Contraband Trades of Southeast Asia

Eric Tagliacozzo

International Security Studies, Yale University

January 1998

Introduction

Southeast Asia has been a crossroads for international trade and commerce for many centuries. Sitting astride the land and sea routes which have traditionally connected Asia to the rest of the world, the region still functions as a conduit between burgeoning Pacific economies and the great trading nations elsewhere on the globe. Much of this commerce is legal and above-board: primary products, rubber, and steel move alongside the new by-products of the international trade orbit, such as semi-conductors and computer-chips. Yet there is also a long, local tradition of commerce moving beneath (or alongside) officially-sanctioned goods, an almost parallel world of smuggling and contraband. These transactions take place on a massive scale both inside Southeast Asia, and, increasingly, also between the region and its neighbors.

This paper focuses on the dynamics of smuggling and the movement of contraband within this greater Southeast Asian arena. It asks how the history of the region has conditioned the present to support such a huge phenomenon of smuggling, evidence of which can be seen from the Bay of Bengal to the Pacific. Southeast Asia, for our purposes, refers to the states subsumed under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines -- as well as the one regional country that has yet to be accepted in the grouping, Cambodia. Yet because smuggling in this region takes place extensively with Southeast Asia's neighbors, too (especially China, Bangladesh, India, and to a lesser extent, Australia), the focus of inquiry gives attention to these "peripheries" as well. The full scope of the paper, therefore, examines cross-border contraband within these two dimensions: internal, Southeast Asian movements, and traffic which includes the region's immediate neighbors.

The range of commodities involved in the Southeast Asian transit of contraband is truly enormous. Historically, the region has been a center for all kinds of trafficked goods -- opium, counterfeit currency, and guns figuring prominently among these items. Now, pornography trickles into Indonesia, an eight-foot high wall separates parts of Thailand and Malaysia (to stop illegal migrants from passing from the former to the latter), and orangutans are trafficked into the world, sometimes for sums approaching $50,000 dollars. ₁ Opposition forces in Burma are arrested for trying to smuggle out natural resources (rubies, teak, and fish) in order to fight the military regime, while consumer goods (like Levi's jeans and transistor radios) are brought back into the country, often with the help of small, quiet boats. ₂ The practice of trading far from the eyes of the state, indeed, has changed little over the centuries in this part of the world. What has changed, to some degree, is the nature of goods flowing in these opaque, liminal spaces, and why they travel in the first place.

Because the history of smuggling in Southeast Asia has been important in shaping the dynamics and mechanics of this phenomenon today, the paper starts off with an examination of contrabanding in the region's past. Pre-colonial, Colonial, High (or Late) Colonial, and Post-Independence periods are considered. The discussion then moves on to an appraisal of the two most important issues facing Southeast Asian smuggling today: borders, and the area's specific "regional context." Borders are problematized in terms of existing agreements, infrastructural connections, problems, and attempted solutions; the "Regional Context" focuses on structural impediments helping the transit of contraband, such as corruption and organized crime. The final section of the paper groups an analysis of smuggled goods into four broad headings; Drugs, Human Beings, Natural Resources, and Consumer Goods. The Conclusion ties the themes together, asking what has changed in this arena over time, and what has not.

A paper on this subject seems timely for one reason more than any other: Southeast Asia's borders are more open today, in some respects, than they have been for centuries, and trade has grown as a result of this by leaps and bounds. So too, it seems, has smuggling. While many of the commodities trafficked are ontologically-neutral and don't elicit much concern (the aforementioned radios and jeans, for example, quietly sailing to Burma), others are more worrying to the interested observer. The passage of underage prostitutes along the Mekong, for example, or the disappearance en-masse of wildlife from the region are problems of this nature. Studying the phenomenon of Southeast Asian smuggling today seems imperative, mostly because the scale at which it is practiced threatens many of its "end products" or commodities. To see why this is so, however, we must first turn to the history of this area, and map out some prevailing patterns. How far does contrabanding stretch into the past of Southeast Asia, and what were its dimensions? Who were traditional perpetrators of this commerce, and what were they trying to trade? Who tried to stop them, and why?

Southeast Asian Smuggling in Historical Perspective: Stimulus and Response

A. The Pre-Colonial PeriodThe history of smuggling in Southeast Asia, and the attempts to stop it by various incarnations of states or proto-state polities, stretches centuries back into the region's past. Early civilizations in this part of the world did not evince clear-cut borders and boundaries which could be crossed illegally; rather, they were often found to exist, especially on the mainland, in the form of "mandalas" (a geographic core of strong authority, which then radiated outward in progressively weaker fashion until it ceased to command effective allegiance at all.) In Insular Southeast Asia, a concomitant model often saw petty kingdoms establishing themselves in the mouths of rivers; authority consisted mainly in the form of trying to establish control over trade, especially in the taxing of products that moved both up and down river ("hulu" and "hilir".) ₃

Both of these organizational scenarios left room for the activities of smugglers. The first great maritime civilization of Southeast Asia, Srivijaya (7-12 cents. A.D.), built much of its prosperity on the monopoly of trade through the Straits of Malacca. The kingdom held outposts on both the Sumatran and Malay Peninsula sides of the Straits, and was thus able to force shipping passing through to submit to coercive taxation, a policy that encouraged contrabanding by any merchants able to avoid these dues. ₄ The Malacca Sultanate, which succeeded Srivijaya as the paramount locus of authority in these waters several centuries later, learned from this experience and kept customs and port duties at much lower levels, trying instead to encourage a high volume of trade. ₅ Yet because Malacca (in present-day Malaysia) became a famous transit-point for the passage of goods with very high value-to-bulk/weight ratios, however, (such as gold dust, gems, spices, and medicinal exotica), we can assume a fair amount of smuggling of these items took place as well.

