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The Golden Triangle: Inside Southeast Asia's Drug Trade: By Ko-Lin Chin

Article  in  Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology · December 2009

DOI: 10.1375/acri.42.3.422

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Ko-Lin Chin. The Golden Triangle: inside Southeast Asia’s drug trade. Cornell
University Press: Ithaca, 2009.

Book Review: Roderic Broadhurst, Australian National University

ANZ Journal of Criminology, Volume 42, Number 3, December 2009, pp 423-27.

Few scholars have undertaken extensive fieldwork on the drug trade in Myanmar and
even fewer have visited all sides of the notorious ‘golden triangle’ that encompasses
the province of Yunnan (China), Northeast Shan state (Myanmar or Burma), Lao and
Northern Thailand. Ko-lin Chin’s field-work is a remarkable contribution to our
understanding of the opium and heroin trade as practiced among the Wa, or Shan, and
other ethnic groups who straddle these strategic border areas. The story of the Wa is
one worth telling. We learn a great deal from Chin’s multi-faceted and meticulous
work over several years (2001-2006) in the Wa sub-state and along the transport
routes over which the narcotics flow. If we are to understand the resurgence of opium
cultivation in Afghanistan – many of the ingredients, religious and ethnic tensions,
weak or rogue states, war, and trans-national crime have been played out in the
golden triangle.

Burma is second only to Afghanistan in the production of opium where once it

accounted for most of the world’s production. Once 40-60% of the heroin consumed
in New York originated in the golden triangle, but most now arrives from Mexico,
and Colombia. Opium production in Burma has been in steady decline since the mid
1990s, although the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB 2009:31) noted that
in 2007 and 2008 production had once again increased in quality and quantity. The
INCB also noted the continued and growing significance of the amphetamine-type-
stimulant (ATS) production within Burma, especially its sub-state autonomous
regions such as Wa.

The high-quality heroin (No. 4) that flowed from the golden triangle and once
dominated the international heroin market has now have been eclipsed by producers
in Afghanistan. Increasingly large seizures of Afghan heroin are intercepted in the
Chinese province of Xinjiang but heroin from the golden triangle continues to be
seized. For example, at Zuhai a seizure (11.5kg) involved a group led by a Taiwanese
and Chinese based in Cambodia (CRI 2009). Cambodian connections will develop as
all weather land routes open access to China. A nascent trade in Cambodia sassafras
oil, an alternative precursor for ATS may also be in play, diversifying the source of
this illicit trade (INCB 2009: 86). In Australia, heroin originating in Afghanistan
rather than South East Asia has begun to appear in Sydney although not yet in
significant amounts (Kidman 2009).

Chin’s field trips to the Wa area enabled him to meet a number of Wa officials and
those involved in illicit drug production. His team of Wa students interviewed 300
opium producers and he interviewed 130 others involved in upstream activities
including small-scale dealing, refining and ATS production. His surveys of the
opium fields and interviews with officials in Mynamar and China add considerable
value to the discussion of drug control later in the book. It seems that a revival of Wa
opium cultivation is likely, albeit more underground, despite the ban on cultivation

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from 2005. The recent fall in opium production and heroin refining in the Wa, and
Kokang and in seizures abroad suggest that most of what is produced may be
consumed in the vast East Asian market. However, ATS (‘yabba’ in Thai) production
is on the increase and makes it way into China, Thailand and onward to Hong Kong,
Taiwan and elsewhere. ATS production depends on the delivery of capital, precursor
chemicals and machinery from these destination countries, and so Chin notes the
hypocrisy that allows the means to manufacture illicit drugs reach source countries.

Chin discusses in detail the nature of opium cultivation and the intricacies of the
small-scale indigenous trade that is mostly driven by the tax levied by local
governments (Chapter 3). He then covers the more discrete business of the refinement
of opium into heroin and the trade in heroin (Chapter 4). The rise of the ATS business
(Chapter 5) that began in the mid 1990s and its inter-relation with opium is also
described, including the important role of corrupt Thai officials, and businessmen.
The ATS business was introduced to the Wa by Thai and Chinese businesses that
were keen to exploit the Wa’s unique location, and its well-equipped army. The Wa, it
seems, adopted ATS as an alternative to the trade in heroin and opium. They saw the
ATS business as an opportunity to raise taxes for state-building while decreasing their
reliance on opium (responding to UN and US pressure), and as a means to placate the
Chinese by reducing the amount of heroin crossing into China (p 151). Wa officials
thought this was an easier business but sadly underestimated the uptake of these drugs
in their community.

