Opium

by Martin Booth

  His rapid rise caused a KMT backlash. In 1967, there was fought a local opium war between Khun Sa’s forces and the KMT in loose alliance with the Royal Laotian Army. A Khun Sa controlled caravan set off from the Shan states for Ban Houei Sai in northern Laos carrying 16 tons of raw opium. KMT soldiers went to head off the caravan, concerned that Khun Sa was challenging their long-standing domination of the opium trade with Burma. As the fighting warmed up, the Laotian General Ouane Rattikone arrived with a government force, attacked both the KMT and Khun Sa’s men, defeated them both and seized the opium.

  This was not, however, all it seemed for Ouane Rattikone had ordered the opium from Khun Sa in the first place: he was to become one of the most important heroin manufacturers in the Golden Triangle, operating laboratories around Ban Houei Sai to process Burmese opium.

  Khun Sa was beaten, his force considerably reduced and his power removed. Two years later, he was captured by the Burmese Army whilst visiting Taunggyi, a town on the western extremity of the Shan states. He was held in solitary confinement for five years, but his supporters maintained command of several opium districts. It was not the end of his career.

  Regardless of the 1967 war, the KMT further tightened its hold on opium. When Hmong tribesmen revolted between 1967 and 1971, the Thai government employed the KMT to eradicate guerrilla bases. Claiming the Hmong to be Communist, the Thais also enlisted the support of the CIA. By 1972, the KMT purchased opium from virtually the whole of the Shan states and dealt in 90 per cent of the region’s produce. They also established heroin factories at several places in the Golden Triangle.

  The only area in the region not to produce opium in any substantial quantity at the time was French Indo-China, now Vietnam, yet the colonial and post-colonial governments were still deeply involved in the trade. Like other colonial administrations, the French ran an opium monopoly which they organised very effectively and which engendered substantial revenue. In 1939, opium accounted for 15 per cent of taxes collected, catering to over 100,000 addicts, but the costs of addiction were high. The labouring classes, mostly Chinese and Vietnamese Chinese, upon whom the predominantly agriculturally based economy relied, spent much of their earnings on opium. Families starved to death, disease was widespread and the drug undermined workers’ abilities. The French-trained native civil service élite were most of them addicts and corrupt. When anti-colonial, nationalist sentiments began to be voiced, the opium monopoly was cited as the worst aspect of French domination and one of the linch-pins of Ho Chi Minh’s anti-colonial propaganda.

  It was the French who enticed the Hmong hill tribes of northern Laos to change their cash crop to opium during the Second World War, obtaining their co-operation by promising political support. Production rose by 800 per cent from 7.5 tons in 1940 to 60.6 tons in 1944 and the Hmong tribes, arguing over opium rights and revenues, split into factions which caused a quarter of a century of civil war. In neighbouring Tonkin, the French politically sided with Tai feudal leaders who purchased Hmong opium but double-crossed them when it came time to pay, causing the Hmong to take sides with the Viet Minh against the French. The Viet Minh and, therefore, ultimately the Viet Cong, had their struggle partly aided by the opium trade they detested.

  The French stopped the opium monopoly in 1946 but, upon losing the revenue from it, unofficially sanctioned French intelligence organisations to take over the trafficking of opiates to fund covert operations in the First Indo-China War of 1946–54.

  With typical Gallic guile, corrupt French intelligence officers in collaboration with Corsican gangsters operated the Indo-Chinese based international drugs trade. The money they earned was vital. The war was underfunded from Paris, where public opinion was against it, so French military and intelligence officers took a new tack. In Operation X, they dealt in opium to pay and arm local groups in order to keep the Viet Minh at bay. The French, therefore, increased the illicit traffic in opium, taking a cut of the profits to pay what were, in effect, mercenaries: individual French officials and military personnel also creamed off percentages for themselves and became rich on the proceeds. This practice did not stop until the French quit Indo-China.

