There is just a whisper about brothels in Mong La in this Mizzima article. But lots of other interesting issues.
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Changing Faces of the Golden Triangle
Maung Maung
Mizzima News www.mizzima.com
April 10, 2007 - Once the epicenter of world opium and heroin production, the Golden Triangle today is undergoing a discernable shift. While this shift is seen in a change in drug policy and trade, it is even more noticeable in the growing influence of neighboring countries, especially China.
The depth of penetration of eastern Shan State by foreign influence and interest is readily manifested in the road linking the Chinese border area around Mongla, Burma with Tachileik on the Thai border; the road itself constructed by two Chinese companies which now share the toll revenue that accrues from its traffic.
Along the length of this passage the drug trade is consistently upheld to be illegal, at least in policy if not practice, while Chinese interests from the north and Thai interests from the south compete for influence and profit. Burma's Drug Eradication Plan calls for all drug activity throughout the region to be eradicated by 2014.
With this official anti-narcotic policy now in place, the days of vast stretches of poppy fields, drug lords with their private armies and massive logistical effort required to get the product across borders is, though not over, greatly altered.
Yet the drug business has not left the Golden Triangle, the drug of choice has merely switched to yaba. Yaba, by most accounts largely comprised of methamphetamines, can be manufactured quickly, cheaply and easily. The main ingredients can readily be bought in the market, and anyone can make it in their own kitchen. Further, as a tiny pill, it can readily be transported in mass quantities.
Simply put, the transition in drug export from the Golden Triangle has effectively concentrated the wealth that derives from the narcotics business in fewer hands, bypassing much of the local population, and pushing the whole business deeper into the shadows of the jungle.
And while it is easily arguable that the drug trade was never going to provide for long-term increased livelihood and development in the region, the problem is here compounded by the fact that the economic conditions of the villages and towns concerned offer few available avenues for mobility and advancement.
With even fewer options of making a living and less disposable income to share, people are forced to look elsewhere. As Sai, a fifty year-old businessman in Kengtung summarizes, "Rangoon is not able to support us, so we have no option but to turn to China or Thailand."
Tachileik
The term Golden Triangle has its origins in the Burmese border town of Tachileik. Here, in the narrow market alleys, opium traders would exchange their precious product for bars of gold. But a shift in product and political interests of larger players has spelt a shift in fortune for Tachileik, and within the Golden Triangle as a whole.
The shifting nature of the drug trade through Tachileik has by no means eliminated illicit cross border trade, but rather altered its major dynamics. Portions of the existing trade are easily visible.
On a recent night, from the comfort of a Mae Sai veranda, I watched as young men waded across the narrow and shallow Mae Sai River directly underneath the bridge which officially connects Burma and Thailand – a Friendship Bridge, as they all are. Concealed boxes, lashed with rope, were portered to Mae Sai, while in the direction of Tachileik new bicycles were the pick of the day.
But the absence of substantial drug money, in the past provided by the lucrative heroin and opium trade, has hit hard the local economy of Tachileik, as it has the rest of the corridor extending north to China.
One small businessman who had migrated to Tachileik from western Burma over ten years ago for the economic opportunity that the border offered, opined that since the change in the drug trade a large amount of revenue to local businessmen has been lost. "Before people would come to Tachileik and purchase not just one, two or a box of oranges, but buy the whole truck. The people coming here for business had lots of money. But now we must sell a single orange at a time," explained the man.
And the perceptible interests and influence of regional neighbors is easily found in the dank market alleys, where it has been made officially illegal to exchange dollars – as it has along the length of the corridor extending to the Chinese border; the Thai baht and Chinese yuan being readily convertible.
Along the road north to Kengtung, through bamboo villages nestled in the hills and following a winding, muddied river, Tatmadaw troops ride atop oil tankers and in the backs of open air lorries and pick-up trucks, singing songs and playing cards as they bounce along, ammunition strapped across chests and gun muzzles pointed skyward.
Kengtung
Kengtung can be an eerily laid back and quiet town. At one instant a policeman commands the middle of an intersection and whistles to a stop imaginary traffic as a military convoy speeds through the town center. Meanwhile the local National League for Democracy office sits locked and shuttered.
Life, by many accounts, is easy but poor. Absent resources to acquire and run a generator, households and businesses are rationed approximately two hours of electricity per night. Residents readily talk of the worsening economic situation.
The rapidly deteriorating New Kengtung Hotel sits next to the Naung Tung Lake, a location formerly occupied by the Haw Sao Pha (Shan Lord's Palace). That palace destroyed by the Burmese military in 1991.
Sai, as is common with so many of the parents in Kengtung, has sent his sons and daughters to Thailand in search of better opportunities. Some make it all the way to Chiang Mai or even Bangkok, but many, lacking legal working and resident papers, settle for what Mae Sai, opposite Tachileik, has to offer.
A 22-year old worker in Mae Sai, originally from Kengtung and without proper working credentials, has moved from job to job in the Thai town for six years now, never once risking a return to visit friends and family. "I like Mae Sai very much. I have many opportunities here," she says. Hers is neither an uncommon nor extraordinary story.
