The amazing fact about the Golden Triangle drug scene is just how much it has changed in the past 10 years. That is, hardly at all.
The greatest proof of this is named Wei Hsueh-Kang, alias Prasit Cheewinnitipanya, also known as his own brother, Charnchai Cheevinnitipanya, with a one-letter difference in the last name as an extra challenge for foreign agents supposedly on the lookout for him. He is the commander of the United Wa State Army, probably the single biggest controller of the government's jade market, and an extraordinary drug kingpin.
It was during the last century that the US State Department first offered a $2 million reward for information leading to the UWSA leader -- 70.3 million baht in real money. Since then and despite the reward, no anti-drug official has laid a hand on him.
Not recently that is. Brief history of that: He was arrested in Thailand in 1986, sentenced to death by the Criminal and Appeals Courts but was on bail and, in a shocking development, never came back to hear the verdict. Who could have predicted that? In 1989, the US offered the reward for his capture or death, and in 1993, the US indicted him for heroin trafficking. He controls a good portion of the opium-heroin business he assumed after Shan state kingpin Khun Sa died in 2007. That is in addition to his original, massive business of making and exporting ya ba (methamphetamine) tablets, especially to Thailand.
While all intelligence reports from the Myanmar part of the Golden Triangle are sketchy at best, it seems Wei is also the heir to Khun Sa's nasty little alliance with the 14K triad, chief smugglers and middlemen in the heroin business.
But Wei's UWSA has plenty of competition (not to mention back-stabbing treachery) right inside the Wa community, and throughout the Golden Triangle.
Drug agents believe the arrests of 15 Malaysians muling drugs from Thailand's North to their country by rail last month highlight that competition. Current sources say the 14K triad leaders from Singapore and Hong Kong set up the smuggling attempt, but they were working with a second big Wa-Thai cartel working from an area north of Wei's operations.
This second gang is headed by the mono-enumerated Col Jalorbo.
If intelligence on Wei is lean, information about this cartel leader's shenanigans is indecently scraggly. Indeed, if a reporter of the Golden Triangle drug scene had 100 baht for each time officials have "put a serious dent" in Col Jalorbo's operations, he would be eating higher on the hog.
It gets worse, too. Col Jalorbo's associate or assistant or bagman or even brains of the outfit -- pick any one -- is Weera Mueanjada, ethnic Thai and most-wanted drug fugitive. We know for certain he is Col Jalorbo's son-in-law and anti-drug agents said the railway bust of the Malaysians "was a serious blow to Weera". It was the eleventeenth such proclamation that the Jalorbo-Weera gang was on its heels and about to be run to ground. This can happen if there is a single change in policy in Southeast Asia.
When it offered the reward for Wei 27 years ago, the US stated that, "The Wa is the dominant heroin trafficking group in Southeast Asia." That may be technically true. There is however one group above the UWSA that has dominated and pushed and affected the drug trade more than any other: the Myanmar government or, to put it more exactly because of changing circumstances, the tatmadaw or Myanmar Armed Forces who ran the country until a couple of weeks ago.
There's a new marshal in town. And let's stipulate that if Aung San Suu Kyi manages to improve 50% of the most important items on her to-do list she will be one of the most successful political leaders of all time.
But her country's current drug policies -- and yes, they are policies -- not only corrupt Myanmar but the neighbours. The big-time, multimillion drug dealers in Myanmar massively affect health, welfare, economics, law enforcement, justice and politics in (for starters) every country touching hers including one that starts with "T". Plus, as the Malaysian arrests showed dramatically, countries far from Myanmar.
The 50-year military dictatorship she and voters are working to replace made bargains with drug cartels and kingpins. The basic deal was they could make and traffic drugs so long as some of the profits went to the regime or, at least, to make the regime look good with "investments" in ports, airlines, tourist business and the like.
A country these days can't be more corrupt than that, whether measured in money or ethics. Mrs Suu Kyi's political success will be measured in coming years by how she makes Myanmar moral again.