do the local farmers raise
them? If they grow vegetables, how to get them
to market, there are no roads and no market,
when they grow poppies some uniformed people
will come and buy the latex. It looks as with
some help on infrastructure building and crop
substitution a lot could be done to make the
farmer not raising poppies, but the relevant
authorities only talk and blame the other,
nobody really ever helps the locals, for them
it's a cash crop which can be substituted.
Tachilek - the Capital.
is located in the eastern sector of Thanlwin Shan
State. The
Friendship Bridge across the small Mae Sai
stream links
the city with the northern Thai
border town. The area is currently
being developed for tourism and cross-border
trade.
A sightseeing tour
could be made by flying direct from or drive 450 kilometers
to the east to
Kentung, then 163 kilometers south.
There is a ferry landing site at Wanpon port,
Mekong River.