Back in Kengtung, another entrepreneur says that in order to survive it is necessary to be adaptable in trade and practice. In the past year he has been a tailor, vendor and taxi man. "Thirty years ago we maybe had more options. But now you see we are poor," he says with a jocular smile.
Sai states that the only option available for those that remain behind in Kengtung is small business and day to day living; what might be termed subsistence economics.
At Kengtung's busy morning market, without question the event of every day in Kengtung, vendors proudly guarantee the quality of their product by virtue of its origin in either Thailand or China.
Over a strawberry shake of sorts, strawberry season having peaked throughout the hills, a young Akha man tells of his aim to reach Australia; so many of his generation sharing the dream of being able to emigrate abroad.
Yet along the quaint streets of Kengtung there is a growing Chinese population and many of them do possess relatively more wealth. In front of an upscale Chinese restaurant a large Chinese tour bus stands parked, its frame advertising all its destinations, from the southern cities of China through eastern Shan State, northwestern Laos and all the way to Thailand.
A veteran of Shan resistance to the military regime, Hkun has no love loss for either the Chinese or Thai – derisively stating that "China begins at Special Region No. 4", he simply wants the Shan and ethnic communities of th
e region to experience democracy and human rights. He speaks longingly of times when the CIA would clandestinely supply Shan forces from outposts in western Laos.
Hkun also claims that the drug trade now bypasses the Shan people of the region, as emphasis has shifted from heroin and opium to yaba. To the extent that the latter makes an appearance in the region, he claims it is distributed to ethnic communities and villages in the hope that the drug will kill, or at least impair, their youth.
The picturesque countryside around Kengtung is a maze of dirt paths and roads, connecting a web of villages: Akha, Wa, Lahu, Chinese (remnants of the Kuomintang) and even a model village erected in 1999 – rapidly showing signs of disrepair - intended to illustrate the impending prosperity to befall the region.
Though these villages may lie within a few hundred meters of one another, there is no guarantee that they share a common language. To the extent that there is a lingua franca in the region, it is without question Shan and not Burmese. Though Burmese is taught at schools, many of the children that grow up in the outlying countryside seldom have the opportunity to attend classes.
Villages and farmers are required to 'sell' to the government half of their yield, lest they risk repercussions by security forces, adding further hardship to an already dire economic situation.
And while many turn their thoughts and dreams toward Thailand, some aspire to freedom within Special Region No. 4. The region, located 85 kilometers to the north of Kengtung, is an enclosure more Chinese than Burmese and offers the distinct absence of Burmese security forces.
Snaking through the hills of eastern Shan State en route to Mongla, 'capital' of Special Region No. 4, large swaths of hillside are enveloped in flame – intentionally set by local farmers, choking the air and an ominous sign for air quality throughout not only this corner of Burma but northwest Thailand as well. Behind one Burmese military checkpoint an entire hill crackles ablaze. But as townspeople will say with a chuckle and a sigh, "What other chance for life do these people have?"
Apparently true to the words of a Kengtung taxi driver, the officially unofficial border with China "moves further and further south every year." Several kilometers prior to crossing into Special Region No. 4 we pass our first National Democratic Alliance Army – Eastern Shan State (NDAA-ESS) checkpoint and the yellow, green and red tricolor flag with its white star, replacing that of the Union of Myanmar, flying from the heights of a bamboo pole.
Mongla
If a foreigner, it costs 36 yuan to enter Special Region No. 4, essentially an entry permit for a state within a state. And this state, abutting the vast People's Republic of China to the north, is a Chinese state dominated by Chinese – much of the Burmese population existing very much as second class citizens.
The Burmese government currently maintains a small immigration post and the flag still flies in front of the local school.
Within a scant few meters the countryside is visibly changed. Corn fields abound while signs warn of impending dangers along roads patrolled by shiny police cars.
As we enter Mongla, sitting as it is in a valley, we pass a sprawling, immaculately manicured estate belonging to Special Region No. 4's head man, Sai Leun – commonly referred to in the region by his Chinese name of Lin Mingxian. Though the region was originally dominated by ethnic Shan and Akha, most Burmese, Akhas or otherwise now residing in Mongla also refer to themselves by a Chinese name.
Small, white rectangular tiles are everywhere used as siding on buildings, exactly as one would find in other regions of Chinese expansion from Urumxi to Lhasa.
NDAA-ESS headquarters rests on a hill to the north of town, literally a stone's throw away from Chinese customs and the People's Republic.
On the sloping lawn of a park on the western side of town, shrubbery has been trimmed to replicate the Olympic rings, in recognition and pride of the 2008 summer games being awarded to Beijing.
Wealthy Chinese race along the tree lined main street of Mongla, on either side of the Nant Ma Chaung River. For some reason the Toyota Mark II Grande, invariably white and impeccably clean, the unquestioned transportation of choice for the moneyed class.