  The raw opium in which they dealt was purchased from the Hmong then flown by French military transport to Saigon where it was prepared and distributed to dens and dealers by the Binh Xuyen. This was a Vietnamese criminal syndicate which controlled organised crime in the south of the country and to whose nefarious activities the French turned a blind eye in exchange for their co-operation and occasional help against the Viet Minh. The Binh Xuyen leader, Le Van ‘Bay’ Vien, became the richest man in Saigon by 1954 for he not only ran the domestic opium market but he sold any surplus on to Chinese and Corsican syndicates.

  With French colonial power receding and Vietnam partitioned, the Americans, who were increasing their influence in the new South Vietnam to counter Communist expansion, supported a new prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, who was fiercely opposed to the Communist Viet Minh. Diem destroyed the Binh Xuyen which he perceived as a political threat. With the departure of Le Van Vien and his cohorts, and the closure of Operation X, opium smuggling in bulk from Laos ceased with selling left to petty criminals.

  The vacuum was quickly filled by the Corsican syndicates who had had representatives in Saigon and Vientiane, the capital of Laos, since the French Expeditionary Corps had arrived in the late 1940s, sent out to fight in the war. Connected to comrades in Marseilles, they had been running gold, gemstones, currency and narcotics between the French port and Saigon throughout hostilities.

  They instigated a number of small charter air freight companies, collectively referred to as Air Opium (not to be confused with Air America). Some pilots were French criminals and some ex-Resistance fighters from the Second World War, including the famous double agent, Henri Déricourt. Under the leadership of Bonaventure ‘Rock’ Francisci, a Corsican gangster who operated Air Laos Commerciale, they flew morphine base from the Golden Triangle to Saigon then freighted it onward by sea to Europe.

  Whilst the Corsicans were setting up a South-east Asian branch of the French Connection, the government of Ngo Dinh Diem was running short of funds. He legalised opium dens in 1958 and, as other South Vietnamese governments were to do, used the revenue to pay for the fight against the Viet Cong. Diem relied for opium supplies upon Vietnamese intelligence agents in Laos and Corsican gangsters whom he personally knew, shipments arriving in Corsican aircraft or, in time, Vietnamese air force transports bringing loads in from Vientiane.

  In common with its neighbours, Laos also had severe monetary problems after gaining its independence from colonial rule. To address the budgetary shortfall, the government tacitly accepted arms, gold and opium smuggling whilst realising opium was their only viable export and promoting its traffic. However, it was not until the Americans withdrew their support for the government in 1962, in the face of a Cold War confrontation with Russia over their Laotian policies, that right-wing government members seriously started to enter the drug trade.

  The man in charge was General Ouane Rattikone, chairman of the quasi-official Laotian Opium Administration and subsequently Commander-in-Chief of the Laotian Army from 1965 to 1971. He controlled a highly successful international drugs ring with agents in Bangkok, Saigon and Hong Kong. A skilful businessman and entrepreneur, he regarded opiates like any other commercial commodity and even brand marked his goods. He owned the infamous 999 morphine trademark, his base morphine pressed into blocks with 999 stamped into them and printed on the wrapping: the figure was taken from the 99.9 fine gold standard, although most South-east Asian morphine at the time was around 50 per cent pure.

  By monopolising the opium trade, Ouane Rattikone put the Corsicans and their airlines out of business and took to flying drugs in Laotian government aircraft to Saigon for transfer to Hong Kong. Although he never admitted outright his involvement in the trade, neither did he seek to cover it up and, when he retired in 1971, he was immensely rich and powerful
and proud he had made so much money for his country – which he had – with a commodity which was conveniently not then illegal in Laos.

  Ouane Rattikone’s ousting of the Corsicans in 1965 caused a minor hiccup in the trade. It produced an air transport shortage which the Laotian government could not entirely redress. A rescuer appeared on the scene in the shape of the CIA and Air America.

  Since 1959, the CIA had operated with Hmong guerrillas in Laos, gathering intelligence and monitoring the Laotian Communists. For fourteen years, from 1960, the CIA ran a secret army of 30,000 Hmong guerrillas who fought the Communist Pathet Lao forces close to the North Vietnam border. In order to retain Hmong loyalty, the CIA had to transport Hmong opium, especially from the north-east of the country.

