-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Opium Fields
ISBN 974-7047-00-4
Jon Boyes & S. Piraban©1991 All rights reserved
Silkworm Books
Bankgok, Thailand 10150
pps. 134
-----
--even more astonishing is the very number of people, organisations, and even
national governments that have had a hand in creating this situation. For the
Golden Triangle did not appear overnight. It was planned. Its growth was
fostered and nurtured over decades by various interested parties--
--Who was behind the 1971 heroin plague? The North Vietnamese? The Viet Cong?
China? Evidence suggests it was America's allies, the South Vietnamese. It is
thought the Vietnamese navy and airforce were the prime importers, and the
army the distributors, with high-ranking officials in the customs, port
authority, National Police and National Assembly all playing important
supporting roles. In an unstable wartime economy, few could resist taking
part in a booming service industry which grossed an estimated eighty-eight
million dollars a year.
And behind it all, lurking in the shadows, lay the CIA,--
Om
k
-----
1
INTRODUCTION
The Golden Triangle
The world's press conjured up the name 'Golden Triangle' to describe a vast,
virtually impenetrable region of rolling, jungle-clad hills, wide plateaus
and towering, jagged, limestone peaks embracing the northern reaches of
Thailand, the Shan, Wa and Kachin States of eastern Burma and much of
northwestern Laos.
It describes a region without defined limits, a land of narrow, twisting
mountain trails, jungle-flanked rivers, and in Thailand at least, government
built strategic roads.
An ethnological crossroads, it is an anthropologist's paradise, or nightmare
perhaps. A land whose bedrock of Thai, Shan and Lao peoples has been overlain
by a multitude of minority tribes and peoples the Akha, Lisu and Lahu,
originally from Tibet and southwestern China, the Hmong and Yao from South
China, the many Karen peoples: Sgaw, Pwo, Kayah, Padaung, and others, whose
precise origins are unknown, the Kachin, originally from China, where they
are called Jing Pu, and the Haw Chinese from Yunnan Province.
It describes a land whose inhabitants are principally farmers, some of whom
till the rich valley floors, while others scratch a living from the steep
mountain slopes; one where valleys and mountains are sun-drenched in the hot,
dry season, blanketed in smoke and ash during the seasonal burn-off, a
quagmire in the long, wet monsoon months and subject to bitterly cold
Himalayan winds in winter.
It is a place where a force of one hundred armed men constitutes an army,
where rebellions against the state, whether against communist Laos, socialist
Burma or democratic Thailand are a way of life.
And it describes a region whose chief product has determined the history of
whole nations, the source of a substance that has been the cause of major
wars, a commodity that today is threatening the very fabric of our societies.
This product is, of course, opium, the so-called mother drug, the raw base
that is refined to produce heroin, one of the most destructive recreational
drugs known to mankind. Opium to the Golden Triangle is what coal was to
northern England, or corn to the American Midwest. It is the trade in illicit
drugs that makes the Triangle... Golden.
The 1988/89 Golden Triangle opium harvest was of record breaking proportions
with a bumper crop of 2,400 tonnes harvested. The 1989/90 harvest is thought
to have matched the previous year's. Two thousand four hundred tonnes of
opium translates roughly into 240 tonnes of refined heroin, or nearly forty
times the estimated annual consumption of the United States. These two giant
harvests will result in the Golden Triangle remaining as one of the most
significant if not the most significant heroin producing regions of the
world, and will contribute massively to the heroin addiction numbers reported
around the world. Thailand already has over 400,000 addicts, Malaysia 180,000
(heroin and opium), India 200,000 to 300,000, Pakistan over one million (in
1980 the number of addicts in Pakistan was considered so few as to be not
worth reporting) and the United States, possibly as many as 750,000. The flow
of heroin, it seems, cannot be stopped.
This book looks at the development of the Golden Triangle. It examines some
of the influences that have contributed to its creation.
We explore the link between the activities of certain European trading powers
in centuries past, and the growth in opium addiction in Southeast Asia and
China which in consequence paved the way for the emergence of the Golden
Triangle during the present century. We review the actions of the French in
Indochina which directly led to the expansion of opium cultivation in
northern Vietnam and northeastern Laos -lands bordering today's Golden
Triangle, and consider the United States involvement with opium growing
hilltribes in northern Laos during the 1960s, an indirect result of which was
the heroin epidemic of 1970/71 amongst American soldiers serving in Vietnam.
We take a look at the Thai and Laotian contribution to the present situation,
and more importantly, we examine the role of the Chinese Nationalists the
Kuomintang, and Khun Sa, the Shan warlord and commander of the Shan United
Army, also known as the 'Opium King' of the Golden Triangle. These two
factions, operating right at the heart of the Golden Triangle, have been the
prime movers behind the post war development of the region into the major
source of heroin that it is today.
This book also focuses on the tribal peoples of the Golden Triangle,
principally those of northern Thailand. These people are of particular
interest as not only are they the cultivators of the opium poppy, but they
are also the first people to suffer the effects of their product. The poor,
village-dwelling, spirit-believing, opium-addicted tribal farmer of the
Golden Triangle, and the callous, parasitic, New York addict/mugger lead
lives a world apart, yet they share a common bond their addiction to a
product of the opium fields. We let the tribal peoples the growers, sellers
and users of opium speak for themselves about their opium-orientated lives.
We also look at the Thai government's policies and programmes in their fight
against the cultivation of the opium poppy in Thailand.