Europeans emerged on the Southeast Asian scene in the 16th century, but it was several hundred years before they made their presence felt in terms of widespread territorial dominion. Southeast Asian kingdoms and sultanates continued to trade, and smugglers in the ports of these polities continued their own subterranean commerce in great volume. The Kingdom of Siam's (modern-day Thailand) vast maritime trade with China was even predicated, in part, on a fiction of "legitimate trade": because both parties were monarchies, and technically did not trade but instead held royal monopolies and received tribute, a large quantity of commodities (such as porcelain jars) were stored as "ballast" by the merchants on these ships, but were then sold (illegally) at profits often greater in value than the real cargoes. ₆ The maritime border between Vietnam and Southern China during the late 18th and early 19th centuries was also a fantastic sieve for contraband goods: metals, silver specie, and even printed books were regularly trafficked across the frontier, often by syndicates of Sino/Vietnamese smugglers. ₇

B. The Colonial Period

With the appearance of the Dutch on the scene in the 17th century, however, some of these patterns began to change. The V.O.C., or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East Indies Company), tried to ensure profits in its conquest of parts of the "East Indies" (modern day Indonesia) by enacting draconian policies of enforced monopoly, especially on the production and transit of spices. In Eastern Indonesia, particularly in Maluku (what used to be called the Moluccas, or Spice Islands), these policies included wholesale murder of the inhabitants of certain clove and nutmeg-producing islands, deportation, and armed surveillance over spice-gardens, to ensure that the commodities were not smuggled out to the financial detriment of the Dutch monopoly. ₈ In Western Indonesia during the 18th and 19th centuries, repressive measures were also taken against the free trade of tin from Banka and Billiton islands, which induced the inhabitants to try to sell their ores to passing English merchantmen and Chinese junks on the sly. ₉ Certain inlets and creeks outside Batavia, the Dutch Indies capital (contemporary Jakarta) were famed in Eastern waters as rendezvous points for smugglers. Some of the primary actors in these midnight liaisons, of course, were underpaid V.O.C. men themselves, bargaining within sight of the capital.

The Dutch Indies were not the only site of colonial smuggling and contestation during the last several centuries of Southeast Asian history, however. The Spanish Philippines, also a vast island archipelago ruled with limited colonial interdiction means and resources, also saw its fair share of illegally-moved goods. Much of this took place in the islands outside Luzon, the Spanish stronghold, with Chinese junks in particular cruising far and wide in search of business opportunities unsanctioned by the Spanish Crown. ₁₀ Yet even outside the walls of Intramurros, the Spanish center of colonial Manila, contraband managed to flow free: the annual run of the Manila galleon, the great treasure ship which plodded its way from the Philippines to Mexico laden with Spain's Asian booty, provided a yearly opportunity for the colonial smugglers of Manila to make significant fortunes. Likewise, the British colonial advance through Burma during the 19th century never realized a completely concomitant amount of revenue-intake based on actual territorial conquests; much of the commerce in high-value goods of the northern hill-regions, such as jade, serpentine, rubies and emeralds, drained silently north into Chinese Yunnan instead. ₁₁

C. The High (or Late) Colonial Period

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bustling, polyglot metropolises and huge plantation peripheries dotted Southeast Asia. European policies and infrastructural development, enforced both economically and politically, had finally structurally-impacted the region in a way that several centuries of colonial trade had not. Yet the fact that these "high colonial" societies now existed with altered engines of growth and organization did not mean that Europeans were able to stop, or even really curb, widespread smuggling. This was far from the case. Rather, the new cities became hot-beds of contraband activity, silently moving illegal "commodities" as diverse as human beings, drugs, and natural resources. Singapore, for example, the seat of British power in the region, became a human-trafficking nexus: prostitutes from China, Japan, and India were continually transited through the city, as were thousands of illicitly-procured coolies, often known colloquially in Chinese as "little pigs." ₁₂ At the same time, Singapore also functioned as a clearing house for weapons crossing quietly into the Dutch Indies, while rubber and Javanese workers crossed the Straits of Malacca back in the other direction. ₁₃

The concentration of colonial resources and attention on the profit-making engines of empire, i.e.: cities and plantations, also freed up "liminal" spaces not being used for such purposes for other functions. Drug-running became a hugely-profitable industry in turn of the century Southeast Asia, encompassing parts of the mainland as well as wide swaths of the Austronesian world. The maritime frontier between the Spanish (and later American) Southern Philippines, and the dominions of the British North Borneo Company in Sabah (North Borneo), was one of these spaces: European coast guards and navies in the area fought a decades-long losing battle to stop the passage of opium, which had already seeped into the life-styles and cultures of people on both sides of the maritime divide. ₁₄ The natural resources of remote areas ("remote", at least, from the standpoint of European regional "centers") also became items to be traded after dark, when colonial border and provincial officials were asleep in their district houses: huge tracts of Burmese forest were secreted out of ostensibly British territory in this way, finally ending up in the sawmills and factories of Anglo/Siamese merchants. ₁₅

D. The Post-Independence Era

The onset of World War II in Southeast Asia set in motion a huge variety of smuggling initiatives related to the continuance of the conflict. Arms, gasoline, food and information were all traded surreptitiously across national borders; end-destinations of the smugglers were sometimes regional (like moving refugees to British Burma or Australia), and sometimes far from the region (as with the passage of Japanese arms on neutral tankers to the German Mediterranean, etc.) The rapid succession of independence movements in the region immediately following the war continued these instabilities and transactions, causing much contraband of war, in particular, to continue floating through the region.

By the 1960's, however, smuggling in Southeast Asia was again reverting to many of the forms (and included much of the same material) found locally in circulation before the fighting of the war. The Indonesian General of Police Hougeng remembers in his recent autobiography the Straits of Melaka reverting to its old function as a clandestine transit for goods between Malaysia and Sumatra; small boats began making the relatively short journey with all sorts of contraband again, often in the middle of the night. ₁₆ During the bloody 1965 coup in Indonesia, when about half a million people were killed in riots and sectarian vendettas, many Indonesians were said to be receiving smuggled-in Communist literature and aid from China, which their attackers sometimes used as a rationale for butchering them in cold blood. Vietnamese nationalists were forced to make use of smuggled arms from China to fight the French in resistance battles like Dien Bien Phu in the 1950's, while arms moving quietly overland from Cambodia and Laos on the Ho Chi Minh Trail kept alive the Vietcong during the later years of the war against the Unites States. ₁₇

The post-independence era up until our own time has not only seen the re-emergence of arms and resistance ideologies, however, in Southeast Asian contrabanding circuits. Drugs have also re-appeared en-masse, most famously in the Golden Triangle (which will be discussed shortly in greater depth), but also in other locations, as with Singapore's oceanic and airline connections with Amsterdam and Hong Kong in the 1970's. ₁₈ Narcotics continue to be to this day a huge part of the smuggling equation in Southeast Asia, despite the enactment of death penalty laws and related measures in several countries in the region. Finally, alongside the gems, teak, and refugees that have streamed out of Burma in the past few decades under the S.L.O.R.C. military regime has also been a more recent smuggled item: taped video-cassettes of the Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's speeches, sent to the world to signal the continuity of protest in Myanmar. This last item speaks louder, perhaps, than all others in showing us the value-ambiguity of contraband as a category: pernicious or proscriptive, smuggling has been and continues to be a part of the landscape of Southeast Asia's regional context.

