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The Akha: The
Thai-Burma Border Drug War
Opium sap is the premier traditional medicinal in this part of the world.
It is effective medicine, and was, in fact, the most widely physician-prescribed
medicine in the United States in 1918. Dr. Marie Nyswander, the popularizer
of the politically acceptable “methadone maintenance”: “There is a pattern
of self-limitation or restraint in opium smoking in countries where it
is socially acceptable. It is common for natives in these countries to
indulge in opium smoking one night a week much as Americans may indulge
in alcoholic beverages at a Saturday night party.... families who accept
opium smoking as part of their culture are mindful of its dangers much
as we are mindful of the dangers of overindulgence in alcohol.” The Akha
have no problem with opium sap - they have a problem with the military
forces competing for Akha land - for control, that is, of the raw opium
crop and the heroin trade that they run.
The Akha hill tribe have been living in the heart of the golden triangle
on either side of borders for over one hundred years. They have seen
the British insist on opium production, drug lords, and now the insistence
that it stop by the Americans. However the Akha can also remember loading
more than bananas on the planes of Air America for which they built
runways near their villages.
The criminalization of drugs makes the economics of supply and demand
drive a lucrative drug trade in the region. Heroin goes to the west
and other destinations. It all moves through the Akha back yard. Raising
opium for heroin production is hard work. As well, much opium is raised
for medicine and smoking, certainly not all for heroin. Whatever the
case, even refining heroin requires laborers. The Akha find themselves
in these jobs for lack of better ones. Not because they like to work
hard for small coins.
Meanwhile, the need for drugs from their neighborhood bring with it
arrests and imprisonment in a major hypocrisy imposed by the west. This
tears up the lives of the Akha families which live vastly below the
poverty line.
However, it is blantantly obvious, that while the US and Thailand may
be spending billions on a drug war they are spending nothing on food
security, land rights or poverty reduction in the Akha villages. It
can also be said, that the Akha made billions in profits for the western
traffickers in heroin, now used and abandoned, they are not needed.
Admiral Fargo
Since summer 2000 when Admiral Fargo promised the Thai Government logistic
support in the drug war, we have seen an immediate escalation of hostilities
along the border with Burma as well as a significant increase in the
quantity and cost of military equipment, vehicles and personell in border
areas. All areas that the Akha live in.
The emphasis in this drug war is on enforcement with ZERO attention
paid to the conditions of the villagers in these same border areas.
Name the village? The equipment however is in the millions of dollars.
While we couldn't even get AM General to talk to us about a suitable
military style Humvee for medical service to the Akha, the military
ones with guns mounted are running everywhere.
Since we got the results of the Admiral's promises, with none of the
benefits (like what the war tools manufacturers got) to the poor, we
thought it might be real cool just to let everyone know who this Admiral
Fargo is who promises war to a place he's never been to. Cause we got
the war.
These brave young Karen rebels, calling themselves God's Army, were
ruthlessly executed - as a Thai political statement. Resisting being
reduced to opium sharecroppers by the nazi Burma regime, but trapped
between the cooperating Burma and Thai armies, these ten staged a political
protest, January 25, 2000. Thailand's military, the previous week, bombed
200 innocent Karen refugees from SLORC brutality cowering just inside
the Thai border. The Thai military was forcibly preventing wounded Karen
rebels from crossing from Burma into neutral Thailand.
This prompted the young Karens to storm a hospital in the Thai border
town of Ratchaburi, taking 500 patients and staff hostage. Thus capturing
the attention of the media, one of the rebels told a Thai Channel Seven
news cameraman allowed into the hospital, "We would like to ask the
Thai authorities to tell the army to stop shelling us." A nurse interviewed
on a mobile telephone by the ITV television network said: "I do not
think they intend to hurt anyone. They seem very hungry. The men went
to the canteen and asked for a pot of boiled rice." The Thai Interior
Minister, Mr Sanan Kachornprasart, added that the hostage-takers were
demanding Thai doctors treat their wounded. Having made their statement,
the rebels then peacefully surrendered. No one had been hurt. The surrenderees
were immediately beaten with rifle butts and then repeatedly shot in
the face at point blank range with small caliber revolvers.
At the very moment this was all going down I was full on squaring off
with forestry and third army Col. Sawat in Chiangrai over the forced
eviction of Huuh Mah Akha which I stopped in that confrontation at the
Chiangrai Office. Believe me I was noting what was going on down there.
The Burma army is slowly turning all of the Karens into opium sharecroppers,
as it has the Wa - all in the name of the anti-drug effort, of course.
The current Thai competition with the Burma army is nothing near all-out
war, simply negotiating for control of that multi-billion dollar trade.
As we have seen, these traditional border competitors readily cooperate
to knock out any threat to their massive drugs-for-arms trade. Legalization
of opium sap, of course, and medicalization of heroin, would be the
ultimate threat, since it would collapse the value of these commodities,
making them useless as a source of military funding. That's why the
Burma Army, the premier heroin trading institution in the world, is
"anti-drug." That's also why it's armed and financed by the
same American defense contractors that finance the Thais - in the name
of the anti-drug effort, of course.
