Battle of the Warlords

By George Russell

At stake: the Golden Triangle's $800 million opium trade

In Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle, January is harvest time. It is also a time when members of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration check the skies for signs of bad weather, hoping that nature will spoil the lucrative crop of opium poppies that are the economic mainstay of the mountainous region where the borders of Burma, Thailand and Laos converge. This year the climate has been kind to the poppy growers and bad for the DEA: a bumper crop of 700 tons is expected, 100 tons more than last year. But the U.S. narcs are not very worried. The reason: in Burma's remote Shan state, where nearly 80% of the area's opium is grown, vicious fighting between the warlords who dominate the drug traffic has closed many of the traditional smuggling routes. Says a DEA official based in neighboring Thailand: "The situation is pure chaos. For once, the area's intrinsic anarchy is working in our favor."

Anarchy may be too mild a term for the situation in the 75-sq.-mi. triangle, where bandits, remnants of China's pre-1949 Nationalist army, and more than half a dozen "liberation armies" scramble for their share of the $800 million annual opium haul. Last February Thai armed forces ousted the region's biggest opium smuggler, Khun Sa, and his 3,000-member Shan United Army from their luxurious mountain aerie in the border town of Ban Hin Taek. Khun Sa fled back to Burma, and his departure created a power vacuum that lesser warlords are now fighting to occupy. In Burma, Khun Sa has tried to muscle his way into territory controlled by smaller criminal gangs. Even the 10,000-member insurgent Burmese Communist Party (B.C.P.) has joined in resisting Khun Sa's invasion, in an escalating fray that has resulted in the death of scores of mercenaries and turned at least 3,000 local Wa and Lahu tribesmen into refugees.

To complicate matters further, military operations against the warlords by both the Thai and Burmese governments have led to cross-border incursions by troops from both countries, which are straining diplomatic relations. Last month the warlords began hitting back, machine-gunning and looting a tourist boat in Thailand's northern Chiangrai province. Says a U.S. diplomat in Bangkok: "Our mission in [neighboring] Chiangmai [province] is almost literally under the gun. The opium warlords have so many contacts in Chiangmai that anything is possible."

Equally threatened are the 450 civilians who live in Doi Luang, a picturesque mountain town straddling the Thai-Burmese border. While Thai border police patrol the streets, three mercenary armies camp atop a 7,200-ft. mountain near by. Among them are Khun Sa's mercenaries and their local allies. In the surrounding jungle are the rival forces of a pro-Communist warlord known as ABe. Periodically, bursts of machine-gun fire echo down the mountainside. Ambushes are frequent, and victims seldom receive a proper burial. Says a Western narcotics agent: "There seems to be only one rule when warlords fight. Kill anything that moves."

Ironically, the big winners in the drug battles could be the Burmese Communists. The B.C.P. began collecting raw opium in the early 1970s and passing it on to Khun Sa's mercenaries, who refined the substance into heroin for shipment abroad. That relationship ended with Khun Sa's forcible eviction, and now the B.C.P. and local Chinese financiers are trying to take over the entire drug traffic. The warlord wars, in other words, are unlikely to end any time soon.

--By George Russell.

Reported by David De Voss/Doi Luang, Burma

With reporting by David De Voss This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.