The Contemporary Situation

A. Borders in Southeast Asia: Salient Issues

One of the reasons smuggling has made such a fluent transition from the past into the present in Southeast Asia has been the relatively open cadence to trade indigenous to the region. Southeast Asia has a long commercial tradition shared by many of its peoples; because the modern territorial conception of borders was alien to this part of the world and introduced only forcibly by Europeans, it should not surprise us that goods continue to flow across these demarcations, often without the blessing of the state. ₁₉ Globalization, regional economic blocs, and the growth of sub-regional economic development "triangles", etc., have only accelerated this trend in recent years, giving new avenues and impetus to smugglers to move their cargoes across national boundaries. The establishment of localized, multi-country growth areas (as mentioned in the Introduction) has particularly aided this process, with compilations such as the BIMP-EAGA development triangle (centered around the Sulu Sea between Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) proving especially profitable and problematic in this sense. ₂₀

Border agreements and re-arrangements have been even more actively pursued in mainland Southeast Asia in recent years, however. Bertil Lintner, a journalist and Golden-Triangle watcher who writes for the Far Eastern Economic Review, has summarized the many border conventions of this area in a research monograph commissioned by the International Boundaries Research Unit. ₂₁ The study was published in 1991, but these negotiations have continued on unabated to today, as regional governments have attempted to legislate border cooperation for both economic and security rationales. Thailand, located centrally upon the mainland, has also been a central locus for these deliberations: the country's borders stretch far from the capital, and are extremely porous to international trade. The official value of Thailand's border trade in 1996 was over 61 billion baht: Malaysia held 66% of this total, Laos 16%, and Cambodia and Burma 9% each. ₂₂ The unofficial tallies (due to smuggling) would be far higher. Laos has recently been discussing better border cooperation with Burma (Myanmar), while China has been looking into improving its border communications with all of its Southeast Asian neighbors, especially Vietnam. ₂₃ A central rationale behind all of these renewed contacts and discussions has been the problem of contraband, as has been stated in many of these nations' joint communiqués. ₂₄

Increasing border dialogues and trade flows have given rise to a host of new infrastructural projects designed to better connect borders in the region. In the above-mentioned BIMP/EAGA development sphere, expanded postal routes now link Northern Indonesia and the Southern Philippines; ₂₅ Palembang, in Southern Sumatra, will have an international airport within easy reach of Singapore and Malaysia by 2001. ₂₆ A second causeway link has also just been added between the latter two countries this past year; already the volume of traffic crossing the original road-bridge was too great for customs officials on either side to check all transiting vehicles for contraband. ₂₇ Plans have been announced with great fanfare for the construction of a huge bridge connecting Malaysia and Indonesia across the Straits of Melaka as well; although the specific location of the structure's endpoints has not yet been determined, the agreement calls for railway, gas pipes, and power cables on the bridge, as well as a main connecting section of road. ₂₈ On the mainland, a large immigration plaza is being built on the border between Thailand and Malaysia; this is in addition to other projects between Thailand and its neighbors, including the recently-finished "Friendship Bridge" near Vientiane and the planned third Mekong bridge stretching across to Savannakhet (both in Laos.) ₂₉

The enormous opening of border facilities and connections have come at a price, however. Alongside increased legitimate border trade revenues have also flowed goods and problems of another kind; contraband, and security as it relates to border traffic generally, have become major issues now in Southeast Asian geopolitics. This can be seen from many different vantage points. China's recent agreement with Burma, which allows the former use of the Irrawaddy River as a trade outlet to the Indian Ocean, has caused a wave of worry in Southeast Asian capitals; the move has been seen as a serious breach of geo-strategic balance in the region, both in the cross-border opportunities it affords Chinese narco-traffickers, as well as to possible designs of the Chinese navy. ₃₀ On the Mekong, increased border trade recently led to an international incident between Thailand and Laos, when border police of the former crossed into Lao territory and threatened a convoy of cargo boats they suspected of smuggling. ₃₁ And in Indonesia, where increased openness to border trade manifests itself primarily in the maritime realm, the effects of the new openness have been felt as well: 10,096 ships were caught illegally docking in Indonesian waters in 1996, leading to a wave of self-reflection by the Indonesian navy as to how secure the country's coasts really might be. ₃₂ As if to underline the point, a small Indonesian ship in November drifted 3,000 km. off course (and half way through the island-nation) before it was finally discovered in distress by the U.S. coast guard in Micronesia. ₃₃

The new openness of borders in the region has also spurred, however, Southeast Asian governments into trying to take concrete measures to stem the effects of smuggling that are part and parcel of the boundary liberalization process. These efforts have manifested themselves in different forms. One of the ways to do this has been to encourage cooperation of law enforcement agencies across frontiers: the police forces of Singapore and Malaysia have been particularly adept at this, while Vietnam and Cambodia recently signed a similar accord, and countries like Laos are now sending representatives to global Interpol meetings (the most recent was in September 1997 in Beijing.) ₃₄ Another way has been to map out coasts and terrain with a greater degree of efficiency, both by increasing interdiction forces in these areas and also by producing more accurate charts of difficult terrain. The Philippines has recently added more ships and Malaysia more coastal radar stations along these lines, while Laos is using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to better map its borders. Indonesia is closing down old markets and opening new ones along the frontier with Papua New Guinea, trying to influence the terms and locus of trade more directly. ₃₅

Finally, better "tagging" is being attempted on human beings who do frequently cross-borders, in order that a more watchful eye may be kept on these peoples' activities. Indonesia has now differentiated the passports which many of her citizens use to work abroad illegally (under guise of undertaking the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca), while Kuala Lumpur has introduced electronic security features into Malaysian passports to prevent forgeries. Laos has revamped its own border-crossing regulations with Thailand. ₃₆ All of these steps, it is hoped by governments in the region, will make the increasing porousness of international boundaries in Southeast Asia profitable to national exchequers, while limiting the abilities of certain citizens who may wish to take advantage of the new openness in illegal ways.

B. Smuggling and the Regional Context

There are good reasons to suppose, however, that these counter-measures taken against the rising tide of smuggling in Southeast Asia will only be partially effective. One of the main reasons for this conclusion is that corruption, as in many parts of the world, is wildly out of control in portions of this rapidly-developing area. Low civil service salaries and widespread cultural norms that wink at official graft make fighting corruption an uphill battle. Another strong hindrance to Southeast Asian states being able to seriously impede the flow of contraband, at least in the short-term, is the near omnipotent reach of organized crime in the area. Many of these syndicates are indigenous; others are arms of much larger networks, which now operate on a global scale. The range of both of these phenomena, corruption and organized crime, can be seen very clearly in counterfeiting, money-laundering, and gun-running, among other activities.

