Myanmar’s War Has Made It the Global Crime Capital - The New York Times

Myanmar’s War Has Made It the Global Crime Capital

Dec. 31, 2024Updated 9:09 a.m. ET

An opium poppy farm in Pekon Township in Shan State, Myanmar, in November.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

"The chaotic country is now a magnet for criminal syndicates, particularly from China, destabilizing law enforcement across much of Asia.

The flower fields stretch out from the mountain village along most every road — fluttering patchworks of white and pink and purple.

The beauty in this corner of Shan State, in northeastern Myanmar, might seem a respite from the country’s brutal civil war. Instead the blooms are a symptom: It is all opium poppy in these fields, and Myanmar again ranks as the world’s biggest exporter of the raw material to make heroin and other opiates. And that’s just the beginning.

Since descending into a full-blown civil conflict nearly four years ago, after the military overthrew the elected government, Myanmar has cemented its status as a hotbed of transnational crime. It is a playground for warlords, arms dealers, human traffickers, poachers, drug syndicates and generals wanted by international courts.

Myanmar is now the biggest nexus of organized crime on the planet, according to the Global Organized Crime Index.

Hundreds of unregulated

rare earth mines operate

near the border with China.

Myanmar is one of the world’s

largest producers of opium

and synthetic drugs.

Scam factories and online

gambling dens are rampant

near the border with Thailand.

Source: U.N. Myanmar Information Management Unit

By Agnes Chang

The criminality flourishing in Myanmar’s fertile soil carries disastrous consequences for its 55 million people. It is also spreading the fruits of transgression across the globe. With more than half of the country battle-struck following the military coup in February 2021 that unseated the civilian authority of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar is racking up dubious superlatives.

It is now the world’s largest producer of opium and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine, ketamine and fentanyl. Concocted with precursor chemicals from neighboring China and India, tablets made in Myanmar feed habits as far away as Australia. With factories in overdrive and international law enforcement overwhelmed, street prices of these drugs are alarmingly cheap.

For years, farmers grew their poppies in mountains and valleys away from certain authorities. Now, growers cultivate opium flowers openly in their villages.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Cutting open a poppy pod to extract the raw opium inside.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Myanmar is not just a narco-state. It is also thought to be the world’s largest exporter of certain heavy rare earth elements that power clean energy worldwide. In battlefields turned toxic wastelands, workers dig in illegal mines, then dispatch the rare earths to China along old smuggling routes. The Southeast Asian nation is also home to the best jade and ruby on the planet, much of it extracted by young men addicted to the same drugs that are flooding the global market. Poachers scour Myanmar’s forests for endangered wildlife and timber, too, often bound for China.

The war in Myanmar is expanding the reach of Chinese criminal syndicates, which are operating with impunity and monopolistic ambition in the region, despite occasional crackdowns by Beijing. Chinese weapons flow both to the ruling junta and to the resistance forces that are fighting it.

In Myanmar’s borderlands, criminal networks that unite Chinese kingpins with ethnic warlords are kidnapping people from all over the globe to toil in factories that scam people online. International police organizations say that this online fraud has bilked billions of dollars from retirees and lonely hearts in the United States, China, Europe and beyond.

“Organized crime has a vested interest in conflict continuing because it thrives in that environment,” said Masood Karimipour, the regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or U.N.O.D.C. “And the longer the conflict goes on, the more territory falls under the control or influence of parties who stand to profit.”

“The profits,” he added, “are from truly horrifying things that are destroying lives in Myanmar and in many other countries.”

The Myanmar military and the ethnic militias that have aligned with it are by far the biggest drivers of the illicit economy. Since the coup, international sanctions imposed because of the army’s terrible human rights record have cut into the junta’s profits. But those fighting on the side of democracy and regional autonomy also know that illegal proceeds are the easiest way to fuel their war machine.

New York Times reporting within Myanmar over the past few years of intensifying war has laid bare how the country’s descent into failed statehood is stoking conflict at home and exporting misery, dependency and corruption across continents.

These are the biggest cogs in Myanmar’s military-industrial crime complex:

Opium in the Open

In the Shan Hills of Myanmar, the opium poppy is called “the peace flower.”

The name is an irony: There has not been true peace in Shan State for decades. Over the years, more than a dozen ethnic guerrilla groups have fought the Myanmar military — and each other — for dominance, not only of the territory but of the drug trade, too.

This planting season, opium farming in Pekon Township in Shan State reached a troubling milestone. For years, farmers grew their poppies in mountains and valleys, away from the authorities that would, sometimes at gunpoint, impose taxes, demand a cut of the crop or even destroy their fields.

Today, these growers cultivate opium flowers openly in their villages. Nourished by complex irrigation systems, fields of poppies sway beside churches, temples, police stations and town halls. Farmers harvest the oozing opium resin without fear of getting caught.

