Word: opium
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fighting gradually fades in Indochina, Southeast Asia's other war intensifies. Up in the cool highlands of the Golden Triangle where the borders of Burma, Laos and Thailand meet, fighting rages for control of the area's 700-ton illicit opium crop-a full two-thirds of the world's output. A major participant in that war fell last week when Thai agents, advised by U.S. narcotics agents, captured Lo Hsing-han, long suspected of being Southeast Asia's largest and most powerful heroin tycoon. In a rare display of cooperation, Burmese armed forces, which...
...capture of Lo is the most impressive victory to date in a campaign launched by the U.S. to clean up the Golden Triangle. For centuries the region's residents had consumed most of its flourishing opium crop, although some was always set aside for export...
After 1970, with Turkish production of the narcotic curtailed by U.S. pressure, the major dealers in the Triangle began large-scale exports. They had discovered that they could reap huge profits by selling their heroin-which they refine from the morphine derivative of raw opium-to the burgeoning markets among the G.I.s in Viet Nam and elsewhere in the West. One kilo of pure heroin-which sells for $300 at the Burma-Thai border-is worth at least $3,000 in Saigon, $10,000 in Marseille and $50,000 in New York City...
...where by 1970 they established an undercover network. There in the north, U.S. and Thai agents set up observation posts on all the main roads leading south from the tri-border area. Thanks to their reports, Thai police, to date, have been able to seize over 20 tons of opium...
...Switch. The impact of these efforts, however, remained limited without the help of Burma. For more than a decade, Burmese Strongman Ne Win had permitted one of Burma's militias, the Ka Kwe Ye (K.K.Y.), to engage in the opium trade as a reward for its support of his campaign against Communist guerrillas. With this franchise, the K.K.Y. and its most important leader, Lo Hsing-han, openly carried opium along Burmese roads. Early this year Ne Win abruptly switched policy. Worried about growing drug addiction among Burmese youth and realizing that he would have no chance of receiving...