Corruption may be the most serious single impediment in this equation, however. Indonesia has long had a reputation as one of the worst nations on the planet in this regard, and in 1995/96 the government amassed statistics of over 18,000 cases, costing the nation almost 900 billion rupiah. ₃₇ Toward the end of 1997, 48 Indonesian army men were caught in possession of ecstasy, and a police captain admitted receiving 45 million rupiah from a drug dealer who had sought out his protection. ₃₈ A police inspector on the Burmese border with India was offered significantly more, U.S. $12,700 a month, to turn a blind eye to smuggling on that frontier, while in Vietnam the number of reported cases of graft for 1996 was almost 2,000 (smaller than Indonesia, but still up 42% from the year before.) ₃₉ Those who stand accused in the region on various charges of narco-trafficking include Cambodia's richest businessman (who also holds a diplomatic passport from his country), opposition ministers of parliament in Thailand, and a senator from the Philippines. ₄₀ Even in squeaky-clean Singapore, policemen have been caught holding contraband materials which flaunt the island's strict bans on smuggling; one officer was recently busted with 1,200 pornographic video cassettes, found during a raid on his apartment. ₄₁

The reach and influence of organized crime in Southeast Asia has hardly helped to ameliorate the situation. Open borders and widening trade opportunities have been nothing but a boon to corps of highly-organized gangs of smugglers in the region. Cambodia in particular, due to the chaos and instability that has reigned there for much of 1997, has become a safe-haven for Asian crime gangs: international law enforcement agents have characterized the kingdom as a known "sanctuary" for these criminals, who can be Cambodian, Vietnamese, Thai, or even Chinese. ₄₂ But Cambodia is only the worst example. Organized crime is on the rise in the rest of the region as well, aided (often) by cutbacks in government funding to law enforcement agencies because of Asia's economic downturn. The syndicates, meanwhile, have become more advanced. An Australian Federal Police report of 1996/97 described them thus:

"(Asian) Organized crime has become more sophisticated, mobile, and global, and its structures often reflect those of transitional corporations with access to the latest technologies." ₄₃

This increasing technical aptitude on the part of smugglers has been put to use very quickly. We can still read about small-time operators being caught passing fake U.S. dollar bills in Singapore and Cambodia, but larger operations -- as with the three plants outside of Pyongyang, North Korea, which have been making U.S. "supernotes" and then passing them into circulation all over Asia -- are now coming to light. ₄₄ Money-laundering, the smuggling and then cleansing of "dirty" money into "clean", is also taking place on a large scale in Asia. Interpol's Secretary General Robert Kendall has put the yearly figure on these sorts of transactions at US $500 billion per annum, a significant proportion of which transits through Asia. ₄₅ Finally, arms merchants, perhaps the richest and most "high end" of international smugglers because of the nature of the contraband in which they traffic, are also deeply implicated in Southeast Asia's contemporary smuggling scene. Two hundred automatic rifles were found in a warehouse near Pochentong International Airport in Cambodia last November, ₄₆ while seizures of ammonium nitrate and fully-assembled bombs have made headlines in Indonesia recently. ₄₇ The Worldwatch Institute estimates that there are now enough small-arms in global circulation to arm every 12th person on the planet. ₄₈ Nouveau-riche Southeast Asia, with its competitive economies, porous borders, and lingering insurgencies, has been one of the most frequent end-destinations for these items. When all of these factors are taken together, it is not hard to see why the transit of contraband across these international frontiers poses one of the largest transnational dilemmas in the region today.

Secret Trades of Southeast Asia

A. Narcotics

The "culture of contraband" in Southeast Asia is perhaps most renowned for one category of goods, however: illegal drugs. Narco-trafficking in the region is famed via the notorious "Golden Triangle", but in recent years the trade has seeped into nearly every corner of ASEAN, and into all socio-economic classes. Klaus Nyholm, of the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) in Colombia, has put the worldwide figure for drug-running at U.S. $400 billion annually -- more than all world automobile sales combined. ₄₉ In Southeast Asia, countries outside of the Golden Triangle -- like Indonesia and the Philippines -- are beginning to admit that they are no longer just transit nations, but huge, consuming "end-destinations" as well. ₅₀ First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh of Cambodia has warned that his kingdom will soon be paralyzed by international drug-trafficking barons unless it receives substantial outside assistance; the Far Eastern Economic Review has taken to describing Cambodia as "Medellin on the Mekong" in recent articles. ₅₁ Even tiny Brunei, staunchly Muslim and easily patrolled, has acknowledged the beginnings of a serious drug problem. ₅₂

The center of this storm, traditionally and even today, is still the Golden Triangle. Situated on the border between Northern Burma, Thailand, Western Laos, and Southern China, the Golden Triangle is still one of the largest production areas of opium (and its derivative, heroin) in the world. Centralized government control over large parts of this region has been exceedingly difficult for centuries, as most of the hilly, heavily-forested territory is controlled by various ethnic minorities. In the second half of the 20th century, this patchwork has been accentuated with other interested parties, including insurgent and outlawed Communist groups, as well as remnants of the defeated Chinese Kuomintang and various drug traffickers. ₅₃ Often, these identities overlap: it is all too common to find people in the area who ascribe to several of the above monikers, all at the same time.

What has not changed greatly is that opium is still the most important source of wealth and conflict in the region. The routes used to transport opium and heroin out of the Golden Triangle have changed over the years -- first via Thailand, then via Yunnan, and now usually via Laos and India -- but the drugs continue to transit nonetheless. ₅₄ Khun Sa, the most powerful upland narco-trafficker in the area, has been forced to retire to Yangon under heavy American arm-twisting and Burmese military pressure, but others have leapt to take his place. The United Wa State Army (USWA) has thousands of troops still protecting poppy harvests opposite the Thai border; their factories refine around 350 kilos of heroin per month, only a small part of the estimated 2,500 tons of opium produced in Burma every year. ₅₅ Both Thailand and Burma periodically locate and burn upland poppy fields, but the seizures and destructions of the drug are only a drop in the bucket, enforcement agents acknowledge. ₅₆ What is not caught is smuggled out to the rest of Southeast Asia, India, China, and often farther afield to the rest of the world. Recent seizures of 4 kilos of heroin en route to Indonesia, ₅₇ 11 kilos transiting to China via Yunnan, ₅₈ and a whopping 900 kilo combined opium and heroin operation which was busted in Vietnam are only the tiny, visible tip of a much larger, moving phenomenon. ₅₉