  Air America, with Continental Air Service (CAS) and Lao Development Air Service, became the Hmong opium carriers, flying opium to Long Tieng and Vientiane. As Air America and CAS aircraft were not painted with international registration markings, they could move freely between Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, the pilots highly trained and often little short of dare-devil acrobats, landing in the mountains at remote, often steeply sloping, rough earth runways surrounded by forests: pilots landed uphill and took off downhill. They knew what they were carrying when the manifest declared a cargo to be ‘miscellaneous’, given priority and handled by special personnel. When the cargo reached Long Tieng or Vientiane, it was transferred to Vietnamese or Laotian military aircraft which, as French official aircraft had done, took it to Saigon where associates of Vietnamese political leaders sent it on its way into the national or international market-place.

  It is fair to say the CIA probably did not – as the French intelligence services had done – directly profit financially from the opium trade, although some individuals did run a sideline of their own: but, by carrying opium, the CIA did reduce its direct costs and assured the Hmong villages of continued economic survival. The carriage of Hmong opium also allowed the CIA-sponsored Hmong commander in north-eastern Laos, General Vang Pao, to build up his credibility and recruit troops from the villages which also received CIA aid in the form of rice and medical air drops. Vang Pao further came to rely upon the CIA for troop, as well as opium, transportation and for refugee air-lifts of local people under attack: this gave Vang Pao the reputation of being a socially-minded saviour and the CIA of being guardian angels against the Pathet Lao.

  Yet it was hypocritical. The CIA used opium as a political lever to sweeten and buy off would-be opponents, to purchase loyalty and to bribe influential local leaders. The type of behaviour they condemned in other countries, and denounced other governments for allowing, they were doing themselves in South-east Asia.

  In north-western Laos, the situation was different. The CIA had been present there since 1959, using the Shan opium muleteers to carry equipment and arms to clandestine listening posts on the Chinese border, the political and topographical terrain being too risky for Air America. Shan and Lahu tribesmen, recruited as agents, conducted cross-border intelligence gathering operations in China during the 1960s. A number of arms-related Burmese opium deals were also sanctioned with General Ouane Rattikone, thus starting the Laotian heroin processing industry.

  Then, in 1968, Pathet Lao offensives prompted the Americans to bomb their mountain and jungle strongholds. A huge Hmong migration began to escape the bombing, with thousands of opium growers on the move. Opium production fell drastically and opium social customs altered. It was traditionally old men who smoked opium: young men were socially forbidden. Now, young Hmong fighters took the drug to calm their nerves, help them relax and to combat boredom in the jungle.

  This social taboo existed throughout Laos where opium was legal and primarily used by the old and sick but, in 1971, opium was outlawed under an American threat to withdraw foreign aid. The American aim was to starve the heroin refineries of stocks but they continued in business whilst the ordinary smoker was hit by the closure of opium dens and retailers. As had happened in Iran in the mid-1950s, addicts changed from opium to the less obvious heroin which was not injected but smoked through a normal cigarette dipped in heroin solution and left to dry or containing heroin powder mixed with the tobacco.

  The government of Laos reached a cease-fire agreement with the Pathet Lao in 1973. The following year, Air America withdrew from the country. Without its air support and CIA protection, Vang Pao had to make a run for it. He reached Thailand and was granted a resident’s visa to the USA in 1975. With their leader gone, tens of thousands of Hmong refugees headed for Thailand. A Communist government came to control in Laos in 1976 and the problems of addiction were rigorously addressed. Opium production, however, was left untouched for it provided foreign currency and output rose sharply. The new government continued to be heavily engaged in the drugs trade. One important Thai drug trafficker, who worked for the Laotian government selling heroin to the West, travelled with a Laotian diplomatic passport and was named by American agents as the Laotian government’s ‘Minister of Heroin’.

  By 1969, the Golden Triangle region was producing about 1000 metric tonnes of raw opium per annum, some heroin was being made in urban Bangkok and northern Thailand and morphine base was being exported direct to heroin laboratories in Europe or Hong Kong, where heroin was refined for local use and re-exported to the USA. There was, however, another market. It began when the Americans moved in militarily to Vietnam in 1965.

  Until 1962, South-east Asian output was in either refined opium or No. 3 heroin, production of this having commenced in 1959 when Thailand banned opium and smokers switched to heroin.