Chin’s Chinese-Burmese ancestry and determination gave him unique access to the
opium growers and dealers, officials of the Wa State and Chinese businessmen who
form another ‘triangle’ – crime, politics and business. However, the poor swidden
farmers are the least able to profit from the tedious and demanding task of producing
raw opium. Chin’s sample of 11 villages showed disparities in the quality and
quantity of the yield that varied by as much as 18 to 1 across villages. The income of
the farmers also varied from $USD1774 to a meager $USD59 per annum. The
average per household was about $USD512 in 2000 but fell to $USD277 in 2001 (p
56). Opium production was estimated in 2007 to be about 460 metric tons down from
the peak 2575 tons in 1993 (p. 54). As noted by the INCB, however, the quality and
quantity is again on the increase, although prone to the ordinary hazards of
unfavorable seasonal conditions. Many villagers are highly dependent on opium both
as users (8% of Chin’s sample reported being users) and to put food on the table.
While none of the cultivators were involved in the ATS business others relied on the
income from opium to supplement other forms of agricultural production and basic
needs.

In 1996 under pressure from the Chinese and the international community the Wa
announced the intention to reduce cultivation of opium and production of heroin, and
to completely eradicate production from 2005. Wa efforts to eradicate opium
cultivation in the absence of subsidies had a devastating effect on those farmers most
dependent on this source of income. Indeed without emergency supplies of rice from
the UN world food program in 2006 the impact of the eradication effort would have
been more deadly. The prior context of this transformation was the bitter six year
struggle (1989-1995) with ‘drug warlord’ Kuhn Sa’s Shan Army that followed the Wa
(and Kokang) breakaway from the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). Kuhn Sa the
son of a Nationalist soldier and founder of the Shan state ‘narco-army’ surrendered in

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1996 and died peacefully in Yangon in 2007 untroubled by outstanding warrants for
his arrest issued by the US. The Wa had entered into a fragile ‘cease fire’ agreement
with the Myanmar state pending the passage of a new Constitution for Mynamar. For
ethnic sub-states, such as the Wa, the prospects of constitutional autonomy are
increasingly unlikely and the tatmadaw’s (Mynamar’s armed forces) recent ‘recovery’
of Kokang north of the Wa in August 2009 may set the stage for more tension and
conflict. Such conflict may spur the need to generate even greater income from the
drug trade.

Chin devotes a chapter (6) to discussing the impact and pattern of drug use among the
farmers and dealers/traffickers across the region including users in Kunming and the
high impact of the ATS drugs. This is a compelling chapter that gives voice to the
users and allows Chin to explore with conviction the options for change to drug
control strategies (chapter 7). He concludes by stressing the importance of ‘grey’
business in the supply of drugs and their micro and macro political connections. Chin
identifies the crucial factor in drug control will be Sino-US relations and its influence
on Thailand-Mynamar relations. With a joint US-China approach to improve the
economic and social conditions there is “…a good chance the area’s drug scourge can
be eliminated once and for all” (p 239).

This kind of optimism is not unjustified but does require a shift from the “war on
drugs” to economic development and engagement. While costs may be considerable,
they are not unmanageable. One option, suggested by the ‘drug lord’ Khun Sah, was
that the entire annual crop of opium in the Shan state be purchased for $US2 million;
a bargain given the phenomenal costs involved in suppression and the value of the
black-market. The mostly Chinese criminal networks that manage the wholesale
heroin, precursor and ATS trade, according to Chin, do so via the merging of licit and
illicit or ‘grey’ business rather than engaging traditional triads or ‘dark’ societies.
These conventional criminal groups remain crucial in managing street level dealing
but may have a limited role in the diffuse and horizontal organizational structures
required to produce, transport and wholesale narcotics (p 227-31).

Much also depends on the extent that the autocratic State Peace and Development
Council of Mynamar are implicated as a defacto ‘narco-state’ tolerant (or powerless)
of its ethnic enclaves role in the narcotics trade, yet implicitly linked via corruption
and neglect. Without a new state in Burma equal to the task of modern governance,
delivery of a new deal to the disenfranchised and impoverished populations of the
golden triangle maybe as futile as ‘chasing the dragon’. Equally important will be
how East Asian states manage their emerging demand problems (especially ATS) in
the context of the increased impact of globalization and weak law enforcement both
within and between states in the region (Ball 1999; Dupont 1999).

