BOOK REVIEW No speed limit Merchants of Madness by Bertil Lintner and Michael Black
Reviewed by David Scott Mathieson
International drug experts and Myanmar's military regime have for years
trumpeted the terminal decline of opium cultivation in the notorious Golden
Triangle area. Self-congratulatory predictions of opium's last gasp in
Southeast Asia, however, were recently met with a harsh reality: production
actually increased by 46% in 2007, according to the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Alarming as this sounds, including the explosion of amphetamine-type stimulants
(ATS), better known as speed, there can be no confidence that drug control in
Myanmar will any time soon turn
successful. Dramatic ATS production from northern Myanmar (some estimates claim
hundreds of millions of pills a year) have since the mid-1990s enriched
narco-entrepreneurs and their ethnic insurgent allies and exposed the
ineffectiveness of Myanmar's United Nations-backed drug control program.
Bertil
Lintner, one of the world's most-respected analysts of Myanmar's Byzantine drug
trade, with co-author Michael Black, a security writer with Jane's Intelligence
Review, have written a short, sharp book on the dynamics of Myanmar's ATS
trade. Merchants of Madness has the fast pace and almost unbelievable
dramatics of a thriller. That is, except that it's all true.
In several brisk chapters, the authors outline the history of global ATS
consumption, increased production in Myanmar from 1989, and its gradual spread
through regional trafficking networks. There is also a detailed analysis of the
main players, the business of making and distributing ATS, and the connivance
of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in allowing the
illicit trade to flourish.
A 2003 study by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) argued that ATS
are attractive to criminal enterprises because of their differences to
agricultural drug production, such as opium, coca leaf or marijuana. As the
book puts it, "There is no dependence on growing seasons; no large workforce is
required; necessary chemicals are easily obtained; it is easy to locate
laboratories near consumer markets; and there is a high profit return on their
investment."
This could read like a template for the activities of Myanmar's major ATS
producers, including the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Myanmar National
Democratic Alliance Army and other actors who are at least nominally allied to
the ruling military regime. There is an ironic symbiosis: the main markets for
Myanmar manufactured ATS - Thailand and China, and increasingly India and
Vietnam - also provide the essential precursor chemicals needed to produce the
drug.
Merchants conveys a strong message about the destructive effects that
ATS trafficking and consumption have had on mainland Southeast Asia and its
bordering states. According to UNODC's 2008 Global ATS Survey, 6% of the
world's population between the ages of 15 and 64 are regular ATS users. Even
though this figure has dropped since 2001, when 8% of the world's population
was estimated to habitually use amphetamines, it is still much higher than
other drug consumption figures: 3% for heroin, 4% for cocaine and 2% for
ecstasy.
Despite some optimism that a global epidemic has seemed to plateau in recent
years, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa recently claimed that the
situation in Asia had actually "worsened" and that overall drug consumption in
the region is on the rise. In Thailand, which conducted a controversial "war
against drugs" in 2003, consumption and trafficking patterns are reportedly
starting to reach levels not seen for a decade.
The rise can at least partially be attributed to Myanmar drug merchants'
innovative marketing. There are more than 100 "brands" of ATS identified by the
Thai Office of Narcotics Control Board, appealing through variety to everyone
from dance club ravers to young teenagers. Syndicates inside Myanmar have also
expanded their product mix into MDMA, or ecstasy, which is known in Thailand as yaa-ee.
The authors feature 16 major players from various ethnic non-state armed groups
and criminal syndicates, some of whom freely attend major state functions in
Myanmar. At the top of the trade, according to the book, is ethnic Chinese
drug-lord Wei Xuegang, scion, in narco-lineage terms, to the country's biggest
drug empire. He has worked as a drug trade contractor for every known major
narco-business in Myanmar, first with the Kuomingtang, then in cahoots with
Sino-Shan warlord General Khun Sa, and, from 1989, the UWSA. Wei was indicted
in absentia on heroin-trafficking charges in 1993 by a New York federal court.