And finally we take a look at the region as a tourist destination, for the
Golden Triangle is a region to visit. It offers outstanding, breath-taking
scenery, captivating tribal peoples, friendly local inhabitants, and one of
the most colourful, seemingly too-dramatic-to-be-true stories of worldwide
significance. For by entering the infamous Golden Triangle, the visitor is
stepping into a headline-making world of intrigue and illegality, a
beautiful, apparently tranquil world at the very centre of one of the world's
most terrifying, soul-destroying epidemics yet to be inflicted on man, by man.
pps. 1-4
=====
2
OPIUM COMES TO ASIA
That this terrifying epidemic now unleashed upon mankind is a product of
man's own endeavours is perhaps astounding. What is even more astonishing is
the very number of people, organisations, and even national governments that
have had a hand in creating this situation. For the Golden Triangle did not
appear overnight. It was planned. Its growth was fostered and nurtured over
decades by various interested parties, as was the opium trade elsewhere in
Asia centuries earlier. To fully understand these more recent developments,
one must look back in opium's long history to the times of the British in
India, to the Arabs of the seventh and eighth centuries, back even to the
very beginnings of man's association with opium in the ancient world.
The Ancient World
The opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, was first discovered growing wild in the
mountains of eastern Mediterranean sometime in the Neolithic Age. From the
very beginning men eagerly turned to its special properties in an effort to
alleviate some of the discomforts that accompany human existence.
The Sumerians of ancient Iraq described the cultivation and preparation of
opium a full five thousand years before the birth of Christ. An unearthed
Egyptian medical treatise of the sixteenth century BC advised physicians to
prescribe opium to crying babies. Homer wrote in the Odyssey of Helen, the
daughter of Zeus, being in possession of a drug, nepenthes, which made one
oblivious of the evils that surrounds one a drug she is said to have
obtained from Egypt and which is thought to be opium.
Opium was known in classical Greece. Theophrastes and Dioscordes both mention
opium in their works as a pain-killer, although Diagoras of Melos strongly
recommended against its use in the fifth century BC. Hippocrates, 'The Father
of Western Medicine' advised its use. And Galen, in ancient Rome, prescribed
opium for most of the ailments suffered by his fellow Romans.
For all these thousands of years the principal method of taking opium was in
a solution. The smoking of opium was, as yet, unknown.
THE ARABS
It was not until the arrival of the Arabs on the world stage in the seventh
century AD that the cultivation of opium began to spread from its original
homelands. The Arabs were great believers in opium's medicinal and
courage-giving properties, and took the drug with them on their quest to
convert the world to Islam, disseminating the knowledge of opium cultivation
westwards across North Africa and up into western Europe, and eastwards
through Persia towards India. By the eighth century Arab traders had
introduced opium into India and even to parts of southwestern China.
In the centuries that followed, Arab sailing vessels continued to carry opium
into Asian waters and trade it whenever possible. As many of the Eastern
states were inward-looking, with self-contained economies and very little
interest in sea commerce, the spread of opium cultivation and use in the Far
East was at first slow. This situation changed rapidly with the arrival in
Asian waters of the more aggressive European traders.
THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH
The Portuguese and Spanish came first, dividing the world between them in the
sixteenth century. The Portuguese arrived in India in 1498 (Vasco de Gama),
and from Goa, their principal base in India, they established in the early
sixteenth century a Portuguese commercial empire with important centres in
Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malacca and the East Indies today's Indonesia. In 1557
the Portuguese added Macao to their empire and in 1569 the Spanish
established themselves in the Philippines.
Once in Asia, the Portuguese and Spanish quickly took over the maritime
commerce in their respective spheres of influence. But at first both had
difficulty in finding a commodity in which to trade. The lands of the east
were found to be brimming with desirable goods spices, silks, precious
stones but these lands wanted for nothing, certainly nothing the Europeans
had to offer. That was until the newcomers hit on tobacco, a new commodity
from the Portuguese colony of Brazil. Tobacco was found to be acceptable to
the natives and began to be traded throughout the areas under Portuguese and
Spanish influence.
While the carrying of medicinal opium had been inherited by the Portuguese
from the native maritime traders, the trade in opium at this time was still
relatively insignificant. But unknown to the Portuguese and Spanish, tobacco,
and even more so, the tobacco pipe, introduced by them, would in later
years-although too late for the original importers to benefit-unlock the door
to Asia's vast, seemingly inexhaustible supply of riches.
THE DUTCH
The Portuguese and Spanish remained the dominant European trading powers in
Asia for barely one hundred years. By the early seventeenth century, Dutch
fortunes were in the ascendant in the Far East. Goa and Macao remained
Portuguese, and the Spanish still controlled the Philippines, but Ceylon,
Malacca, The East Indies, Formosa (Taiwan) and all the important sea lanes
were Dutch.
It was the Dutch who were now to benefit from the introduction of tobacco and
the tobacco pipe into Asia. For they realised that many Chinese in the East
Indies, as well as on Formosa, were mixing Indian opium with tobacco and
smoking the mixture through a pipe. The Dutch tried it and also found it
pleasurable. Realising they were onto a good thing, they began trading in
Indian opium as a recreational drug, pushing it wherever there were Chinese
and others who found it enjoyable.
Opium had never been entirely a medicinal drug, its recreational
possibilities had always been exploited to some extent. But now for the first
time, it was being used primarily for recreational purposes. Compared with
later day trading in opium the Dutch market was small, insignificant really.
But it was a start. Something on which to build. A valuable tradeable
commodity had been found, and the stage was now set for the entrance of the
big-time players merchants bent on the total exploitation of Asia's vast
riches. Opium was soon to become very big business.