The other traditionally-grown narcotic of Southeast Asia whose transit has become big business in recent years is marijuana. Marijuana has been a traditional medicinal and leisure crop in the region for centuries; in the last few decades, it has become a valuable bulk commodity for smugglers as well. Cambodia has become a new clearance center for the drug in the past few years: authorities in Europe seized 26,952 kilos of marijuana from the country in 1996, placing Cambodia second only to Colombia in this respect. ₆₀ Much of this traffic is local within Southeast Asia, however: Cambodia was recently the origin point for two of the largest regional marijuana busts of 1997, a 300 kilo shipment to Hong Kong, and an incredible 4.3 ton haul which was packed into rubber pellets en route to Singapore. ₆₁ The kingdom is by no means the only source for the drug, though: remote, secluded areas all over Southeast Asia are used as marijuana plantations, far from the eyes of the state. In Indonesia, Aceh and the Karo-lands of North Sumatra have been growing huge amounts of the plants since time immemorial; ₆₂ in the Philippines and Vietnam, mountain provinces like Ifugao and Lai Chau also follow suit, distributing the drug in brick form down to the lowlands. ₆₃ Separate, significant busts on the Thai/Malay border indicate that the traffic also has a maritime dimension: twice in recent months fishermen have been caught transporting hundreds of kilos of ganja, which were then hidden on islands and in half-submerged caves that dot the frontier. ₆₄

A much more modern phenomenon inside the world of Southeast Asian drug-running has been the massive introduction of synthetic narcotics to the region, particularly psychotropic drugs. Ecstasy smuggling has become an explosive new force in this trade, garnering huge profits and causing a host of new interdiction problems for law enforcement agencies. Because the pills are so small, they can be smuggled in large numbers over national boundaries -- a quick glimpse at Singapore and its neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, makes this clear. In the first ten months of 1997, 37,426 ecstasy pills were seized in Malaysia; many of them came over the causeway from Singapore, often ending up being sold in one of the 80 discos Kuala Lumpur has identified as being complicit in the sale of the drug. ₆₅ Ecstasy also moves by sea to neighboring Indonesia, however: 3 separate cases in December of last year made this plain, when caches of 15,000, 38,000, and 100,000 pills were seized on their way by boat to nearby Batam island. ₆₆ Indonesia's problems with the drug are not only local, though, as huge hauls of ecstasy have been trafficked into the country on international air routes, including at least once by a pilot of the national airline, Garuda. ₆₇ The ease and cheapness with which a small, transportable lab can be outfitted to make the pills (1 kilo of the drug can yield a profit of over $50,000 in just 2 weeks) has been a strong lure for traffickers to diversify into ecstasy. ₆₈ Loopholes in regional narcotics laws, which have only been filled in recently to cover psychotropic substances, have also encouraged proliferation.

Ecstasy is not the only synthetic drug making inroads into the narco-trafficking circuit of Southeast Asia, however. The methamphetamine "Ice" (methamphetamine hydrochloride) has also become a frequently smuggled commodity in recent days, sometimes dwarfing in number the huge cashes of ecstasy pills being seized on a regular basis in the region. Once again the Golden Triangle is a center for the production of the drug: Thai officials estimate that there are over 60 major routes being used to bring "ice" into the country from Burma, with an astonishing 8 million tablets per month making the journey. ₆₉ In an interview with a narcotics control officer in the region, I was informed that "you can make 'ice' in your kitchen sink -- it's that easy"; ₇₀ the precursor chemicals are easily bought, and there are dozens of tiny laboratories operating on the Thai/Burmese and Thai/Cambodian frontiers. The movement of the chemicals often comes down from China, via Burma and Laos, and eventually to Bangkok: the mighty Mekong River acts a s a conduit. ₇₁ Another conduit form China, however, seems to be the sea, as Chinese ships are known to off-load their cargoes into Philippine fishing boats, which then transport the drug to many of the latter nation's 7,000 islands. ₇₂ "Ice" has reached even into mountain West Java and the Malaysian dominions in Borneo, the latter of which now has the fastest growth curve of addicts in all of that nation. ₇₃

Who is responsible for all of this trafficking? As the range of drugs and geography is large, it should not surprise us that the net of people involved is also diverse -- politicians, merchants, professional criminals, and even "ordinary folk" all take part in this commerce. One trend that stands out is that narco-trafficking in Southeast Asia often seems to be accomplished along ethnic lines: Pakistani groups have been caught selling heroin into Indonesia, for example, while Indonesians are regularly caught contrabanding drugs north into Malaysia (perhaps because linguistic and cultural similarities facilitate connections and trust.) ₇₄ Two larger syndicates separate themselves from the rest of the data by the sheer size and number of their operations, however: the Chinese and Nigerians. Chinese networks, as we have seen, supply the Southeast Asian drug smuggling nexus by land and by sea; two triads who have been active in these activities for a long time are the 14K and Bamboo Gangs, among others operating out of Southern China and Hong Kong. ₇₅ Nigerians have also built a big business in drug-trafficking as well; six Nigerians were executed in Singapore in the early 1990s for these sorts of activities, ₇₆ but this has not deterred the majority of this nation's drug-runners, as by November of 1997 sixty-five more had been arrested, this time in Indonesia for trading in heroin. ₇₇ Drug-trafficking cases in Indonesia this year, to be fair, have involved an incredible international cast: Dutchmen, Singaporians, Irishmen, Thais, Liberians, Burmese, and Nepalese have all been arrested, in addition to the above-mentioned groups. ₇₈

The hiding places that narco-traffickers have made use of in Southeast Asia are ingenious and diverse. In the Philippines, heroin has been illegally imported into the country inside lady's coin purses and socks, as well as in cans of corn and the hollowed-out insides of children's story books. ₇₉ Cambodian drug merchants send marijuana to Vietnam in cargoes of used clothes, as well as containers of scrap metal, while smaller-time operatives smuggle the drug to Hanoi at the bottom of baskets of fruit. ₈₀ To Indonesia, ecstasy tablets travel in aluminum foil, toy packages, speaker boxes and coffee jars, not to mention stitched to the bottom of suitcases. ₈₁ Yet perhaps the devices to get drugs into Singapore, the country with the strictest rules and enforcement in the region, are the most interesting: smugglers will throw their packages off trains at designated spots, line their automobile petrol tanks, swallow condoms filled with heroin, and even stuff their own orifices to get their cargoes onto the island. ₈₂ A drug enforcement agent I interviewed, who would only speak anonymously, said the scams may be unnecessary: the volume of traffic coming off the causeway from Malaysia is so heavy at certain times that customs can only afford to check a small proportion of all vehicles, leaving the rest to pass unmolested. ₈₃