Don't be fooled by border issues for a minute here in Thailand. Peace
Peace they say. Well, read between the lines. Today's Bangkok post said
that a 20,000 man five country joint military project will run from
15 May till 29 May of this year, Cobra Gold 2001
with some 5,000 plus US troops, Singapore, Malaysia and some others.
Where? (now note the vague words) "In the rugged border terrain of
Chiangrai Province." This is exactly where villages like Huai Sah Leh,
Huuh Mah Akha (army tried to evict last year as you recall, which I
blocked) Loh Mah Cheh, Huuh Yoh, Hua Mae Kom, Pah Nmm, Bpah Mah Hahn,
Meh Maw and a score of other Akha villages are. This is not vacant land.
The Akha farm here. There is a major effort to totaly destroy these
people.
There will be live fire excercises. Now just the %@#! where are the
Akha suppose to be farming while all this is going on? They already
lost two months in the fields because the big PUSSY Thai army couldn't
knock a few stupid instigating shans in the head, had to shell the shit
out of some Burmese troops and then had to militarize the entire Akha
border from BEHIND AKHA village positions.
So just what will these people eat?
We need ANYONE who can put us in contact with a US Senator or Rep who
would be opposed to all this so this can be made public and stopped!
NOW! We need ANYONE who can tell us where exactly the ops are going
to be held. There is not an inch of land up here on the border that
the Akha don't farm, have in fallow or traverse on a regular basis.
This is why America is always sticking its head in where it doesn't
belong, the UGLY american, stirring up crap in someone's back yard and
the pawns and peasants get totally stepped on. No one has told these
villagers that this is coming. Nothing tells that this is a drug interdiction
effort. So how will they interdict, talk to trees, ask them if they
are doing more than growing leaves? Or will it mean village harassment
and traffic on the road harrassment about pills, opium and such? Makes
me want to go right out and buy a bunch of US flags so I can teach the
Akha how to bloody burn them.
Extremely pissed off, Had enough of this fucking drug war, Matthew,
Chiangrai, Thailand
Friday, April 06, 2001 2:15 PM
Village Crators
Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group Thailand (JUSMAG) Joint Task Force-Full
Accounting (JTF-FA) Dear Sirs:
I read in today's Bangkok Post (April 6) that there is a planned Cobra
Gold 2001 Excercise with five plus countries and quite a large
contingent of troops scheduled for the dates between May 15 and May
29 of this year in Chiangrai Province "rugged mountain border areas".
The article stated live fire excercises.
Well, there are only one kind of mountains of a rugged nature that
also have a border in Chiangrai province and these mountains are full
of Akha villages or other hilltribe. Furthermore, past articles noted
that this was going to be a "drug interdiction" excercise. Naturally
this will include police, army and local people as the "clients".
These people have already been battered sufficiently by Thai Army policy
of forced relocation going on better than ten years now, in violation
of their rights and international norms, forestry taking their rice
food land with the guns of the army backing them up and now this foolish
border incident that kept many of the villages out of their farming
fields for two months while the Thai army hid behind their villages
lobbing mortars over the top. Very brave.
So what now are they to expect, more lost time while thousands of soldiers
glory boy it through their mountain fields and villages? These people
are receiving no poverty relief aid, and this operation is going to
cost in the millions of dollars, with these unsponsored hill tribe people
being the "clients" of this thoughtful action.
No village chiefs have been informed of these coming events. Possibly
this is why villagers have no interest in cooperating regarding a "DRUG
WAR" because mostly it is a war against them.
Can you please specify by longitude and latitude or town name the exact
regions in which these excercises are planned? In Chiangrai Province
there are more than 135 Akha villages, most of them in the "rugged mountain
border areas".
Matthew McDaniel Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand
Cluster Bomb
I have done more research today, in addition to the imbeciles from
Cobra Gold 2001 (11,000 troups, 5,000 which
are US, not 20,000, that was last year) and have discovered that they
have assasinated at least one of my Akha friends and tried to on others.
They are currently hunting to assasinate a few more if they can find
them. This is the Thais, the Americans are surely involved, doing phone
call mobile tracking etc I would guess. You did know that the CIA tracked
Dudayev's phone calls so the Russians could rocket him? Well, I am cooking
up Admiral Fargo's Cobra Gold party. We are mobilizing.
Now you can reach your hand out and call your man, the Senator you
hardly know and give him a lesson on geography, and tell him that there
is this mad dog American over here who has wife and kids who are Akha
in these "border regions" and there is going to be one hell of a stink.
Furthermore, Bush or no, assasinations are illegal. Morally illegal.
I work here ten years in Maesai Thailand to help the Akha hilltribe.
The region is full of drug runners of every sort, be it Thai, hilltribe
or foreigners. In the last number of years numerous Akha leaders who
were suspected of being involved with the drug trade related to Khun
Sa have been assasinated. I know these men, I know their villages, their
families, and the plight of their people in general. They know the names
of too many politicians or even westerners involved in the drug trade
and can tell too many stories.
The one sided assasination of these people, and the fact that they
are killing them quietly rather than bringing them in, suggests that
they can tell many of the names of the Thai politicians and military
officers who are in the meth and heroin trade, and surely a few Americans
too.
Hook and tongs, Matthew
Pine Bluff
Plain of Jars