Workers displaced by Myanmar’s civil war working on an opium farm in Pekon Township. The farmers can harvest the opium without fear of getting caught.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

The fields are nourished by complex irrigation systems.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

“Now there is no government, no military, so we don’t have to hide,” said Daw Hla Win, as she returned from tending her poppies in a field across the street from her house. “It’s the best time ever for opium.”

Before the coup, elected officials and foreign bureaucrats tried to convince Shan opium farmers to abandon their traditional ways and grow substitutes, such as avocados, coffee and corn. But impoverished farmers in these isolated hills say there was little market for such crops.

Besides, opium, which has been used sparingly as medicine for generations here, is more lucrative. This flowering season, which runs from November to February, prices for opium resin are already reaching $430 per pound, three times what they were a few years ago.

“Life is unpredictable,” said Ko Htein Lin, who has given over his farmland for opium poppies. “We need to make money when we can.”

The U.N.O.D.C. estimates that up to $1.26 billion in heroin, mostly derived from Shan State opium, was exported from Myanmar this year. Many of the opium farmers in Pekon are sharecroppers who were displaced by the fighting and earn as little as $2 a day.

“I have to survive,” said Ko Pa Lae, who with his family fled junta airstrikes on their hometown.

A year ago, a resistance offensive pushed the military out of dozens of towns, bringing these opium fields under the mandate of an ethnic armed group that is part of the antigovernment resistance force. At the same time, the Myanmar military — which terrorizes the civilian population with airstrikes and drone attacks — and its associated militias are buying most of the opium grown here, locals say. Some rebels fighting the military are also complicit in the trade, though other armed groups have eschewed drug trafficking completely.

Raw opium. “Life is unpredictable,” said one farmer who now grows poppies. “We need to make money when we can.”Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

A camp for internally displaced people in Shan State that was damaged by a military airstrike. Antigovernment resistance forces now control much of the region.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

“We sell to anyone who has money to pay us,” said Ko Myo Lay, an opium farmer in Pekon. “I don’t ask who they are.”

Jungle Drug Labs

A bottle of beer in Myanmar costs about $1. A little pink pill, a potent combination of methamphetamine and caffeine known as yaba, goes for less than 25 cents.

Last year, governments in East and Southeast Asia seized a record 190 tons of methamphetamine, the U.N.O.D.C. said, but its street price dropped as jungle labs in Shan State went into overdrive.

A yaba dealer selling pills in Lashio, in northern Shan State, in 2019. The pills, a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine, can cost less than 25 cents apiece.The New York Times

Shooting up and smoking drugs in Lashio.The New York Times

The making of synthetic drugs in Myanmar predates the coup and ensuing civil war. Warlords in certain self-administered regions of Shan State have long overseen drug economies, with the military and its proxies taking a cut of the profits. Air force helicopters would fly packets of pills and chunks of crystal methamphetamine to cities and ports for distribution overseas, former pilots said.

Production in Myanmar intensified after a crackdown on the assembly of drugs in China. The chemical precursors instead found their way to Myanmar, and Chinese lab technicians taught locals how to craft crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, in jungle redoubts. Chinese kingpins brought in pill presses to make yaba.

In 2019, in the northern Shan State village of Konemon under the control of an ethnic armed group, a visit by The Times showed the extent to which methamphetamine production dominated the local economy. All but three homes, locals said, were involved in making yaba. At night, the thrum of generators broke the quiet of the Shan Hills. A sour smell pervaded from the acid used in drug making.

The intensity of workshops churning out synthetic drugs has reached a new high since the army takeover in Myanmar, drug trade monitors and law enforcers say. Ethnic armed groups in Shan State have begun producing new club drugs, such as “happy water” and lollipops made with a cocktail that includes ketamine, MDMA and methamphetamine.

Synthetic drugs are pouring out of Shan State to Laos and Thailand, reconstituting the infamous Golden Triangle. They are smuggled to Bangladesh and India by ethnic rebels who are both fighting the junta and in business with it.

The yaba pills can sometimes be delivered in watermelon boxes.The New York Times

Mules inside an abandoned building in northern Shan State. The animals are sometimes used to transport goods, including drugs, on jungle routes.The New York Times

In Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, about 40 extravagantly tattooed soldiers with rifles spend their days hewing to the junta’s command as part of a so-called people’s militia. Sometimes they break up pro-democracy dissent or threaten entrepreneurs thought to support the resistance movement. Mostly, though, they organize the movement of synthetic drugs from rebel-held areas to junta-controlled territory before they head abroad by sea and land.

“We are called a people’s militia, but we rarely engage in fighting,” said Ko Ye, one of its members. “We engage in the drug trade.”