Wei has ingeniously leveraged his official and underworld contacts and access
to capital to run the finances for the UWSA's political wing, which is
currently controlled by Bao Youxiang and his four brothers. The authors write
that Bao and the UWSA appear to have a genuine desire to help their own people,
seen in their provision of public services and requests for international
assistance, but that in the final analysis those gestures don't eclipse their
pivotal role in the human destruction wrought by the ATS trade.
Like any good illicit enterprise, drug production requires clearly defined and
well-protected territory. In urban settings this is usually negotiated by gang
violence or through local ethnic or clan hegemony in which family crime groups
operate and turn a profit within the protection of their community. But in
Myanmar, the authors contend, the government has sorted it all out. Following
the breakup of the Communist Party of Burma in 1989, the heavily armed
mutineers of the Wa and Kokang areas near the Chinese border reformed into
nominal political groups.
The regime, then situated in Rangoon, made the following arrangements: hold
your territory, get rich, don't fight us and we'll get back to you. The result
was the creation of various "special regions" in the remote Shan State, which
first became opium-cultivation havens and later evolved into ATS production
zones. Drug profits have been plowed into roads, hotels and casino towns,
giving rise to a sort of narco-development model.
The UWSA-controlled Special Region Two also happens to host a number of UN drug
eradication officials and other international aid agencies, somewhat ironically
considering the sustained export of narcotics from the area. For countries and
organizations pouring financial assistance into Myanmar, or for any private
company considering doing business in the underdeveloped country, the rogue's
gallery and their often hidden neighborhood business empires outlined in this
volume are certainly worth a close read.
One of the most entertaining, if shocking, sections in Merchants is the
description of the town of Mong La, home to jungle casinos, glitzy transvestite
shows, Eastern European sex workers and an "anything goes" frontier spirit. Run
by one of the ATS trade's main players, Lin Minxian (aka Sai Leun), a
Chinese-born Red Guard volunteer who later became a Burmese Communist Party
cadre, Mong La became known as Shan State's Special Region Four.
A mixture of Medellin and Las Vegas, Mong La's fortunes have over the years
waxed and waned. The town gained notoriety from 1999 as a surreal manifestation
of the free-wheeling, extra-legal, state-building alternative witnessed in
northern Myanmar's drug production zones, and was simultaneously presented by
Myanmar and Western drug eradication officials as the supposed showpiece of
progress in opium eradication. An estimated 500,000 Chinese vice tourists also
visited annually to gamble, eat endangered animal species and soak in the seedy
night life.
Several Western journalists also visited the area and published stories that
often contradicted the "opium free" zone claims made beginning in 1997 by
Myanmar and UN officials. This writer visited Mong La in early 2003, when it
was still run as an extreme version of the ribald film Porky's for
Chinese day-trippers. The town declined dramatically beginning in 2005, after
Chinese border security guards raided the area and forced Chinese citizens back
across the border. They also shut off the town's main electricity source. But
as Lintner and Black argue, the town has recently experienced a resurgence and
is now complimented by a satellite facility at the nearby town of Mong Ma,
which has emerged as a sort of Internet gambling hub.
Drug-lord Wei bid to carve out his own little zone of drug-fueled peace and
prosperity at Mong Yawn in Eastern Shan State. From 1999 to 2001, more than
100,000 ethnic Wa and Lahu were forcibly relocated from the northern Special
Region Two to new settlements straddling the Thai border. This ill-conceived
opium eradication project displaced nearly 50,000 original inhabitants in the
area, creating a displaced population that died in droves from malaria,
starvation, anthrax and extra-judicial killings.
It was all a disastrous cover for Wei's mobile methamphetamine labs, which
around then started to crank out millions of pills for the burgeoning Thai
market. The destitute and desperate civilians around Mong Yawn were also used
as convenient "ants" to carry the drugs into Thailand, an incredibly perilous
task as Thai border security capabilities were beefed up with United States'
counter-narcotics assistance.