THE BRITISH
Opium Came from the English
"The history of opium is very long. It involves the English and the Chinese
having a business together. The English gave the Chinese the idea. In the
past Chinese people didn't know any thing about business. Normally they spent
their lives working in the fields and growing Chinese tea. The English took
the first opium to China and gave it to us to smoke. When we smoked it we
liked it and asked for more. The English wanted Chinese tea. If we gave the
tea, they would give us opium. If we didn't give them enough tea, they were
not happy. In the past all Chinese people smoked English opium. It was very
good quality opium. Every family had opium to smoke."
Pai chi-sha, a Chinese opium addict now living in northern Thailand.
The big league came to Asia with the arrival of the British who, in the
eighteenth century, quickly supplanted the Dutch as the principal European
power in Asia. The English first established themselves in India, where the
East India Company a London firm founded in 1600 had already begun
carving out its own private empire in the seventeenth century, establishing
its authority in Madras (1640), Bombay (1668) and Calcutta (1690). After the
victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British consolidated their
territorie's and then set about annexing much of North India.
Needing a reliable source of tax revenue to help offset the cost of their
imperial ventures, the British in India decided on opium, a commodity which
was as that time growing in abundance in North India, particularly in Bengal,
one of the seats of British power on the sub-continent. A British-run opium
factory was set up in Calcutta and the British authorities began encouraging
sales of the product. Sales grew rapidly, particularly to China, and revenues
from opium began to constitute a very valuable share of the total revenue of
British India.
As British influence and power spread, so too did the opportunities for
trading in opium. Rising demand in China in the early nineteenth century led
to further increases in production.
Between the years 1811-1821, a yearly average of 340 tons of opium entered
China from India. The amount increased tremendously during the late 1820s and
1830s, when the yearly average reached a massive 1841 tons. It is thought by
the late 1830s there were almost two million opium addicts in China. The
British rationalised this at the time by arguing that, although the
undesirable addictive effects of the drug were well recognised, if they, the
British, didn't monopolise the trade, then foreigners would. And as anyone
could clearly see, the Chinese, Malays and other natives evidently wanted the
drug, so damn it, why not give it to them.
So they did. The supply increased, opium's financial importance to British
India strengthened, and the opium trade soon developed into the economic
pivot around which the whole China Trade revolved.
THE CHINA TRADE
In the early days of the China Trade the British traded their own goods
(mainly Indian exports especially raw cotton) for Chinese teas and silks.
But the problem faced by all previous European powers trying to do business
with China persisted. China was a land overflowing with riches: fragrant
teas, exquisite silks, fragile porcelains. But the Chinese were almost
self-sufficient, they did not want anything the West had to offer. Thus the
British based in India had to pay in silver coin and bullion. Silver started
to flow from British India in ever larger quantities, a situation the British
found totally unsatisfactory. They therefore sought a commodity the Chinese
could not resist. And found opium. Chinese merchants paid for the opium in
silver and then the British bought in return Chinese tea and silk. The great
imbalance in trade was rectified and the drain on the British coffers halted.
More and more tax revenues were earned by the British Indian government. And
the tough, resilient British traders of the East prospered tremendously.
The Anglo-Chinese Opium War of 1839-1842
As more and more opium flooded China, the situation became impossible for the
empire. Opium smoking had been prohibited in 1729, and smoking, the
cultivation, and even more specifically, the importation of opium had been
banned in 1800. Yet not only did China find itself exchanging valuable trade
goods, particularly tea and silk for a commodity it should not have needed,
but over the decades the authority of the government was weakening throughout
the land due to the misuse of opium by officials and soldiers. With the
enormous leaps in the tonnage of opium entering China from British India,
friction between China and Britain resulted, leading finally and unavoidably
to the first major conflict between the two nations.
In December 1838, a Commissioner Lin was sent to Canton by the Emperor of
China to suppress the opium trade. Canton was the only port in the country
open to foreigners. It was here that they bought their illegal opium into the
country. Within days of his arrival, Lin took measures to destroy the trade.
First he laid down regulations governing the conduct of all classes of
society in relation to opium. Teachers were to report on students found
selling or smoking opium. Soldiers caught smoking were to be severely
downgraded in rank as a warning to others. And the employees and the lackeys
of the mandarins were not to be allowed to smoke opium under the protection
of their masters, but when caught, were to be dismissed along with their
masters. Lin then demonstrated his understanding of the situation by setting
a time limit for those who smoked the drug to break their habit. At the end
of this period all opium pipes and smoking equipment were to be handed over
to the magistrates. Then Lin turned his attention to the foreigners, the
actual bringers of the misery of opium addiction.
Lin seized all the opium stocks held there by foreign traders and had them
destroyed. The traders, the majority of them British, were then ordered to
leave Canton, and the one trading port in China open to foreigners was closed.
In all 20,280 chests of opium (approximately 2,000 metric tons) were
surrendered to the Chinese, the vast majority coming from the British
traders. It is recorded that the opium was destroyed in the following manner.
Trenches were dug on a beach on the Pearl River Delta outside Canton. Water
was then diverted into the trenches and salt sprinkled on the resulting
pools. The unprocessed opium was then thrown into the pools along with a
quantity of lime. Later, after the opium had been completely destroyed, the
residue was flushed into the river. The whole operation took twenty-three
days to complete.
The British government reacted swiftly on hearing news of Lin's actions, and
in defence of their much vaunted policy of free trade, dispatched warships
and men to China. Hostilities commenced in 1840. The Chinese forces were
easily and hopelessly outgunned by the British navy and land forces and China
suffered one humiliating defeat after another. In one naval engagement alone,
two British frigates sunk a fleet of twenty-two Chinese war junks, and
shortly afterwards, a British fleet threatened to reduce the city of Canton
to rubble.
