Word: lin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...This Faustian deal was one of several the junta made with the opium warlords within its borders. They have helped Burma become one of the world's largest opium producers, and the source of at least half the heroin sold in the U.S. Soon Lin was opening new heroin-smuggling routes in Southeast Asia to get his product to the U.S. and Australia. The U.S. State Department identified Lin and his Wa allies as key players in the heroin and methamphetamines trade. A single refinery belonging to the Lin syndicate could manufacture anything up to 2,000 tons of pure...
...Drugs made Lin a very rich man, but they were only one source of his enormous income. Mongla was a transshipment area for smuggling Chinese laborers through Thailand and into America. For this service the laborers paid up to $40,000 each; some paid again with their lives. Three hundred Chinese hailing from Lin's territory were aboard a ship that ran aground off New Jersey in 1993. Scores of them drowned trying to swim ashore through heavy seas...
...trippers from neighboring Yunnan province were pouring over the border to visit them. Later I picked up an official tourism leaflet, written in Chinese, which described Mongla as "a beautiful and prosperous region (with) unique natural scenery and curious local customs." One of those curious customs was public executions. Lin governed his private fiefdom with medieval brutality. On one occasion three men suspected of plotting to assassinate him were dragged into the busy market and machine-gunned to death by his teenage bodyguards...
...variety of checkpoints. An hour or so before the town, I stopped at a bridge to show my documents at a Burmese immigration post. On the other side I was waved through two fortified checkpoints manned by conspicuously armed soldiers. This was the first indication that I had entered Lin's territory: the soldiers were not Burmese, but belonged to the National Democratic Alliance Army?a fancy name for Lin's private militia. A few miles farther on, my entry was officially recorded at a small roadside booth by a grumpy, half-naked man playing Tetris...
...This hardly explained or excused the regime's abysmal record in drug control. Since 1988?when Khin Nyunt and his clique rose to power?opium production in Burma had more than doubled. This startling increase was largely due to the generous concessions the regime had granted Mongla's ruler Lin and other ethnic druglords...