What concrete steps then have been taken by regional governments to try to combat the floodtide of narcotics through the region? There have been several, the first of which has been an attempt to coordinate efforts on a region-wide level, so that all ASEAN members have a similar framework under which to work. The police-chiefs of these nations recently met to draw up resolutions for cooperation and contact over drug trafficking in the region, while the Mekong nations (minus Cambodia) held a similar meeting shortly after, outlining a plan for intelligence-sharing in narcotics-related matters. ₈₄ Direct, bilateral discussions have also been instituted on the subject, as with Thailand and Cambodia's initiative in May 1997, and Laos and China's, which followed in November. ₈₅ ASEAN has also sought help from without: dialogue partners such as Australia and Russia have been brought in to help coordinate, and the U.N. has been assisting with workshops of its own, particularly in cash and resource-strapped countries such as Laos. ₈₆ Problems remain, however: the economic slowdown in the region has starved interdiction agencies of badly-needed funds, and alternate crop suggestions posed by outsiders (like silk instead of opium for the Golden Triangle) still have only limited appeal. ₈₇ New synthetic drugs also appear quickly on the market (such as methamphetamine chlorohydrate and dextromethorphan), necessitating a rapid-response mentality from national legislatures to plug off potential loopholes. ₈₈ Attempts by regional governments to enlist the private sector as allies, by asking the latter to only warily sell potentially-useful pre-cursor materials and equipment to interested buyers (like ephedrine and industrial-sized flasks, for example) is only just beginning. ₈₉ All indications suggest that the smuggling of drugs in Southeast Asia will continue to be big business for the immediately foreseeable future.

B. Human Cargoes

The movement of human beings across boundaries in Southeast Asia, both legally and illegally, also has a long history in this part of the world. Migration theorists have noted that there has been a fundamental, world-wide shift in the nature of population movements in the last two centuries: in the 19th century, the majority of migrants were moving from rich to poor countries, while in our own century the tide has been clearly reversed. ₉₀ Classical push/pull economic theories have been traditionally forwarded to explain this phenomenon, but recently there have been critiques of what is perceived as an overly economic-centered model. ₉₁ Wider, more holistic interpretations have been attempted, ₉₂ as well as theories which single out one stimulus among many, such as the influence and desires of the State. ₉₃ What becomes clear from the discussions is that the transit of human beings is on the rise -- whether they be workers in the traditional sense, or sex-workers (a problem particularly salient to Southeast Asia) -- and that the phenomenon constitutes a major dimension of contemporary smuggling networks in the region.

1. Workers

Though there has been a good deal of movement between Southeast Asian kingdoms and sultanates traditionally, the modern configuration of the region has accelerated the dynamic because of the contemporary nature of local economies. Economic structures and needs within ASEAN are widely variant: there are large differences between labor supplies, wages, worker education and skills, not to mention population densities and natural resource bases. ₉₄ These differences have led to huge movements of workers across national boundaries, very often illegally, in search of a livelihood: there are over 700,000 foreign laborers in Thailand, 1.2 million in Malaysia, and 4 million Filipinos working abroad. ₉₅ Trafficked workers, governments argue, pose a threat and are themselves at risk at the same time; they are often accused of bringing crime and disease with them (including AIDS), but at the same time are at the mercy of gangs who distribute them [Indonesian illegal laborers, for example, are often dumped into deep water off the Malaysian coast, and told to swim for their lives, as trafficking boats don't wish to come too close to shore.] ₉₆ Receiving countries often desperately need the migrants, however. Malaysia has recently taken to color-coding their foreign workers, depending on the economic sector for which they are intended (red for manufacturing, yellow for construction, etc.), while illegal workers are sometimes allowed to stay, depending on the overall needs of the economy. ₉₇

Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are the three main destinations for illegal labor-traffickers in the region. Singapore, with the highest per-capita GDP and the most-educated work force in Southeast Asia, is a logical destination for low-income migrants desperately searching for a job. ₉₈ The island has a long history of receiving human cargoes from its neighbors; Dutch colonial sources, in particular, paint a grim picture of the hardships and exploitation Indonesians sometimes faced in order to get into the colony. ₉₉ Today, the principal traffickers of labor into Singapore are often Bangladeshis: syndicates with arms in Dacca and locally, who transit poor villagers onto the island for around $8,000. This, however, does not ensure employment: the syndicates sometimes keep the demanded advances, and then strand villagers in Southeast Asia without any means to make a living. ₁₀₀ Poor Bangladeshis are not the only nationality to show up illegally on Singapore's streets, though. Burmese are periodically flushed from construction site holding places, Indonesians still row from neighboring islands like Batam, and Sri Lankans have been bribed not to testify at human trafficking trials, if their employers are caught red-handed by the authorities. ₁₀₁

Malaysia has an equally-long history of illegal labor crimping from its neighbors. At the turn of the century, the Dutch caught on to scams in which Javanese workers were being secretly transited to British Malaya, when the paperwork described their destination as Dutch plantations in Sumatra. ₁₀₂ For some Indonesians, these journeys have become a cultural rite of passage: one isn't considered a "man" until one has labored far away in Malaysia, and even married an (extra) bride there. ₁₀₃ Malaysia continues to be a popular destination for illegally-trafficked Indonesian workers today. Smugglers move them by small boat from neighboring Riau province, while occasionally some unfortunates make the headlines, either by drowning, being hospitalized with jellyfish stings, or even being murdered by Malaysian security forces. ₁₀₄ In September the Indonesian navy sent a ship, the "Tanjung Oisina", to Malaysia to carry over 1,600 illegal workers back home. ₁₀₅

Thailand is also a major destination for trafficked laborers from surrounding countries. A Thai Lt. General of Police recently commented to the press how difficult it was to control a problem of this magnitude; aside from the country's long borders with its neighbors, he acknowledged that some politicians and "people in uniform" were deeply involved in the trade, making even more problematic any crackdowns against it. ₁₀₆ Yet because Thailand's economy is so much stronger than most of its neighbors, the flow of trafficked migrants continues: illegals are often willing to work for as little as $2 per day, or half the Thai minimum wage. ₁₀₇ The current economic slowdown has affected this disparity, but unofficial estimates still put the number of illegal workers in Thailand at over a million, twice the figure that Bangkok is willing to acknowledge. ₁₀₈ Laos continues to lecture its citizens about their responsibilities not to cross the border, and Burma takes batches of its (caught) illegals back, but no one expects this profitable trade in humans to end soon. ₁₀₉ A man I met in Ranong, on the southernmost frontier of Thailand and Burma, acknowledged this to be true: he was a Burmese national, but with the help of bribes to local police and a village in the area, had assumed the identity of a missing Thai man, presumed killed in a recent typhoon.