  No. 3 heroin is crude being only 20–40 per cent pure, often far lower, and includes adulterants, especially caffeine. It gains its name from being the result of the third stage of processing. Consisting of small dirty grey or brown granules or lumps, it looks somewhat like fish tank gravel, pet litter or unrefined sugar from which it gets the nickname of ‘brown sugar’. It is cheap and usually smoked, being unsuitable for injection.

  Heroin of purer quality is called No. 4 heroin, deriving its name from a fourth processing phase in which ether and hydrochloric acid are added to heroin base or No. 3 heroin dissolved in alcohol, the heroin forming as tiny soap-like flakes in the solution. These are then filtered and dried. It is highly soluble in water, injectable and normally sold as a white powder although this may vary in colour from pure white through off-white to creamy yellow or even pink. Before being cut, its purity ranges from 80–99 per cent. The making of No. 4 heroin has an inherent risk, but not of addiction such as opium handlers might face. In the final phase, the ether gas can ignite. The resulting explosion can demolish a building.

  The first refinery for the making of high purity, injectable No. 4 heroin was erected in a Thai village called Mang Tang Wu in 1963. Its product was sent to Hong Kong. Other primitive refineries were also established but soon closed, the restriction on the expansion of No. 4 heroin production being the dearth of competent drug chemists.

  Soldiers are susceptible to drugs and the American military involvement in Vietnam offered a market not to be refused. At the height of the Vietnam War, there were 500,000 American soldiers in the theatre of conflict.

  By 1968, Chinese narcotics syndicates in Hong Kong had dispatched skilled chemists to the Golden Triangle to set up laboratories specifically to cater to American GI demand for pure No. 4 heroin. By 1971, twenty-nine refineries were running in the Golden Triangle, fifteen of them producing only No. 4 heroin. Thousands of kilograms were produced and sold to GIs throughout Vietnam. The addiction rate rapidly escalated.

  Ban Houei Sai was the centre of heroin production, using Burmese opium. The largest refinery belonged to General Ouane Rattikone and was the source at the time of the infamous Double UOGlobe (sometimes Double Globe) brand of heroin: as with the 999 brand of base morphine, heroin, as it still does, came trademarked. Ironically similar to the first-ever heroin packets devised by Bayer, the Double UOGlobe wrapper has a circle containing two
rampant lions holding a globe. It is usually printed in scarlet (a lucky colour for the Chinese) or brown. Across the top are Chinese characters which translate as Double Lion Earth Brand, below which are two statements, also in Chinese – ‘Beware of Counterfeits’ and ‘Pure 100 per cent’. Outside the circle may be printed, in Chinese and Thai, ‘Travel safely by sea’, a colloquial expression equating to Bon voyage!, implying not only that the heroin might reach its destination unmolested by customs officers but that addicts might have a good ‘trip’ with it.

  Not only was this heroin sold in Vietnam but it was also exported direct to the USA with morphine base simultaneously going to heroin manufacturers in Vientiane and Long Tieng. The heroin was mostly flown to Vietnam, primarily via Vientiane, by Laotian and Vietnamese military aircraft. The traffic was controlled by corrupt Laotian and South Vietnamese officials, with some Thais in co-operation or collaboration. Making huge profits out of their allies, these men addicted untold numbers of American personnel. Heroin was available at roadside stalls on every highway out of Saigon, and on the route to the main US army base at Long Binh, as well as from itinerant peddlers, newspaper and ice-cream vendors, restaurant owners, brothel keepers and their whores and domestic servants employed on US bases. No barracks was without a resident dealer.

  The heroin was not injected by most GIs but smoked as it was so pure and plentiful, mixed with tobacco or marijuana which was also abundant and grown in Laos and Cambodia. Many GI addicts had their own pipes, often home-made from lengths of bamboo but sometimes purchased. On occasion, bizarre or gruesome examples could be seen, such as pipes made from cartridge cases or human bones. Others removed the end from a cigarette and filled it with heroin. The heroin smoked, being No. 4 heroin and anywhere between 90 and 98 per cent pure, was considerably more addictive than that which would have been injected back home in the USA where it would have been cut to a far lower strength.