The conflict ended in 1842 with the signing of the Treaty -of Nanking, the
first of the so-called 'unequal treaties' imposed upon China. The treaty
demanded the payment of a twenty-one million dollar indemnity to the
Britisha third of which was to compensate the traders for their lost opium
the surrendering to the British of a barren, almost deserted rock off the
Chinese coast this being Hong Kong -and the opening up to trade of five
Chinese ports; Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai.
The way was now wide open for yet further increases in the tonnage of opium
imported into China by the foreign traders.
China: A Reluctant Producer
A second Anglo-Chinese war broke out as a result of trade disputes in 1856,
leading to a further defeat for China and the signing in 1858 of an agreement
that put a nominal tax on imported opium, thus effectively legalizing the
importation of the drug into China. Realising it could not halt the
ever-increasing flow of opium into its domains, and wearying of the constant
drain on national financial resources that purchasing the foreign opium
entailed, China now began to produce its own domestic opium on a large scale.
At first inferior to the Indian opium, it was cheaper, and so sales grew
rapidly. Shortly, the poppy became a valuable crop for peasants, especially
those in the more mountainous, inaccessible regions where opium's low weight
and bulk, and high value, made it a particularly profitable crop. The
provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan were particularly well-suited to the growing
of the opium poppy so production in these areas rose enormously from the
1860s onward.
Chinese demand for foreign opium decreased after 1880, and by the beginning
of the twentieth century China itself produced over 22,000 tons yearly,
dwarfing Britain's 1880 high-point of 6,500 tons imported into China. China
was now the world's biggest producer of opium.
The nation was also its biggest consumer. It is estimated that there were
roughly fifteen million opium addicts in China at the turn of the century.
Rich and poor, scholar and soldier, all suffered the miseries of opium
addiction. The wealthy squandered their family fortunes, the poor starved to
death. The ravages of the opium epidemic were helping to undermine the very
existence of the nation.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the surprise defeat of China
in a war fought with their insignificant (by Chinese estimate) neighbour
Japan, finally supplied the momentum for political reform in China in the
early years of the twentieth century. One consequence of this was the
eventual deliverance of the people from the curse of opium addiction.
In 1906 the Imperial Chinese government initiated the first of a number of
opium suppression campaigns in China, during which large numbers of opium
dens were shut down and extensive areas of land removed from opium
cultivation. Campaigns were continued in later years by the Kuomintang
government of the Republic of China, and later still, by the communist
government of the People's Republic of China.
But in the years from 1860 until well into the twentieth century, the
provinces of southwestern China had been blanketed in poppy cultivation. And
it was opium-growing mountain tribesmen from these provinces that were to
take the opium poppy with them on their migrations into a vast mountainous
region which was later to become known throughout the world as the Golden
Triangle.
pps. 5-23
=====
4
THE BIRTH OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
By the late nineteenth century, migrating tribal groups from the mountainous
provinces of southwestern China had brought the knowledge and practice of
opium cultivation into the jungle-covered mountains, plateaus and valleys of
northern Vietnam, northwestern and northeastern Laos, eastern Burma and
northern Thailand.
Now it was the turn of governments and institutions indigenous and foreign
of the nations bordering the soon-to-become 'Golden' Triangle, to add their
contribution to the growth and development of the opium and heroin trade in
the region.
Whether using the opium trade to finance the prolongation of a privileged
position, or as a means of influencing certain opium-growing allies in a time
of conflict, or simply as a short-cut to power and riches, the French in
Indochina, the Americans after them, the South Vietnamese, the Thais,
Laotians and others, have all contributed in one way or another to the sudden
explosion in opium and heroin production that we see today at the heart of
the Golden Triangle.
THE FRENCH IN INDOCHINA
Opium first began trickling into Vietnam during the early years of Britain's
opium trade with China, and was almost immediately banned by the Vietnamese
court on moral and economic grounds. Despite harsh penalties being meted out
for its use, the movement of the opium south from China was hard to control,
and the number of smokers in Vietnam increased greatly over the years. But it
was not until 1862, when the French took possession of southern Vietnam, that
the opium trade in Vietnam really took off.
After annexing Cambodia (1863), central Vietnam (1883), Tonkin (northern
Vietnam 1884), and Laos (1893), and lumping them together as Indochina, the
French, like the British before them a century earlier in India, turned to
opium to help finance their colonial ventures. From the late 1890s onwards,
the French-controlled opium business in Indochina experienced a rapid growth
in output and sales. A modern, efficient opium refinery was constructed in
Saigon to process Indian resin into smokers' opium, and a special mixture of
opium was devised that burned quickly and thus encouraged smokers to consume
more. In a further effort to expand sales, particularly to the poorer
sections of the population, the colonial government also began importing
quantities of a cheaper variety from Yunnan in China.
The financial success of the French opium business was evident. By the early
1900s, opium dealing supplied one third of all colonial revenues in
Indochina, and the number of government-run opium dens and retail shops was
multiplying yearly. By 1918 there were 1,512 of the former and 3,098 of the
latter the overwhelming majority in Vietnam.
Despite growing world opinion against the trade in opium, the French in
Indochina continued to operate their opium monopoly throughout the 1920s and
1930s. But with the disruption to world trade brought about by the outbreak
of the Second World War, they found themselves cut off from their primary
sources of opium Iran, Turkey and Yunnan and thus unable to satisfy the
demands of the now 100,000 opium addicts in Indochina. Subsequently, they
began encouraging the expansion of the opium growing ethnic minorities' opium
production particularly by the Hmong in Indochina itself. By making
selected prestigious tribal leaders their opium brokers, the French managed
to push up opium production in Laos and northern Vietnam a massive 800 per
cent in four years, from 7.5 tons in 1940 to 60.6 tons in 1944.