Scam Mills With Global Reach

Myanmar’s War Has Made It the Global Crime Capital

Dec. 31, 2024Updated 9:09 a.m. ET

An opium poppy farm in Pekon Township in Shan State, Myanmar, in November.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

The chaotic country is now a magnet for criminal syndicates, particularly from China, destabilizing law enforcement across much of Asia.

The flower fields stretch out from the mountain village along most every road — fluttering patchworks of white and pink and purple.

The beauty in this corner of Shan State, in northeastern Myanmar, might seem a respite from the country’s brutal civil war. Instead the blooms are a symptom: It is all opium poppy in these fields, and Myanmar again ranks as the world’s biggest exporter of the raw material to make heroin and other opiates. And that’s just the beginning.

Since descending into a full-blown civil conflict nearly four years ago, after the military overthrew the elected government, Myanmar has cemented its status as a hotbed of transnational crime. It is a playground for warlords, arms dealers, human traffickers, poachers, drug syndicates and generals wanted by international courts.

Myanmar is now the biggest nexus of organized crime on the planet, according to the Global Organized Crime Index.

Hundreds of unregulated

rare earth mines operate

near the border with China.

Myanmar is one of the world’s

largest producers of opium

and synthetic drugs.

Scam factories and online

gambling dens are rampant

near the border with Thailand.

Source: U.N. Myanmar Information Management Unit

By Agnes Chang

The criminality flourishing in Myanmar’s fertile soil carries disastrous consequences for its 55 million people. It is also spreading the fruits of transgression across the globe. With more than half of the country battle-struck following the military coup in February 2021 that unseated the civilian authority of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar is racking up dubious superlatives.

It is now the world’s largest producer of opium and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine, ketamine and fentanyl. Concocted with precursor chemicals from neighboring China and India, tablets made in Myanmar feed habits as far away as Australia. With factories in overdrive and international law enforcement overwhelmed, street prices of these drugs are alarmingly cheap.

For years, farmers grew their poppies in mountains and valleys away from certain authorities. Now, growers cultivate opium flowers openly in their villages.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Cutting open a poppy pod to extract the raw opium inside.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Myanmar is not just a narco-state. It is also thought to be the world’s largest exporter of certain heavy rare earth elements that power clean energy worldwide. In battlefields turned toxic wastelands, workers dig in illegal mines, then dispatch the rare earths to China along old smuggling routes. The Southeast Asian nation is also home to the best jade and ruby on the planet, much of it extracted by young men addicted to the same drugs that are flooding the global market. Poachers scour Myanmar’s forests for endangered wildlife and timber, too, often bound for China.

The war in Myanmar is expanding the reach of Chinese criminal syndicates, which are operating with impunity and monopolistic ambition in the region, despite occasional crackdowns by Beijing. Chinese weapons flow both to the ruling junta and to the resistance forces that are fighting it.

In Myanmar’s borderlands, criminal networks that unite Chinese kingpins with ethnic warlords are kidnapping people from all over the globe to toil in factories that scam people online. International police organizations say that this online fraud has bilked billions of dollars from retirees and lonely hearts in the United States, China, Europe and beyond.

“Organized crime has a vested interest in conflict continuing because it thrives in that environment,” said Masood Karimipour, the regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or U.N.O.D.C. “And the longer the conflict goes on, the more territory falls under the control or influence of parties who stand to profit.”

“The profits,” he added, “are from truly horrifying things that are destroying lives in Myanmar and in many other countries.”

The Myanmar military and the ethnic militias that have aligned with it are by far the biggest drivers of the illicit economy. Since the coup, international sanctions imposed because of the army’s terrible human rights record have cut into the junta’s profits. But those fighting on the side of democracy and regional autonomy also know that illegal proceeds are the easiest way to fuel their war machine.

New York Times reporting within Myanmar over the past few years of intensifying war has laid bare how the country’s descent into failed statehood is stoking conflict at home and exporting misery, dependency and corruption across continents.

These are the biggest cogs in Myanmar’s military-industrial crime complex:

Opium in the Open

In the Shan Hills of Myanmar, the opium poppy is called “the peace flower.”

The name is an irony: There has not been true peace in Shan State for decades. Over the years, more than a dozen ethnic guerrilla groups have fought the Myanmar military — and each other — for dominance, not only of the territory but of the drug trade, too.

This planting season, opium farming in Pekon Township in Shan State reached a troubling milestone. For years, farmers grew their poppies in mountains and valleys, away from the authorities that would, sometimes at gunpoint, impose taxes, demand a cut of the crop or even destroy their fields.

Today, these growers cultivate opium flowers openly in their villages. Nourished by complex irrigation systems, fields of poppies sway beside churches, temples, police stations and town halls. Farmers harvest the oozing opium resin without fear of getting caught.

