HONG KONG
SUNDAY POST-HERALD
BODIES FOUND IN RIVER
6 MAY 1973
OPIUM WAR
HOTS UP
BY JOEL HENRI IN MAE SAI
MORE THAN 10 bodies were seen last week floating down the Mae Sai river 1,000 kilometres northwest of Bangkok and directly opposite the legendary Burmese border town of Tachilek, reportedly the nerve centre of the heroin trade.
Fierce fighting has been raging in Tachilek during the past few days between Burmese troops, the notorious Lo Shing-min drug dealers and Kuomintangs who want to control the opium rich area known as the Golden Triangle.
Smoke can be seen from this side of the river - where thousands of refugees are crossing over daily to escape the crossfire.
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The "Golden Triangle" is again full of excitement as it has always been during the past four years. A misnomer by any name is this tri- border area on the Burmese, Thai and Lao frontiers. unknown to the world but for opium and heroin.
The 10,000 square kilometres of dense jungle and rugged hills is however endowed with a cool climate where opium - the chief source of morphine and heroin thrives best.
To understand why the Golden Triangle has become synonimous with death one must for understand the "politics" of the area politics and the inability of the three
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governments to extend their authority has caused the region
to become notoriously famous as the chief source of hard drugs.
This rugged area is populated by a varied race of people - the hilltribesmen (Musers and Meos common to all three countries), the Karen minority now waging a guerilla warfare against Burma and the famous Kuomintangs- remnants of Generallisimo Chiang Kai-shek's World War II troops.
Together they total more than 50,000 all depending on one source of income opium growing.
They are also, to all intents and purposes, a law unto themselves in this frontier region where the authority of the three central governments virtually never pervades.
But although the group's common denominator is opium for survival – they are all however rivals in chasing a common cause. For whoever controls the area also wields considerable political power not only in the Golden Triangle but also with the three governments concerned. They are all, it is interesting to note, anti communists.
In order to wield authority and hegemony and to extract allegiance from rivals they are also subtle enough to understand that this can only be done through the barrel of a gun. To obtain the weapons necessary to implement
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control the groups understand the meaning and power of money and this is only obtained through opium.
So there is this interesting equation: opium- heroin-money-power.
But a new element has been injected into the politics of the area: The advent of the international drug traffickers who must be complimented for their resourcefulness in turning the Golden Triangle into what has become the chief source of heroin.
Initially the opium oriented society was content to eke out its living from small returns of the sales of opium provided what they earned ensured complete hegemony over their immediate areas.
With new incentive of higher prices for their product, a new situation developed. With more money they began to acquire better weapons and better weapons mean subjugation of areas that are weaker inevitably causing friction and fighting among themselves culminating in the current "opium war" here.
A rural people now gained business acumen. From 300 baht (U.S.$15) per kilo a few years ago their opium now fetched a price of 800 baht (U.S.$40).
This means that one kilogramme of opium now costs 4000 baht (U.S.$200) in Hongkong. But if they cooked their opium and turned it into a morphine-based product they discovered that they can earn 8000 baht (U.S.$400) which in turn would cost 19,000 baht (U.S.$950) in Hongkong.
Refined heroin, they soon learned would be even more lucrative fetching an even higher price. So they expanded their operation to the final phase. No 4 heroin, according to informed source here, would cost 500,000 baht (U.S.$25,000) in New York being only the wholesale price.
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needed to And the price of one M-16 rifle wield authority of the area is 4000 baht (U.S.$200). With such sophisticated weapons ready available from smugglers from both Laos and Thailand and from corrupt American servicemen there is natural tendency to be better armed. And in order to acquire these arms they had to produce more drugs.
One man alone has come to the forefront as being the most formidable and astute trafficker of them all. Lo Shing-min, an ethnic Burmese born in Thachilek started off as a young thug. The 37-year-old thug turned drug- king together with a band of young toughies soon carned a reputation as the sleepy little- town's chief "protector" to the inhabitants against bandits and other local terrorist groups. The "little dictator" was meanwhile being watched by the Burmese Government first with some alarm and then with favour.
The Burmese Government's authority then and now is confined to only 40 per cent of Burma.
But things began to take a turn for the worst for the Ne Win Government. Insurgency began five years ago throughout Burma with minority groups, particularly the Karens and Musers in the northwest, demanding first autonomy and then outright independence.
>hard-pressed troops thinly spread across the length and breadth 61 Burma the Burmese Teadership was astmte-enough to
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