But after the war, international opinion, coupled with a growing local
objection to the trade, finally forced the colonial government to
'officially' discontinue its trade in opium.
OPIUM AND THE FRENCH INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES
Immediately after the Second World War, the French in Indochina were faced
with an ever-increasingly hostile nationalist movement the Viet Minh and
soon found themselves fighting a difficult and unconventional war in which
the clandestine operations of the intelligence agencies began to take on a
greater and greater significance. Working closely with tribal minority groups
in Laos and northern Vietnam, and finding government funding scarce, the
intelligence agencies turned to the forbidden, and now underground, opium
trade to finance their activities. And the original French opium monopoly,
only just abandoned, was resumed as a 'legitimate' clandestine operation of
the French military.
The operation ran as follows. The intelligence field officers working with
the tribes purchased the tribal opium thus securing the tribes' loyalty
while also ensuring their subservience to French ends and transported it to
Saigon. Here it was promptly handed over to the Binh Xuyen bandits former
river pirates who, having helped the French clear Saigon of Viet Minh
cells, were serving as the city's local militia and managing its opium
traffic under the supervision of French intelligence. The opium was processed
and quietly distributed to the hundreds of dens and shops in Saigon, with the
surplus being exported to Hong Kong or Marseille. Profits from the trade were
shared between the intelligence agencies and their Binh Xuyen auxiliaries,
with the French using theirs to finance operations with the tribal minorities
battling the Viet Minh in the north.
The scale of the French operation in Laos and northwest Vietnam was
impressive. By 1954, the year France was defeated by the Viet Minh, the
French intelligence agencies had 40,000 hilltribe troops mainly Hmong
trained and fighting in mountain guerrilla units under the command of four
hundred French officers the whole operation financed almost entirely from
the secret trade in opium.
By encouraging opium production in Laos and northern Vietnam during, and
immediately after, the Second World War, the French in Indochina directly
aided in the growth and development of the neighbouring, and partly
overlapping, opium-growing region which was soon to be known throughout the
world as the infamous Golden Triangle.
During this same period, nearby Thailand was also reorganising its opium
trading activities. These had had their birth a century before under pressure
from the British, and they, too, would play their part in facilitating the
growth and development of the Golden Triangle into the significant heroin
producing region it is today.
THAILAND
In 1811, King Rama II of Siam announced Thailand's first formal ban on the
sale and consumption of opium. Twenty-eight years later, King Rama III
reiterated the prohibition and ordered the death penalty for major
traffickers. Despite this prohibition, British traders under the protection
of the British flag continued to 'smuggle' opium into the nation, immune from
the anger of the Siamese law-makers, until eventually, under considerable
pressure from Britain, King Rama IV bowed to British wishes and established a
royal opium franchise. This was duly leased to wealthy Chinese merchants, and
the trade in opium was henceforth legal in Siam.
The creation of this royal opium franchise can by seen as the first of three
stages in the eventual development of Thailand's post-Second World War
involvement in the Golden Triangle opium trade.
The second step occurred a few years later, when in 1855, the British, eager
to trade with Siam under more advantageous conditions, coerced King Mongkut
(Rama IV) to abolish the royal trading monopolies. This act had the result of
undermining the fiscal basis of the royal administration. In order to
compensate for the resulting short-fall, the king expanded his
revenue-earning 'vice' franchises, of which opium was now one the others
being lottery, gambling and alcohol.
Scaling down their operations in the 1920s and 1930s under increasing
international awareness of the evils of drug addiction, the Thais
nevertheless continued to run their opium monopoly into the post-war years.
The third phase occurred in the years immediately after the Second World War
when the Royal Thai Opium Monopoly, which had now been in operation in one
form or another for nearly one hundred years, was finding it difficult to
import sufficient quantities of opium to meet the demand from Thailand's
domestic smokers. So in 1947, when traditional opium growing regions around
the world were going out of production, the Thai government authorized poppy
cultivation in the northern hills for the first time.
This change in government policy attracted a growing number of Hmong
tribesmen master opium cultivators to settle in northern Thailand, thus
leading to a dramatic rise in the nation's opium production. That was then
closely followed by an explosion in production in the nearby Shan States of
Burma under the control of nationalist refugees from China, which in turn led
to an unprecedented rise in the volume of opium being smuggled through
Thailand. Hence Bangkok developed into the principal export centre for
Southeast Asia's illegal opium production.
For nearly ten years the trade in legal and illegal opium continued side by
side almost uninterrupted under the very eyes of the country's National
Police Force. There is even evidence that the large and well-equipped
CIA-supported police force found time between carrying out its civil and
anti-insurgency duties to actually participate itself in the lucrative
illegal trade. But towards the end of the 1950s changes were on the way. A
power struggle amongst Thailand's leaders in 1957 resulted in a successful
coup against the government and, in 1959, the newly consolidated government
outlawed the growth, production, importation and exportation of all harmful
addictive drugs in Thailand.
Since 1959, all Thai governments have, as a matter of course, clearly
reiterated their standing policy of actively suppressing all trade in and use
of illegal drugs within the kingdom.
While 1959 signalled a minor set-back in Thailand in the growth of the region
as the world's principal source of opium, in Indochina the year marked the
beginning of another state's contribution to the development of the Golden
Triangle as we know it today. The Americans were now on the scene,
AIR AMERICA AND THE CIA SECRET ARMY
The United States filled the vacuum after the French withdrawal from
Indochina in the mid-1950s by becoming advisors and protectors to the newly
established Republic of Vietnam. Although arguably idealistic and naive at
first, the Americans quickly came to appreciate the particular realities of
the situation in Indochina, and began to follow the previous French line an
unconventional war requires unconventional methods.