Here in Mongla the visitor can wallow in 24-hour electricity, discos and well furnished hotels. Internet parlors are packed with youth in the evenings, usually enthralled in some sort of violent interactive video game. But, for the interested, web sites commonly blocked by censors in Rangoon or Mandalay are here easily accessible.
Mahjong is played everywhere: in upscale clothing shops that now lack patrons, in hardware stores and even on pagoda grounds.
But all is not as prosperous in Mongla as first appears. The transformation of the drug trade and growing and changing interest of foreign powers in the region has not passed over this remote outpost of Chinese influence.
The once booming entertainment and tourism scene of Mongla is but a shell of its former self. Talk of drug money without question leads to a discussion of the past.
Chinese banks, once reported to stay open till all hours of the night to fuel the burgeoning economy, are virtually a thing of the past. The girl working the local branch of the Bank of China, now occupying a monopoly on the local banking industry, could not be roused from her afternoon slumber in order to conduct a simple transaction.
Massive casinos that once lit up the night sky and drew hordes of Chinese from across the border have now been closed for nearly two years on orders emanating and enforced from north of the border – though some still operate underground for privileged clientele. Gone also are the elephant and crocodile shows, the Akha dance troop, the ladyboys and sex workers from all corners of the world.
Again the common refrain is heard from the business folk of Mongla, both Burmese and Chinese, namely that all they have now is the opportunity to run small businesses with little prospect of accruing wealth or expanding.
Xi, a small business owner, laments, "The Chinese tourists that come here now only visit some temples, drive around and eat at the night market. They no longer come here and spend any money."
However, in the wake of a top Burmese delegation visit with Sai Leun last month, this population is now concerned that what liberty they do have may soon be negatively affected. Rumour on the street is rife with reports that Sai Leun reached some kind of understanding with the Burmese regime. One businesswoman, originally from north of Mandalay, commented, "I don't care if the Burmese government and soldiers come here, but I don't want to lose the freedom I have in running my business and living each day."
What does still exist of the former playland is a large enclosed night market. The center of which is dominated by eating venues. Manicured conifers and palms define the inner square, and past these the pale red/pink glow of the sex establishments abound. And here also, at the brothels and in front of lewd posters, the girls sit largely disinterested in everything but their mahjong.
Television stations in hotels are furnished with Chinese subtitles to Japanese porn. A plethora of calling cards for escort services are casually slipped under the door, everywhere around the central market billboards advertise the services of young women.
During the day, as most of the city remains inside polishing their mahjong tiles and readying for the night's activities, Burmese migrant workers wait on street corners and dingy shops, hoping to be able and get work, commonly from trucks that pass through and need labor to load and/or offload.
This Burmes
e population has come to Special Region No. 4 for its freedom, and though their lives are wrought with poverty and labor abuse – almost all of them with some sort of hideous scarring from wounds suffered, they remain apprehensive in returning to their homes further south. The boys and men comprising this underbelly of Mongla society, and having made the choice to do so, include qualified teachers who have abandoned their careers.
Mongla's wealth and prosperity came quickly and in abundance, largely rumored on the wave of heroin profits filtered through Sai Leun's opium syndicate. But Mongla, having risen from the jungle a scant few years ago as a region of unheralded freedom and brash entrepreneurship, the large Dwe Nagara Shwe Pagoda overlooking town only being completed in 1999, now confronts growing realities and pains in its relationship with a rapidly changing and expanding China.
Whither the Golden Triangle?
Yes there are still fields of poppies in the hills hidden from public eye. Yes the region is still home to an array of armed outfits. And yes, much of the region remains a largely lawless expanse of hills and valleys.
Yet the Golden Triangle is ever so gradually being pinched. From the luxury resorts that now occupy the point where Burma, Thailand and Laos physically meet, to the infusion of economic interests along the north/south axis through eastern Shan State. The problem is that the wealth and benefits accruing from business and trade in the region are distinctly failing to find most of those whose families occupied the lands far before there ever was a Golden Triangle.
A fair amount of traffic through Mongla continues on to the Wa stronghold of Pangshang on the Chinese border further to the northwest. Those that have business there, or have recently visited, speak of it as a thriving community with many happenings and growing wealth – an apparent far cry from its deathbed as the jungle outpost headquarters for the terminal Communist Party of Burma in the late 1980s. But why should local residents of Pangshang thrive while the fortunes of those in Tachileik, Kengtung and Mongla wane?
While many critics of the Burmese regime argue from a position of morality and rights, often drawing on the continuing export of narcotics from the Golden Triangle region, China and Thailand continue to amass tangible interests inside the country, in this case throughout the Tachileik/Mongla corridor. It must then be asked, when speaking of ways forward, whether it is not imperative to recognize and consider the interests that, especially with China, have already been established and are poised only to grow.
Finally, as if the Golden Triangle does not continue to puzzle and attract with ample mystery and enchantment, the price of the deluxe suite at the Hong Feng Hotel in Mongla: 8888.
Note: all names of those quoted and referred to throughout article have been altered.
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