Workers displaced by Myanmar’s civil war working on an opium farm in Pekon Township. The farmers can harvest the opium without fear of getting caught.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

The fields are nourished by complex irrigation systems.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

“Now there is no government, no military, so we don’t have to hide,” said Daw Hla Win, as she returned from tending her poppies in a field across the street from her house. “It’s the best time ever for opium.”

Before the coup, elected officials and foreign bureaucrats tried to convince Shan opium farmers to abandon their traditional ways and grow substitutes, such as avocados, coffee and corn. But impoverished farmers in these isolated hills say there was little market for such crops.

Besides, opium, which has been used sparingly as medicine for generations here, is more lucrative. This flowering season, which runs from November to February, prices for opium resin are already reaching $430 per pound, three times what they were a few years ago.

“Life is unpredictable,” said Ko Htein Lin, who has given over his farmland for opium poppies. “We need to make money when we can.”

The U.N.O.D.C. estimates that up to $1.26 billion in heroin, mostly derived from Shan State opium, was exported from Myanmar this year. Many of the opium farmers in Pekon are sharecroppers who were displaced by the fighting and earn as little as $2 a day.

“I have to survive,” said Ko Pa Lae, who with his family fled junta airstrikes on their hometown.

A year ago, a resistance offensive pushed the military out of dozens of towns, bringing these opium fields under the mandate of an ethnic armed group that is part of the antigovernment resistance force. At the same time, the Myanmar military — which terrorizes the civilian population with airstrikes and drone attacks — and its associated militias are buying most of the opium grown here, locals say. Some rebels fighting the military are also complicit in the trade, though other armed groups have eschewed drug trafficking completely.

Raw opium. “Life is unpredictable,” said one farmer who now grows poppies. “We need to make money when we can.”Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

A camp for internally displaced people in Shan State that was damaged by a military airstrike. Antigovernment resistance forces now control much of the region.Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

“We sell to anyone who has money to pay us,” said Ko Myo Lay, an opium farmer in Pekon. “I don’t ask who they are.”

Jungle Drug Labs

A bottle of beer in Myanmar costs about $1. A little pink pill, a potent combination of methamphetamine and caffeine known as yaba, goes for less than 25 cents.

Last year, governments in East and Southeast Asia seized a record 190 tons of methamphetamine, the U.N.O.D.C. said, but its street price dropped as jungle labs in Shan State went into overdrive.

A yaba dealer selling pills in Lashio, in northern Shan State, in 2019. The pills, a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine, can cost less than 25 cents apiece.The New York Times

Shooting up and smoking drugs in Lashio.The New York Times

The making of synthetic drugs in Myanmar predates the coup and ensuing civil war. Warlords in certain self-administered regions of Shan State have long overseen drug economies, with the military and its proxies taking a cut of the profits. Air force helicopters would fly packets of pills and chunks of crystal methamphetamine to cities and ports for distribution overseas, former pilots said.

Production in Myanmar intensified after a crackdown on the assembly of drugs in China. The chemical precursors instead found their way to Myanmar, and Chinese lab technicians taught locals how to craft crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, in jungle redoubts. Chinese kingpins brought in pill presses to make yaba.

In 2019, in the northern Shan State village of Konemon under the control of an ethnic armed group, a visit by The Times showed the extent to which methamphetamine production dominated the local economy. All but three homes, locals said, were involved in making yaba. At night, the thrum of generators broke the quiet of the Shan Hills. A sour smell pervaded from the acid used in drug making.

The intensity of workshops churning out synthetic drugs has reached a new high since the army takeover in Myanmar, drug trade monitors and law enforcers say. Ethnic armed groups in Shan State have begun producing new club drugs, such as “happy water” and lollipops made with a cocktail that includes ketamine, MDMA and methamphetamine.

Synthetic drugs are pouring out of Shan State to Laos and Thailand, reconstituting the infamous Golden Triangle. They are smuggled to Bangladesh and India by ethnic rebels who are both fighting the junta and in business with it.

The yaba pills can sometimes be delivered in watermelon boxes.The New York Times

Mules inside an abandoned building in northern Shan State. The animals are sometimes used to transport goods, including drugs, on jungle routes.The New York Times

In Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, about 40 extravagantly tattooed soldiers with rifles spend their days hewing to the junta’s command as part of a so-called people’s militia. Sometimes they break up pro-democracy dissent or threaten entrepreneurs thought to support the resistance movement. Mostly, though, they organize the movement of synthetic drugs from rebel-held areas to junta-controlled territory before they head abroad by sea and land.

“We are called a people’s militia, but we rarely engage in fighting,” said Ko Ye, one of its members. “We engage in the drug trade.”

Scam Mills With Global Reach

Myawaddy

Township

Township"

Myanmar’s War Has Made It the Global Crime Capital - The New York Times