The Wa’s central place in opium and heroin production in the ‘golden triangle’ came
about from several factors not least was the tolerance of opium and the role of the
British, whose powerful Hong Kong merchant houses had been founded on capital
raised in the lucrative China-India opium trade of the 19th and early 20th century.

The complex geo-politics of this once remote border region have also driven the Wa,
Kachin, Kokang and other independent highland groups involvement in opium and
now the ATS business. It is these exigencies that compel Chin to look beyond the

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self-interested demonization that has characterized Western and US responses to the
‘drug warlords’ of the golden triangle. This demonization is a diversion, and an
excuse for the failure to regulate the demand for recreational drugs in wealthy
destination countries. A point the Wa themselves recognize in defense of their
circumstances. If we recall, cold war ‘games’ were instrumental in making the golden
triangle and it is those same players the US and China, that are essential in driving the
changes necessary in bringing a modicum of hope to the thousands of villagers
enmeshed in the tragedy of the golden triangle.

After all, the trigger for the massive growth in opium and the heroin trade was the
influx of the Nationalist 13th Army under General Li Mi a Yunnan native in 1949. As
the civil war swept the victorious Red Army south and west, General Li was forced to
retreat across the border to Burma. Under his command a tax on opium was raised on
the occupied border areas of the Wa-Shan as a means of supporting the army and its
camp followers. Ordered to withdraw to Taiwan in 1954, General Li and 6500 of his
troops complied, however, many of the officers and Yunnan peasants in his army
stayed on. This ‘lost army’ formed an irregular border force known as the Yunnan
People’s Anticommunist Volunteer Army both a buffer and irritant to the Burmese
and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Although supported by the CIA as an
irregular army it was also the genesis of the opium-heroin business initially supplying
local or Asian markets. By the 1960s the remnants of this force and their merchant
allies accounted for 90% of the heroin business. The second trigger was the Vietnam
War and the supply of heroin to the market of disaffected US servicemen that began
an unbroken boom in demand from 1970 onward (McCoy 1972). This second wave of
heroin arrived in Australia along with US servicemen and developed thereafter readily
absorbing the later ATS trade for yet another new generation of recreational drug
users. Just as opium users changed to heroin users, so heroin users converted to the
cheaper ATS drugs – injecting, literally even greater harm than opium ever did. The
third wave was the development of the great global China market and with it lucrative
transnational crime. The convergence of grey business, geo-political instability,
improved communications and transportation, rising global demand and the weak
guardianship of international, regional and national law enforcement agencies
provided vectors for an epidemic in drug consumption.

Chin reminds us of the blood and toil that makes the drug trade a profitable business
for some while exploiting those least able to make choices – the forgotten villagers of
the golden triangle. He also brings into picture the essential collusion between,
business, criminals and elements of the state in profiting from the trade. His plea for
engagement rather than further isolation of Burma is a stance that is both practical and
compassionate. It recognizes that sustainable change comes at the village level and
foreign aid should focus on rural development – optimism could be justified. If
support for the Wa farmers does not materialize then any progress in reducing
cultivation would quickly be reversed. International engagement is the only hope for
positive change as Chin argues. One hundred years ago in Shanghai the International
Narcotics Control Board convened to address through international co-operation the
dreadful toll of the opium trade. Thus began the nascent mechanisms of global
regulation anchored to the recognition that we live in communities of shared fate.
Thus what befalls the Wa and the Afghan farmer will affect us all.

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 References

Anon. ‘11.5 kg of Heroin Seized in SE China’, CRI, August 25, 2009,

http://english.cri.cn/6909/2009/08/25/2001s511071.htm, (accessed October 1, 2009)

Anon. ‘Khun Sa Ruthless Burmese warlord who dominated the world’s heroin trade’,
The Times, November 5, 2007, (accessed September 29, 2009).

Ball, D. (1999). Burma and Drugs: The Regime's Complicity in the Global Drug.
Working Paper 336. Canberra: Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, Australian
National University;

Dupont, A. 1999. Drugs, Transnational Crime and Security in East Asia. Working
Paper 328. Canberra: Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, Australian National
University;

International Narcotics Control Board (2009). Report of the Board 2008. UN: New
York.

Kidman, J. (2009). ‘Afghan brown heroin hits Sydney streets’. Sydney Morning
Herald, March 16, 2009, see: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/afghan-brown-
heroin-hits-sydney-streets/2008/03/15/1205472157938.html, (accessed September 28,
2009)

McCoy, A. (1972). The Politics of Heroin in South Vietnam. Harper Colophon Books:
New York.

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