[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

NEWS - A crossroads in the new Myan



Subject: NEWS - A crossroads in the new Myanmar 

10 December, 1999

A crossroads in the new Myanmar 

Burma Road has long been a supply line. Now, it serves as a route for
illegal immigrants and drug smuggling. 

                                       By Patrick McDowell

                                      ASSOCIATED PRESS

                 LASHIO, Myanmar - In the early years of World War II,
                 the dusty outpost of Lashio was a key junction on the
                     Burma Road, the intravenous drip that fed allied
                   supplies to the beleaguered government of China. 

                    The mountainous route in northeastern Myanmar
                retains a whiff of danger and mystery, but these days it
                  is because the old road is one of the world's biggest
                                        smuggling routes. 

                       The cargo moving up and down treacherous
                          switchbacks and over rickety bridges in
                   smoke-belching trucks is a lifeline for the bankrupt
                 military regime of Myanmar, as Burma is now known.
                  But it also is fanning ethnic tensions and feeding the
                                        world's drug habit. 

                    "The border is completely wide open now," said
                  Sterling Seagrave, who endured Japanese bombing
                 raids five decades ago as a boy living along the road,
                  when Burma was a British colony. "It's become like
                    the border between Texas and Mexico. There's a
                tremendous amount of people coming across. They're
                           going to change Burma very quickly." 

                      Myanmar is one of Asia's poorest nations, and
                   commerce is badly needed. The country has been
                hammered by the region's economic crisis, which has
                    choked off investment from its neighbors, and by
                  Western sanctions supporting Nobel Peace laureate
                     Aung San Suu Kyi's persecuted pro-democracy
                                             opposition.

                But the traffic includes heroin and amphetamines from
                   Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle region. It goes to
                      China's Yunnan province, where drug use has
                     mushroomed in recent years, and elsewhere for
                        shipment to the United States and Europe. 

                  From overpopulated China come illegal immigrants
                   seeking cheap land and opportunity in a relatively
                      empty country. Many are settling in Mandalay,
                 Myanmar's second-largest city, and alarmed citizens
                   fear northeastern Myanmar will become a Chinese
                                               colony. 

                    More innocuous traffic includes gems, teak, farm
                    produce and raw materials heading to China and
                    electrical goods, fuel and auto parts coming out. 

                           This has never been an ordinary road. 

                  Hacked out of the mountains by Nationalist Chinese
                  leader Chiang Kai-shek's forces in the late 1930s, it
                   connected besieged China with a rail network and
                     seaport in Rangoon after China's ports fell into
                                         Japanese hands. 

                   The main junctions - Rangoon, Mandalay, Lashio -
                     were taken by the Japanese in their steamroller
                 victories after Pearl Harbor. Reopening a land route to
                  China became America's objective for the rest of the
                    war so Chiang could pin down a large part of the
                                          Japanese army.

                  Seagrave, a Myanmar expert and author who writes
                       about Asia's power structures, is the son of a
                   missionary doctor whose wartime border hospital
                   treated the Allied wounded and the road laborers. 

                 "The joke was that the road was two lanes wide - one
                     for each wheel," Seagrave said. "You had to be
                 careful. The drivers coming from China would turn off
                their engines to save gas and ride their brakes to slow
                                                 down.

                "The brakes would give out, of course, and you'd drive
                 by these curves where they didn't make it and see the
                wrecks in the ravine. Sometimes, the wheels were still
                                             spinning." 

                Today's trucks are mostly rugged Japanese Hinos that
                    do not look much different from models of a half
                  century ago - big-fendered, low-geared, goods piled
                 above the cab and held down by a tarpaulin. A dozen
                           or more passengers might ride on top.

                Trucks still miss turns, rolling into a ravine or
teetering
                  precariously on a cliff edge, front wheels hanging in
                                                space. 

                   Wartime Americans described the road as a trail of
                corruption, where bribe-hungry officials would hold up
                convoys for weeks. A modern trucker, Wang Lee, said
                                 only the goods had changed. 

                Heading to Mandalay from the frontier, Wang, a border
                        Chinese, is stopped at one of four customs
                 checkpoints along the route. His Nissan diesel awaits
                  inspection while he sips a soda outside a dusty gas
                    station where hill-tribe girls sell freshly cut
fruit. 

                   Wang asks a Westerner - a rarity in Lashio - if he is
                  with Myanmar military intelligence, the omnipresent
                  branch of the regime that has ruled through fear and
                                     bloodshed since 1962. 

                  Convinced that is not the case, Wang begins talking
                  about how bribery and smuggling are the way of life
                 on the road. In confirmation, the owner of the station
                    slips him a payment for four drums of smuggled
                                              gasoline. 

                    "This is a trafficking road," Wang said. "I've been
                  doing this kind of work for 15 years, and I have only
                one truck. If I was engaged in other kinds of activities
-
                  narcotics, or people - I'd have 10 or 20 trucks and be
                                                 rich." 

                Pointing to mammoth customs docks across the road,
                 Wang points out the big boys. Their trucks and shiny,
                  four-wheel-drive utility vehicles get the required
five
                 stamps - narcotics, immigration, customs, police and
                                    forestry - within an hour. 

                The rest - trucks, cars, buses - have to pile their
goods
                      on a siding, where they are slowly inspected.

                 "Sometimes it takes a week when the checkpoints try
                                  to squeeze us," Wang said. 

                     Part of the money is kicked upstairs to regional
                  commanders, who need wealth and the patronage it
                can buy to improve their careers and get posted closer
                                           to the capital. 

                    Western diplomats say Myanmar's cash-strapped
                government has reached deals with drug traffickers to
                        invest part of their gains in roads and other
                       infrastructure. For the regime, it is a form of
                  development. Critics call it drug-money laundering. 

                      Asia World, a company run by the family of Lo
                     Hsing-han, the Golden Triangle's first big heroin
                 exporter, upgraded the Lashio road and is working on
                                  several other such projects. 

                  A government spokesman, speaking on condition of
                anonymity, said that Lo - who was jailed between 1973
                          and 1980 - had paid his debt to society. 

                "It is nothing unusual or illegal for Lo and his family
to
                 take part in the development and investment sector,"
                                      the spokesman said. 

                The government spokesman noted that the penalty for
                   drug smuggling can be execution. But more heroin
                   reaches the rest of the world from Myanmar every
                              year than from any other country. 

                The border trade is needed by the government to raise
                    money. It is also a concession to China, which is
                   Myanmar's biggest supplier of military hardware. 

                   But ordinary people openly express resentment at
                  China for backing the government and at the illegal
                    Chinese immigrants they say are moving into the
                                country by tens of thousands. 

                   In Mandalay, where ethnic Indians were the largest
                minority a few years ago, Chinese letters on shops and
                                restaurants line entire streets. 

                 A police official said many immigrant men paid local
                 woman to marry them, gained residency, and moved
                              their whole families to Myanmar. 

                 The ethnic Chinese tend to have more business skills.
                  Their relatively rapid accumulation of wealth breeds
                   resentment in an area where ethnic suspicions are
                                  never far below the surface. 

                  The original inhabitants of the region, the Shan and
                    other ethnic minorities, have been decimated by
                        decades of unsuccessful rebellion, poverty,
                immigration to Thailand, and the latest scourge, AIDS. 

                  A bitter joke heard up and down the road goes: "The
                     Burmese son has been adopted by the Chinese
                                               father."