The Americans, particularly the CIA, started to build up close links with
the minority tribes in the border regions of Vietnam and Laos and, in 1959,
the CIA began operating with Hmong guerrillas in northeastern Laos. A rising
military star, Vang Pao, himself a Hmong, was chosen to raise and command the
new army, and soon the CIA had an army of 30,000 trained mountain guerrillas
battling both the communist Lao and the Neutralist forces.
With its many successes in counter-guerrilla warfare, the value of the Hmong
army became increasingly apparent to its American backers, and in consequence
the general well-being of the whole Hmong population took on a greater
importance.
Wartime conditions had caused serious economic problems for hilltribe farmers
who were finding themselves increasingly dependent on poppy cultivation a
high yield crop that requires little land. To help ease the situation, and to
enhance the loyalty of the Hmong, in 1965 the CIA's own airline, Air America,
began to ferry Hmong opium out of the mountains to transit points in
readiness for its transportation further afield.
While necessity seemed to make such an operation expedient, its consequences
for the United States were disastrous. Much of the opium ferried by Air
America was processed into No.4 heroin and then shipped on to Saigon, where
officers of the Vietnamese government and armed forces arranged for its
domestic and foreign distribution. This was the stock that was to help fuel
America's heroin epidemic of the 1970s.
THE GI HEROIN EPIDEMIC
In 1971, United States Army medical officers were estimating that between ten
and fifteen percent of the lower-ranking enlisted men serving in Vietnam were
heroin users. This means that between 25,000 and 37,000 US servicemen were
recreational users of one of the most harmful and destructive addictive drugs
known to mankind. The military authorities asked why? Why should US soldiers,
supposedly the cream of the nation's youth, the men battling communism, the
men saving democratic South Vietnam, why should they turn to heroin in such
numbers? The answer seemed simple, perhaps too simple. The soldiers were
using it because it was there, everywhere, available at rock-bottom prices in
almost unlimited quantities at practically every US installation in Vietnam,
from the Mekong Delta in the south to the DMZ in the north. It was there,
actively being pushed by children on roadside stands, by hooch maids in the
soldiers' own barracks, by officers in the South Vietnamese army. And it was
No. 4, from the secret heroin refineries of the Golden Triangle, heavy stuff
with a purity of between 80 to 99 percent. Whatever other factors were in
play, that was definitely part of the answer.
Who was behind the 1971 heroin plague? The North Vietnamese? The Viet Cong?
China? Evidence suggests it was America's allies, the South Vietnamese. It is
thought the Vietnamese navy and airforce were the prime importers, and the
army the distributors, with high-ranking officials in the customs, port
authority, National Police and National Assembly all playing important
supporting roles. In an unstable wartime economy, few could resist taking
part in a booming service industry which grossed an estimated eighty-eight
million dollars a year.
And behind it all, lurking in the shadows, lay the CIA, its opium carrying
airline Air America, and the clandestine operations of its hilltribe armies
in the rugged mountains of northern Laos.
But the days were numbered for the Americans, as they were also for the
Republic of Vietnam and the Laotian Royalists. The 'good guys' were on their
way out, and the communists were on the verge of taking over.
THE LAOTIAN CONNECTION
One of the very first actions of the new communist government of Laos on
coming to power in late 1975 was to legalise the growing of poppies. It is
now believed this was the first step in the communist government's entry into
the region's ever-growing trade in drugs.
Rumours of the Laotian government's role in the drug business began surfacing
in the late 1970s, with suspicions that the government-owned Lao Airways was
making regular heroin drops to smugglers in the South China Seas, and that
port facilities at Da Nang, Vietnam, loaned to Laos for purposes of
legitimate trade, were being used to ship out large quantities of heroin to
Singapore, Hong Kong, and even as far afield as Holland. Other rumours
surfaced hinting at the use of hollowed-out teak logs bound for Bangkok being
used to smuggle heroin out of the country.
When rumours of these 'secret' operations began appearing in the world's
press in the early 1980s, it is thought the traffickers sought new, more
clandestine opium and heroin routes, since when a veil of secrecy has been
drawn even tighter over this particular aspect of the Laotian economy.
pps. 26-36
=====
5
AT THE HEART OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
Two factions in the Golden Triangle have been primarily responsible for the
massive expansion of opium cultivation in the region since the Second World
War. The first of these are the Chinese Nationalists or Kuomintang who
are thought to have played a key role in the expansion of the Shan States
opium trade in the 1950s and 1960s. The second is the Shan warlord, Khun Sa,
the so-called 'Opium King' of the Golden Triangle, the man being blamed by
governments the world over for the world's present heroin addiction epidemic.
THE KUOMINTANG: DEFEAT IN 1949
In 1949, the Nationalist Government of China (Kuomintang-KMT), under the
leadership of Chiang Kaishek, lost control of China to the revolutionary
armies of Mao Zedong. More than two million nationalist soldiers and
followers fled the Chinese mainland to regroup on the island of Taiwan, just
off the Chinese coast. Here they reaffirmed their commitment to the Republic
of China, and awaited the chance to strike back against the communist
'bandits' and recover their homeland.
A portion of the nationalist forces had been pushed back to Yunnan Province
in the far southwest of the country. The Kuomintang government ordered these
retreating armies to make craggy Yunnan their last bastion. The troops dug in
and waited. But the overwhelming weight of the communist advance, aided at
the last moment by a popular uprising engineered by a disgruntled local
warlord, swiftly crushed the Kuomintang resistance and, in late 1949 and
early 1950, remnants of the Kuomintang armies streamed over the nearby
unguarded Burmese border, entering the jungle-clad mountains of the eastern
Shan States.
