Village thrives on heroin

Press, 9 March 1984, Page 18

Village thrives on heroin

From

TONY DAVIS

in Ban Piang Luang

As villages along the remoter reaches of the Thai-Burma border go, Ban Piang Luang stands as a model of development. In startling contrast' to other impoverished communities along Thailand’s mountainous northern rim, it boasts a new hospital, a new cinema and generator-driven electricity. It also runs to three brothels and a couple of backyard casinos.

Its single dirt street is still lined by dilapidated one-storey wooden shops. But along with general stores they sell Japanese TVs, videos, transistor radios, bicycles and the latest in digital watches.

The source of the remarkable prosperity of Piang Luang — a bone-jarring 70 kilometre drive from the nearest main road — is not to be found in the village itself. It lies hidden in the wooded hills several kilometres across the border to the north, where an estimated 10 or more illicit refineries are busy producing some of Asia’s purest heroin. Among Piang Luang’s predominantly Chinese and Shan population, the writ of central government runs lightly. Thai officialdom’s nearest outposts are a police station and an army check-point 20 kilometres distant in the sub-dis-trict centre.

Such as they are, government functions fall to two shadowy organisations both believed to be heavily engaged in the narcotics production and trafficking across the border — the exiled 93rd division of the Chinese Nationalist

Kuomintang, led by General Li Wen-Huan, and its anti-Communist allies of the Shan United Revolutionary Army. The S.U.R.A., one of several pocket armies ostensibly committed to Shan secession from Burma, has regarded Piang Luang as a home from home since its founding in 1969. While its military camp is tucked a discreet couple of kilometres into Burma, civilian dependents and off-duty troops are quartered in a cantonment overlooking the village. Less visible, but no less firmly entrenched, are the Chinese K.M.T. Latterly rechristened Chinese Irregular Forces in deference to an apparently semi-permanent position in Thailand, they fall — on paper at least — under the supervision of the Thai armed forces supreme command. Their 2000 or more S.U.R.A. allies are led by Moh Heng, a gnarled 57-year-old veteran of a string of ephemeral “armies” that, amoeba-like, have formed and disintegrated since Shan separatists took up arms in 1958. One-armed, turbaned and a staunch traditionalist, Moh Heng lends the S.U.R.A. a dash of the exotic that stands in blunt contrast to the heroin and assault rifles that underpin its activities. Deeply religious, he spends much

time in meditative retreat in a Buddhist monastry overlooking the lush, green hills of the border. He also maintains three wives, 14 children, an air-conditioned Range Rover and a 21-strong bodyguard armed with Shan broadswords.

But, as many observers argue, Moh Heng and his S.U.R.A. serve as little more than a political-cum-military fig-leaf for Chinese Irregular Forces’ commercial ventures inside Burma. S.U.R.A. and C.I.F. troops are known to operate together closely in Burma, C.I.F. men often in S.U.R.A. uniforms.

The C.I.F. General Li, aged in his mid-60s, now a naturalised Thai citizen, has long since publicly renounced the narcotics trading that, along with American C.I.A. support, financed the Kuomintang remnants’ grip over much of Burma’s Shan state in the 1950 s and 19605.

But despite a profitable and ostensibly respectable jade business in Thailand’s northern capital of Chiang Mai, Li’s disclaimers of a C.I.F. role in today’s booming heroin trade are regarded by most analysts with profound scepticism. In recent years both the C.I.F. and S.U.R.A. have successfully managed to avoid the limelight. Media attention has focused almost exclusively on their main rivals in the border heroin business, the

Shan United Army of “Opium Warlord” Khun Sa — a figure the media, local and foreign, have come to love to hate.

In early 1982 the Shan United Army was bloodily expelled from its headquarters in the Thai village of Ban Hin Taek by Bangkok troops. The move was apparently due to American pressure. Throughout 1982 and 1983 Thai forces continued to harry it as it re-established itself on the Burmese side of the border.

Operations against the S.U.R.A., on the other hand, have come entirely from the Burmese side of the border. In early 1983 three battalions of Burmese troops punched into the hills north of Piang Luang and claimed to have destroyed nine refineries. But the impact of Burmese strikes has been shortlived. “The S.U.R.A. can get whatever opium they need,” noted one Western narcotics official. “They’re back in business.”

Thai narcotics suppression agencies have made efforts to stem the flow of narcotics south from the border. The number of major seizures has risen sharply in the last two years. Arrests by undercover agents have been made in Piang Luang village itself, according to locals. But, again, the impact is questionable. As one Thai resident shrugged: “It’s the small fry getting caught. If you’re ready to pay enough the goods get through.” (Copyright — London Observer Service.)