2. Prostitution

The movement of illegal workers is not the only form of human trafficking prevalent in the region, however. Prostitution has also been a magnet for the transit of women through Southeast Asia, as the poor of various nations have often had few alternatives but to sell their bodies to survive. In colonial times, the forces that drove mass prostitution-trafficking often started from outside the region: poor country girls from China and Japan, reacting to famine and underdevelopment in their own countrysides, were sometimes driven to the lure of Southeast Asia's burgeoning ports. ₁₁₀ The contemporary scene has witnessed an elaboration and expansion of this dynamic, however, pushing women -- and increasingly children -- in new directions. The profits of successfully moving women across national borders and into lives of prostitution have become simply enormous.

Within Southeast Asia itself, the trafficking of prostitutes takes place not only to the great urban centers, but also to relative "backwaters" in the region. In the cities, a Singaporian cab driver was recently arrested as part of a syndicate that brought Filipina prostitutes in from that country, secreting them through Changi Airport; 39 of these women were finally arrested, partially because the traffickers were also importing drugs at the same time, and had thus aroused the surveillance of the police. ₁₁₁ In Malaysia, prostitutes have been run into the country increasingly from Thailand and even China; many have been lied to, and are told that they have jobs in factories, so that they will readily take up the offer. ₁₁₂ The trade siphons women off even into comparative peripheries, however, so long as it is felt that there is money to be made. The vacation island of Batam off Singapore is one example of this phenomenon, while women are even brought to Indonesian New Guinea (Irian Jaya), as Thai fishermen spend weeks at a time there, far away from home. ₁₁₃ Even tiny, staunchly Islamic Brunei has seen its share of this kind of trafficking: seven women were recently arrested who had been trafficked there, simply because of the strength of the Brunei dollar (they included 3 Malaysians, 3 Indonesians, and a Filipina.) ₁₁₄

Lest anyone believe that the situation is purely regional, however, it has also become clear that the trafficking of Southeast Asian women is taking place on a far larger, international level as well. Japan is one common destination for Thai and particularly Filipina women who work as prostitutes, though this has often taken place in conditions of near-slavery, as their passports are sometimes taken away by their employers. ₁₁₅ Australia has also become a popular receiving country for these women, with their number increasing by a factor of ten, says a Thai consul, over the past few years. ₁₁₆ The roads for these women do not end in these "end termini" of the Asian continent, however. Prostitution-trafficking syndicates have also been recently busted moving women to North America and Europe, sometimes in large numbers. At a selling price of $25,000 Canadian per head, it is not hard to see how some of these traffickers can be so bold: the profits on a single successfully-moved shipment of women can set up a smuggler for life. ₁₁₇

Of all the Southeast Asian nations, however, the scope and size of the prostitution trade in Thailand is by far the largest. The respected law professor Vitit Muntrabhorn of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok has commented that this is partially because Thailand is involved in all aspects of the trade in women: the country is a source for trafficking to the industrialized world, is also a transit-center for regional trade in humans (especially with its immediate neighbors), while also being a receiving country, all at the same time. ₁₁₈ A new law has been promulgated to try to stop the floodtide of women spilling through Thailand by giving the authorities power to detain suspected victims for up to ten days, but traffickers themselves will still be allowed to go free. ₁₁₉ Critics to the country's laissez-faire approach to the trade in women say the new legislation will accomplish little. The sourcing-stations for women have merely moved further afield. Where once poor women from the northeast of the country (Issan) were moved, traffickers now concentrate on hill-tribe women in the northwest, and, increasingly, on Burmese and Cambodian girls. ₁₂₀ "When we stop them in certain areas, they emerge in another place" says the Minister of Parliament Lamapang Laddawan Wongsriwong. ₁₂₁ There are now estimated to be over one million women and girls working in this trade in Thailand -- a rising percentage of whom are foreign.

A last aspect of Southeast Asia's trade in humans for sex should be mentioned here; the increasing number and frequency of children in this commerce. The sheer numbers of children estimated to be working as prostitutes in the worlds is staggering: Terrell Hill, UNICEF's representative in the Philippines, puts the statistics on underage girls alone at well over one million. ₁₂₂ The breakdowns on minors of either sex engaged in some sort of sex for sale show the parameters and fulcrums of the trade: 250,000 estimated child sex-workers in Thailand, 400,000 in China, perhaps 500,000 in India. ₁₂₃ In Southeast Asia proper, the dynamics around the marketing and sale of children in Cambodia provide clues to the people involved. Vietnamese girls and Cambodian children from the outer provinces are routinely smuggled to Phnom Penh's Tuol Kork Red Light District; pedophiles like the Canadian Amadee Henion, who reportedly molested 200 children in less than two years, come specifically for this trade from abroad. ₁₂₄ Cambodian child traffickers in turn sometimes try to sell their charges in foreign markets, the distribution centers for which stretch occasionally as far as Rome. ₁₂₅ In the Philippines, UNICEF estimates that 40,000 children are involved in sexual commerce, while the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women/Asia puts the figure higher at 75,000. ₁₂₆ The world center for pedophile activity, labeled in the Indonesian press as the "mother city" ("ibu-kota") or "heaven" ("surga") of the trade, is in Pagsanjan, the Philippines; recently 24 Australians were banned from entering the country because of their connections there, including two Anglican priests. ₁₂₇ As the newest and perhaps grimmest dimension of human trafficking in the region, the prostitution of children shows how smuggling can reach down even into the nuclear family in Southeast Asia, simultaneously tearing it apart.

C. Natural Resources

1. Wildlife

The transit of humans and drugs across ASEAN is mirrored by the movement of another category of quickly-circulating merchandise -- wildlife, both fauna and flora. If the passage of illicit drugs in the world, as we have already seen, is roughly equivalent to the value of all car sales worldwide, then global wildlife smuggling also has its contextual (and numerical) equivalent: the value of arms trafficked illegally, also around the planet. The U.S. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife puts the global figure on this trade at approximately $30 billion per annum, with Southeast Asia as one of the hotspots of the commerce, due to its incredible biodiversity and the (shrinking) extent of its forests. ₁₂₈ The inventory on smuggled wildlife in the region covers a broad spectrum of goods, from mammals and an assortment of terrestrial animals to plants and the harvest of the sea.