THE KUOMINTANG IN THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
The KMT have now been in the Golden Triangle for some forty years. Their
activities and in particular the extent of their participation in the local
economy namely opium trading is still clouded in mystery and open to
speculation. The movement of troops, the hard battles won and lost, and the
changes in command are all fairly well recorded. But the extent of their
involvement in the drug trade is less easily defined.
Entering Burmese territory in late 1949 and early 1950, the KMT remained in
the Shan States until 1961, when their camp at Mong Pa Liao, their principal
base in the region, defended by 10,000 KMT soldiers, was overrun by a
combined force of 25,000 Burmese and Chinese troops.
Throughout their sojourn in Burma, the KMT had been closely supported by the
American CIA who were anxious to block communist expansion into Southeast
Asia. The Americans made air drops of arms and supplies to the KMT, and
helped establish secret intelligence-gathering posts deep in the jungles
close to the Chinese border.
Twice in 1951, and once in 1952, CIA sponsored invasions of Yunnan were
undertaken by the KMT in the hope of the nationalists' presence on Chinese
soil sparking off mass uprisings against the communist regime across the
length and breadth of China. All three invasion bids failed miserably.
After their defeat in 1952, the KMT leadership in Burma had to be content
with spreading their troops along the entire border with China to hold the
line, periodically sending out small intelligence-gathering missions across
the border in readiness for the day when the nationalists on Taiwan were able
to mount an expedition to retake their beloved homeland.
When the Mong Pa Liao camp was overwhelmed in 1961, the KMT forces had no
choice but to flee across the Mekong river into northwestern Laos. Their stay
in Laos was short. Under United Nations pressure, four thousand seven hundred
KMT regulars were repatriated to Taiwan. They were flown from the provincial
capital of Nam Tha to Ban Houei Sai, the Laotian town opposite Thailand's
Chiangkhong District, to be ferried across the Mekong to Chiangkhong and
trucked to Chiang Rai, where planes were waiting to whisk them off to the
island redoubt of Taiwan.
But almost two thousand troops remained in Nam Tha, where they helped to
strengthen the rightist garrison against increasing attack from the Laotian
communiststhe Pathet Lao. In 1962 the garrison was in danger of falling to
the communists and the KMT forces moved south, and crossed the Mekong into
Thailand.
Following their withdrawal from Laos, the KMT was beset by deep internal
divisions, and three separate commands were formed. Two new bases were
established in Thailand in jungle-covered mountains close to the Burmese
border. The KMT 5th Army settled in Mae Salong, a small village fifty
kilometres northwest of Chiang Rai, while the 3rd Army and the 1st
Independent Unit moved to Tam Ngop in Fang District, eighty kilometres west
of Chiang Rai.
The KMT quickly established themselves in their new territory and throughout
the 1960s and early 1970s acted as a border patrol force helping to protect
Thailand's mountainous northern frontier. During the mid-1960s they aided the
Thai 3rd Army in putting down a 'Red' Meo (Hmong) revolt in Chiang Rai and
Nan Provinces, and received particular recognition and praise from the Thai
government for their highly successful operations in 1968 against supposedly
communist Hmong tribesmen in mountains near Chiangkhong, in eastern Chiang
Rai Province.
With the increasing ability of the Thai army during the 1970s to maintain
security along the northern borders without KMT assistance, the KMT
necessarily lost some of its power and influence in the once wild, remote
northern border regions. Lacking a well-defined role in Thailand, and unable
to mount serious operations against the communist hold on China, the KMT
forces in Thailand began to disintegrate in the late 1970s. This process
accelerated drastically after the death of General Tuan, the commander of the
KMT 5th Army, who died of cancer in a Bangkok hospital in 1980.
THE KUOMINTANG AND THE OPIUM TRADE
The above account of the KMT struggle to hold their own in the mountains and
jungles of the Golden Triangle emphasizes one aspect of their involvement in
the region: their fight against communism. There is another: their alleged
participation in the Golden Triangle's opium and heroin trade.
It is believed that profits from opium dealing helped to finance the KMT's
military operations against China. Observers have noted that after the KMT's
pull-out from Burma in 1961, the opium output of the Shan States had
increased by almost one thousand percent. And their involvement in the
so-called 'opium war' of 1967 with the Shan warlord, Khun Sa, is well known.
Of more importance, perhaps, are the reports that first surfaced in the press
in 1971 of the existence in the Golden Triangle of heroin refineries capable
of producing the powerful ninety-nine percent pure No.4 heroin. These
refineries are thought to have been operated by members of the KMT.
The complete extent of their involvement in the Golden Triangle opium trade
will probably never be fully revealed. However large it was, the KMT have
long since been outstripped by the rise to prominence of the Shan 'opium
king', Khun Sa, the charismatic leader of the Shan United Army.
KHUN SA The Opium King of the Golden Triangle
Khun Sa has carved out his place in history as the uncontested 'opium king'
of the Golden Triangle. Controlling a vast territory in the Shan States
which he asserts covers six 'provinces' with a population of eight million
and an army of between 3,500 and 8,000 men General Khun Sa is directly
responsible for a major percentage of the heroin production of the Golden
Triangle heroin which eventually finds its way onto the streets of the
United States, Europe, Hong Kong, Australia, Thailand, and elsewhere around
the globe.
Whether an opportunist of considerable skill and staying power he operates
in a wild and very volatile region or, as he claims, a Shan freedom fighter
forced by circumstances into the drug trade to finance his people's struggle
for autonomy drugs being at present the only realistic revenue source in
the hostile, impenetrable hills and valleys of the Triangle Khun Sa's
presence and influence on the international drug scene is indisputable.
