Northern Thailand - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Northern Thailand - page 938

THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE, YESTERDAY & TODAY
In historical terms, the Golden Triangle refers to an area, stretching thousands of square kilometres in-
to Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, within which the opium trade was once prevalent. From the early
20th century to the 1980s, the Golden Triangle was the world's biggest grower of Papaver somnifer-
um, the poppy that produces opium. Poverty and lack of infrastructure and governance in the largely
rebel-controlled areas meant that growing poppies and transporting opium proceeded virtually un-
checked, eventually making its way around the world as refined heroin.
Undoubtedly the single most significant player in the Golden Triangle drug trade was Khun Sa, a
Shan/Chinese warlord dubbed the 'Opium King' by the Western press. Starting in the mid-1970s from
his headquarters in Chiang Rai Province, Khun Sa, his Shan United Army (SUA), ex-KMT fighters in
Mae Salong and other cohorts in the region formed a partnership that would eventually claim a virtual
monopoly of the world's opium trade.
In 1988, after having been the victim of two unsuccessful assassination attempts, Khun Sa offered
to sell his entire crop of opium to the Australian government for AUS$50 million a year, claiming that
this would essentially end the world's entire illegal trade in heroin. He made a similar offer to the US,
but was dismissed by both. With a US DEA bounty of US$2 million on his head, in 1996 Khun Sa
surrendered to Myanmar officials. They refused to extradite him to the US, and Khun Sa eventually
died in Yangon in 2007.
Khun Sa's surrender seemed to be the last nail in the coffin of the Golden Triangle opium trade.
Land dedicated to poppy cultivation in the region hit an all-time low in 1998, and since the early 21st
century Afghanistan's Golden Crescent has replaced the region as the world's pre-eminent producer of
opium. But a recent report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime claims that the trade has
spiked yet again - most likely due to increased demand from China - and in 2012 Myanmar alone was
thought to have produced 10% of the world's opium.
However, most agree that the contemporary Golden Triangle drug trade has shifted from opium to
methamphetamines. Manufactured in Myanmar in factories with alleged links to the United Wa State
Army, the drug, known in Thai as yah bâ h (crazy drug) has become the new scourge of the region, and
footage of tweaked-out users holding hostages was a Thai news staple in the early 2000s. Although re-
cent efforts to eradicate methamphetamines by Thai authorities have led to higher prices, trafficking
and use are thought to have increased.
The area's opium days are (mostly) long gone, but hoteliers and tour operators in Chiang Rai have
been quick to cash in on the name by rebranding the tiny village of Sop Ruak as 'the Golden Tri-
angle'. The name is undoubtedly meant to conjure up images of illicit adventure, exotic border areas
and opium caravans, but these days the only caravan you're likely to see is the endless parade of buses
carrying package tourists. Sop Ruak's opium is fully relegated to museums, and even the once beauti-
ful natural setting has largely been obscured by ATMs, stalls selling tourist tat and the seemingly
never-ending loud announcements from the various temples. And perhaps most tellingly, Khun Sa's
formerly impenetrable headquarters in Ban Thoet Thai are today a low-key tourist attraction.
Mae Salong
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