Word: opium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...less manageable. Increasing numbers of arriving foreigners have been fluent in Chinese and thus able to bypass the guided tour and the official interpreter. The result has been growing alarm in Peking over the depth of personal contact, which could lead to what the Chinese press decries as "spiritual opium," meaning corruption from abroad. Two years ago, officials were stunned and alarmed by the case of Steven Mosher, 34, a Stanford University graduate student who lived for nine months in a commune in Guangdong province. Mosher collected extensive interviews, photographed thousands of documents shown him by village officials and took...
...Baluchistan, near Zahedan, where the Iranian, Pakistani and Afghan frontiers meet to form a triangular no man's land. For centuries, the mountainous border area had been controlled by fierce Baluchi tribesmen, who freely traverse the borders of the three countries. The area is also used by opium smugglers and roamed by packs of wild, emaciated desert dogs...
...murder," says an official of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which has more than 20 agents in Thailand. "He pays his men well and has won surprising loyalty from them." In 1978 he even tried to make a deal with the U.S. to sell it 500 tons of raw opium over a five-year period for $30 million. DEA officials convinced the Carter Administration that such preemptive buying would be futile, since Khun Sa could still flood the market with opium. Officials now estimate that about 600 tons of opium is harvested each year in the area, most...
...long as Khun Sa did not threaten Thailand's national security, Bangkok refrained from direct attacks on him. But last year he made a deal with Burma's Communist Party to provide its cadres with rice in return for opium. The Communists soon became a major supplier. Khun Sa's army in turn acted as a conduit that enabled Communists to establish a toehold near the Thai border...
...destruction of Ban Hin Taek may disrupt the heroin flow for a while. Thai officials claim they have swept Khun Sa's mercenaries out of Thailand and captured ten tons of guns and ammunition worth $2 million. But narcotics officials admit that the opium war is far from over. Says one Bangkok agent: "The syndicate will start up again. The problem is not supply but demand. People will continue to want heroin and be willing to pay big money for it." -By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David DeVoss/Bangkok