Early Days
Born in 1933 in the Mong Yai state of Burma, of mixed Shan and Chinese
parentage, Chan Shee-fu (as he was until then called) adopted the title Khun
Sa, meaning Prince Prosperous, after the marriage of his mother to a Shan
prince.
He gained his first military experience with the Kuomintang, but soon after
left and formed his own 'army' of a few hundred men, which later, in 1963, he
reformed into a Ka Kwe Ye (KKY), a local self-defence force supposedly loyal
to the Burmese government. In return for a promise to help the government
combat Shan rebels, Khun Sa's unit, as with many of the KKY units, was given
money, uniforms, and a small quantity of arms. They were also granted the
right to use all government-held roads and towns in the Shan States for opium
smuggling. The Burmese government of the day considered the threat to
national unity of greater importance than the illegal trade in narcotics.
This was to prove a heaven-sent opportunity for the ambitious Khun Sa.
Having built up a ruthless army of eight hundred men, Khun Sa dropped all
pretence of aiding the government and began his notorious rise to fame,
smuggling opium, processing opium into morphine bricks and generally
terrorising a large area of the Shan and Wa States.
His swift aggressive ascent to prominence eventually led to his clash in 1967
with the KNIT, whose position as the dominant military force in the Shan
States he was threatening. The deadly farce of the 1967 Opium War and Khun
Sa's subsequent defeat was perhaps his first major setback. It wasn't to be
his last.
He was captured in 1969 by the army and imprisoned for five years in
Rangoon. He was released in 1973 thanks to his second-in-command who managed
to abduct two Russian doctors in the Shan States. The doctors were held
hostage ' until the government, bowing to world opinion, freed Khun Sa. After
a suitable, face-saving delay, the government kept their side of the bargain
and the drug warlord was freed on condition that he stay in Rangoon. Shortly
afterwards, one dark night, a single jeep left the city and sped northwards
on a two-day journey to the Shan States. Khun Sa was back in business.
Domination of the Heroin Trade
Since his return to the Golden Triangle in 1976, Khun Sa's rise to power has
been spectacular. Ostensibly changing the emphasis of his operations from
smuggling opium and heroin to that of fighting for Shan autonomy from
Rangoon, he nevertheless managed to increase his share of the drug trade
processing and smuggling heroin to such an extent that he became one of the
principal figures in the entire Golden Triangle region.
A minor, though significant, hitch in Khun Sa's rise to dominance to the drug
trade occurred in January 1982, when the United States Drug Enforcement
Agency pressured the Thais into undertaking military action against his Thai
headquarters at Ban Hin Taek, a small heroin distribution centre set in a
landscape of rolling, jungle-clad hills fifty kilometres northwest of Chiang
Rai. A pre-dawn attack by Thai rangers and Border Patrol Police, with support
from artillery and helicopter gunships, forced many hundreds of Khun Sa's
Shan United Army soldiers to withdraw into nearby Burma.
In revenge, Khun Sa hastily dispatched almost two hundred men to Mae Sai in
Chiang Rai Province, where they attacked the town's police station, robbed
the local branch of the Thai Farmers Bank and set alight numerous vehicles in
the vicinity.
After an initial period of confusion, Khun Sa regrouped his men and
established a new headquarters in the mountains just across the Burmese
border opposite Thailand's Mae Hong Son Province in the northwest. He then
set about enlarging his forces and the building of fortresses at strategic
points in the mountains along the length of the border from Mae Hong Son to
Mae Sai.
Three years later, Khun Sa and his Shan United Army joined forces with the
Tai-Land Revolutionary Council (TRC Tai being what the Shans call
themselves in their own language), a group under the leadership of the Shan
warlord Moh Heng, originally composed of the Shan United Revolutionary Army
(SURA), and elements of the Shan State Army (SSA). By joining forces, the two
warlords hoped to combat the growing power of the Communist Party of Burma
(CPB), who in recent years had become increasingly involved in the drug trade.
After beating off a challenge in the Mae Aw region on the Thai border by the
Wa National Army (WNA) the Wa are an ethnic group from the Shan States
Khun Sa and the TRC gained control of the whole border area from Mae Hong Son
to Mae Sai.
It was this alliance with Moh Heng that raised Khun Sa's status to that of
'opium king' of the Shan States, and thus, by extension, of the world.
pps. 37-48
-----
Figure 1.
Processing Opium into Morphine in
a Jungle Laboratory
Opium to Morphine The Six Steps
1. Place raw opium into a drum of water and heat from beneath.
2. When boiling, add lime fertilizer and wait for morphine to become
suspended in the water.
3. Drain off water with a flannel cloth.
4. Pour solution into a second drum and heat.
5. Add concentrated ammonia. Morphine will sink to the bottom.
6. Drain off water into a flannel cloth. Chunky particles of morphine will
remain ready to be packaged.
Figure 2.
Heroin Manufacture
The heroin manufacturing process is a good deal more complicated than the
process whereby raw opium is converted to morphine. It essentially entails a
master chemist working through a five-stage process with the ultimate aim of
binding morphine molecules with acetic acid and then processing the compound
to produce a fluffy white powder No.4 heroin that can be injected from a
syringe.
In general terms the process is as follows:
1 Heat morphine and acetic anhydride together
in water until they bond.
2 Remove impurities.
3 Add sodium carbonate to cause crude heroin
particles to solidify.
4 Filter out particles and purify in alcohol and charcoal. Evaporate
alcohol leaving granules of heroin at the bottom of the flask.
5 Dissolve the heroin granules in alcohol and add ether and hydrochloric
acid. After the white flakes form, filter and dry.
It is the final stage of the process that requires the skill of the chemist.
Ether is extremely volatile, and if mishandled, may ignite causing a powerful
explosion.
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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