EmergencyNet NEWS Service-EMERGENCY SERVICES REPORT- Saturday, July 26, 1997 Vol. 1 - 207
ASIAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS CAN RUN,
BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE ANY LONGER
.By Steve Macko, ERRI Crime Analyst
When the man who had arranged the largest heroin shipment ever seized in the United States jumped bail in Thailand, he fled into neighboring Burma. Li Yun-chung ran into what is called the "Golden Triangle," which is a rugged area of Asia where about 60 percent of the world's supply of heroin and opium are grown. It wasn't that long ago that Thai authorities could have just forgotten the drug trafficker -- but those days are apparently gone.
Three months after Li escaped, Burmese officials handed him back to Thailand. And on 5 June, he was flown to New York City to stand trial for being the mastermind of shipping large shipments of Herion into the U.S., including one shipment of 1,069 pounds that was estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. That was the largest seizure ever made by U.S. authorities.
Li is just one of 15 major drug traffickers from the Golden Triangle who has been arrested in the past three years by operations organized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and its Asian counterparts. The success that has been made in this area has been little noticed and for the first time, the major heroin drug traffickers are being brought to justice and sometimes in U.S. courts.
Even China, which has only cooperated in a limited way with U.S. anti-drug efforts, quietly deported a Burmese national to the U.S. earlier this year. China is facing a rapidly growing drug problem of its own.
But the potential monetary rewards still outweigh the risks in the heroin business. When Burmese warlord Khun Sa, said to be the biggest heroin trafficker in the Golden Triangle, surrendered himself to Burmese authorities, his rivals moved quickly to muscle in on his market share.
According to U.S. estimates, worldwide opium production in 1996 was almost 4,300 metric tons -- quite possibly a record amount and enough to produce 430 tons of heroin. Burma was the largest producer, making an estimated 2,560 metric tons. According to a report from the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, the value of opium and heroin exports from Burma may have equal to 50 percent of all its legal exports.
Two separate studies conducted said that Thailand, which is used as a primary transit point for drug shipments, estimated domestic turnover in heroin and opium to be about US$1 billion annually.
The annual report by the United Nation's International Narcotics Control Board said that improvements in communications and transportation for expanded trade have made it easier for drug traffickers to operate.
According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, Burma poses the biggest problem from counternarcotics operations. On the other side of the coin, the GAO has praised Thailand for its anti-drug efforts, where as many as 31 suspects indicted in the United States have been arrested in the past three years and seven of them have been so far extradited to the U.S.
Important cooperation has also come from the authorities in Hong Kong, which is another important transit point for heroin smugglers. Since 1991, 64 fugitives have been extadited to the United States, most of them on drug-related charges. One of them was a former major-general in the Thai army. He became the first high-ranking military officer from Southeast Asia to be successfully prosecuted in the U.S. on drug charges.
In the production of heroin, you would first have to go to northern or northeastern Burma, where opium poppies are cultivated on hillsides. The crop is harvested by painstakingly scraping off by hand with the sap oozing from cuts made in the flower bulbs. The sap is boiled into a gum and what isn't smoked locally is sold for processing. In guarded jungle laboratories, chemists turn the opium into morphine and then heroin. The narcotic is then shipped to the drug addicts of the world, including an estimated 600,000 in the United States.
What many people don't realize is that there are many more heroin and opium addicts found in the Golden Triangle region itself, enough for the governments in the region to start taking notice.
James Milford, a top DEA official, recently told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "even China, which once had all but eliminated heroin addiction, is experiencing a serious rise in teenage addiction."
The Chinese gangs are said to usually deal with large drug shipments, ranging in size from fifty to several hundred pounds. They are often hidden in maritime shipping containers and air freight cargo.
In recent years, the West African gangs, primarily from Nigeria, have carved themselves a niche in the market. They are known mostly for their use of "mules" who smuggle the heroin in smaller quantities. They conceal the drugs in luggage, by strapping it to their bodies, or packed in condoms and then swallowed -- a highly dangerous but common way of smuggling.
Last October, the DEA's "Operation Global Seas" ended and broke up a Bangkok-based, Nigerian-led heroin trafficking ring that transported the drugs from Thailand and Cambodia to Chicago and Boston.
The GAO says that the drug traffickers' ability to shift transportation routes to countries with poor law enforcement capabilites as one of several problems that need to be overcome in the continuing counter- narcotics campaign in Asia.
(c) Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1997. All Rights Reserved. Redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.
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