By 2001, Mong Yawn had become so notorious that Wei eventually decamped to
build a massive new mansion near Panghsang. Lintner and Black claim the
reclusive drug merchant actually prefers the quiet life: he apparently likes to
watch television, doesn't drink or smoke and often works all night protected by
hundreds of bodyguards. He is also an enterprising investor in new areas of
vice in Laos, including the massive Boten complex on the Chinese border, a
haven of gambling, prostitution and smuggling.
The book's detailed exposure of the Wei-controlled Hong Pang Group and its
various subsidiaries makes for disturbing reading and raises hard questions
about whether the current international approach to pushing for change in
Myanmar can succeed as long as the ruling regime benefits from the drug trade.
Its release is also well timed: on January 15, the US Treasury Department
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) identified and sanctioned two
individuals and 14 companies linked to the SPDC and drug trade. They included
businesses close to Steven Law, son of infamous drug lord Lo Hsing Han, and his
Asia World company, as well as 10 affiliated companies operated by Law's wife,
Cecilia Ng, of which at least one is registered in Singapore.
The US has maintained a US$2 million price tag on Wei's head for nearly a
decade. In 2005, the DEA indicted the UWSA's top eight leaders on drug
trafficking charges in the US. And in November 2008, OFAC tightened measures
against the UWSA by designating 26 individuals, including the brothers and
subordinates of the militia's top leaders, and 17 linked companies - many of
which are exposed in great detail in Merchants.
The authors also challenge the assertion made by some researchers - and the
often-naive assumption held by many Myanmar-based development experts - that
the UWSA is not involved in the drug trade and that the blame should be pinned
solely on Chinese crime syndicates known to be active in the area. Lintner and
Black outline in great detail a system of production and transit involving
ethnic Chinese financers (Wei) with armed muscle (Bao) and a cooperative
transit environment (provided by the SPDC) into receptive markets (Thailand and
China) that handle the retail and franchise end of ATS.
The system of ATS production, and its complementary product, No 4 heroin,
simply could not proceed without at least the connivance, if not active
participation, of the Myanmar military, the authors argue. Underscoring that
point, they note that current Myanmar Prime Minister General Thein Sein was
formerly in charge of the army's Triangle Command, which is located in the
heart of known narcotic production zones. In 2001, he gave a speech in Mong La
in which he said, "U Wei Xuegang and U Bao Youn are real friends."
Merchants should be read as a shocking, vicarious overview of the ATS
trade as it originates in Myanmar. With all its excellent details and
documentation, it serves as a more detailed account of the phenomenon than the
previous study published in 2004 by French geographer Pierre-Arnoud Chouvy and
his sociologist co-author Joel Messonier. It also nicely complements a major
new study of the Golden Triangle by Sino-Burmese criminologist and Rutgers
University professor Ko-Lin Chin. And it's a better read than the
often-somnolent UNODC reports.
Given the recent developments in Myanmar and the Golden Triangle - including a
resurgence of opium cultivation, burgeoning ATS production and conflicting
international approaches of economic sanctions and counter-narcotics assistance
- Lintner and Black make the simple but salient point that, at its core,
Myanmar's drug problem is a political issue that will ultimately require a
political solution. Merchants of Madness cogently reminds the reader
that this is as true today as it ever was.
Merchants of Madness. The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle
by Bertil Lintner and Michael Black. Silkworm Press, 2009. ISBN-10: 974951159X.
Price US$34.95t, 180 pages.
David Scott Mathieson is the Myanmar consultant for New York-based Human
Rights Watch.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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Bertil
Lintner, one of the world's most-respected analysts of Myanmar's Byzantine drug
trade, with co-author Michael Black, a security writer with Jane's Intelligence
Review, have written a short, sharp book on the dynamics of Myanmar's ATS
trade. Merchants of Madness has the fast pace and almost unbelievable
dramatics of a thriller. That is, except that it's all true.
