Once upon a time there were the Drug-Lords of the Shan states, a Burmese territory wedged between Thailand, Laos and China, where the land favours opium cultivation. Some of them, such as Khun Sa, took on almost epic proportions. They were characters with shadowy hearts. They often set themselves up as champions of an ethnic cause. They justified their drug trafficking with the need to finance an army to defend their people from attack from the Burmese army. Then tribal rivalries took hold among the various groups competing for control of the market in opium, heroin and ya baa, the so-called madness drug, a terrible methamphetamine that inundated Asia and boosted its development, enabling men to work as hard as a horse (the original name, ya ma, literally meant horse drug, implying extraordinary power). The Burmese saw their chance, and in perfect “divide and rule” style, proposed a truce to the groups. Many accepted, thinking they could concentrate on more direct adversaries and increase their profits from drugs. As did the ex-headhunters Wa (of Chinese origin), sworn enemies of the Shan (of Thai ethnicity), who, according to a CIA report, became the largest army of drug producers and distributors in the world. But then the Burmese government raised the stakes, asking the militias who had accepted the truce to join the Border Guard Force, which reports directly to the national army. When they refused, attacks against rebel states resumed with even greater violence, the justification being that the state was fighting the war on drugs. “We are fighting for you (westerners). Drugs are not a problem for us”, declared Colonel Hla Min, spokesperson for the SPDC (the State Peace and Development Council, the official name of the organism with which the Burmese military regime governs).
A report by the Shan press agency states that, on the contrary, the aim of this move is not to fight the production and trafficking of drugs, but to try to replace who is controlling them. Taking advantage of the pressure exerted on ethnic groups, the junta has set up local militias (as many as 400 in northern Shan states alone). The militias share the drug profits with the military and help them in the fight against armed ethnic groups. In exchange they are given protection, impunity and business subsidies. Many of their commanders are even standing in the upcoming elections for the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which is being used by the junta to create a new democratic image for itself. They have been dubbed “politically correct drug-lords”.
The story told in the Shan Drug Watch report is only the latest thread of an infinite web woven by spiders of all kinds: tribal groups, communist and anti-communist guerrillas, CIA, mafia, former Kuomintang militants, the Chinese nationalist party, and ethnic separatists. It’s a web that has actually been thousands of years in the making. If it weren’t for the tragedy of victims around the world, it may even be a fascinating story. Leading expert on drug trafficking, Pierre Arnaud-Chouvy, of the French Centre national de la recherche scientifique, told the story in his book entitled Opium.
Today the spider is the Burmese army: through local militias it attempts to control the national territory and, as drug use rises among young people in ethnic separatist groups, operate a subtle form of genocide. But perhaps, in the light of the story told in Opium, in which opium is almost an alchemic element that eludes anyone who wishes to control it, even future Burmese governors will also fall into the same web.

Click here to see the Shan Drug Watch report