Large animals, both indigenous to Southeast Asia and foreign (but prized in the region for various reasons) make up a large percentage of these illegal cargoes. Tigers are endemic to various parts of Southeast Asia but are now being hunted to near-extinction by poachers: conservation groups in North Sumatra recently recommended downgrading the number of wild tigers there from 800 to 500, while only 100-200 Indo-Chinese tigers are assumed to survive in Cambodia. ₁₂₉ The ivory from elephants, both African and Asian, is also still being trafficked through Southeast Asia today: a recent decision to allow the limited sale of tusks to Japan after a several years-long ban was greeted with dismay by conservationists, especially as in July a large, secret cache of the items was discovered in Manila. ₁₃₀ Culture, not just commerce, is at work here, says Judy Mills, the Director of TRAFFIC/East Asia (a monitoring program of the Worldwide Fund for Nature): ivory signature chops are given as a rite of passage to young adults in Japan, making them as important culturally, she says, as a diamond ring might be in the West. ₁₃₁ Still, it is not just rites of passage that are inducing the region's wildlife into smuggling pathways -- it is also the demands of luxury consumption. A Malaysian restaurateur was recently fined after a veritable zoo of protected animals was found in his refrigerators, including leopard and bear legs, flying foxes, monkey bones and a lynx. ₁₃₂

Smaller animals, easily hidden and transported but worth no less than their larger cousins on the open market, are also being sold. Over half of Laos' national biodiversity conservation areas are on its borders, which hasn't helped at all in protecting species like the pangolin, which is illegally exported for the value of its scales. ₁₃₃ A Gray's monitor lizard from Indonesia can fetch up to $20,000 when trafficked, while Black Palm cockatoos fetch nearly that much, and Birdwing butterflies (the latter two also from Indonesia) $2,500 per pair. ₁₃₄ Rare turtles are especially prized: the more uncommon species show up on Thai airliners, in Jakarta markets, and even in Singapore specialty stores, all to be used in Chinese medicines. ₁₃₅ But birds may be the single hardest-hit species of all in the conduit of this illegal commerce: more than a quarter of Thailand's 1000 species of avians are now judged to be endangered, according to the Bird Conservation Society of that country. ₁₃₆

The reach of the international contraband trade in wildlife has also seeped into Southeast Asia's plant dominions, however. Part of this trend is based on the very modern phenomenon of drug companies and botanists looking for rare plants and their potential medicinal values; the copyright on use of certain biota can generate millions of dollars in pharmaceutical profits, if the medicines are eventually enabled to be sold worldwide. A recent scandal in Malaysia, where Japanese (and other) botanists were found to be stealing rare plants from Endau Rompin Nature Park in the southern state of Johor, and a similar case in the Philippines, has brought these "scientific smuggling expeditions" to the attention of the world. ₁₃₇ Yet the vast majority of pilfered forest resources have little to do with the high-tech world of drug-patenting in industrialized countries and more to do with the sale of profitable forest products by needy peasants. The collection of certain biota, even if rare or protected, can mean the difference between eating and not eating over a particularly bad season, if the biota can be facilitated to market. It is not surprising, therefore, that Thai villagers are sometimes killed when they illegally cross the Burmese border in search of such products, or that eaglewood trees (once common in Vietnam, now close to extinction) are still illicitly stripped and sold by Vietnamese villagers. ₁₃₈

A final wildlife-sourcing station which offers opportunities for smugglers is the sea. Southeast Asia's warm, shallow waters are vast, difficult to patrol, and possess great wealth in fish and other resources; the combination of these three factors allows contrabanders a tempting field of potential profit and activity in the region. The main prize here are the large cargoes of fish and other edible sea creatures which fetch predictable prices at market; fishing boats form various ASEAN nations, and countries just outside the grouping, often sail into each other's waters and illegally smuggle their catches abroad. On the Thai/Cambodian frontier, this sort of contrabanding has been the subject of continual disputes in 1997: Thai and Cambodian coastal patrols have seized each other's boats, 1500 watt lights, as well as fishing nets and catches over such incidents. ₁₃₉ In Indonesia the actors have been more diverse. Ten Philippine boats were caught illegally fishing in Eastern Indonesia between June and July of last year, while the number of detained Chinese fishermen in the same waters was over 300 in April. ₁₄₀ Capturing and then carting off wildlife of this sort provides avenues of profit for a wide scope of contrabanders, from fishermen and wholesalers to crooked coast guards and customs agents in host country waters.

2. Timber

One sort of biota, however, is smuggled more frequently, and on a greater scale than all other resources of the natural environment: timber. Although the trade in trafficked gems and metals in Southeast Asia may, perhaps, rival timber smuggling in absolute terms of cash value [see this footnote for a discussion and fieldwork observations on this issue], ₁₄₁ the sheer scope of illegal logging and its transit across national boundaries is by far the largest nature-based smuggling phenomenon present in the region. The illicit movement of timber takes place on a small, opportunistic basis in some areas of ASEAN; Taiwanese ships periodically move logs out of the Philippines, for example, and smugglers have denuded parts of the cordillera running north through Vietnam. ₁₄₂ These actions pale in comparison, however, with the three main sites of timber extraction and its subsequent illegal transit: Cambodia, the Thai/Burmese border, and the forest frontier on the island of Borneo (between Malaysia and Indonesia.)

Measuring only by sheer rapacity, Cambodia's situation may be the worst of these three places. The constant civil turmoil -- first between the Khmer rouge and the government, and lately between players in the government itself -- has encouraged an atmosphere where logs fund political power bases, and often, survival itself. Government factions, insurgents, criminals and wealthy business concerns all sell as much timber as they can, often flaunting national laws on the subject and worldwide watch bodies at the same time. An export ban on logs went through on December 31st, 1996, and has been almost universally ignored.

Oa Soeurn, the Deputy Director of Forestry in Cambodia, has said that illegal logging remains rampant in the provinces of Kampong Thom, Preah Vihear, Stung Treng, Kratie, Siem Reap, Ratanakiri, and Banteay Meanchey. ₁₄₃ Logging companies pay villagers bribes to keep them from reporting, but this seems hardly necessary when we see how the smugglers are armed. In April authorities seized a boat heading down the Mekong with a cargo of logs, the guards of which were wearing police uniforms and who were touting AK 47's and several B-40 rocket launchers. ₁₄₄ The traffickers also move by sea: the Thai province of Trat is a notorious site for illegal log distribution, but Phnom Penh is hard pressed to crack down on the problem, as one government minister has complained that "the sea is full of men with guns." ₁₄₅ The border with Vietnam is little different. A foreigner who witnessed a huge illegal transit operation in December of '96 speculated that 2,300 truckloads of timber crossed the frontier: "I couldn't count all the trucks. They came day and night for (the span of) one month." ₁₄₆

Because actors like Teng Boonma, Cambodia's richest man, and the military are deeply involved with logging in Cambodia, it is very difficult for international watchdog groups (like the London-based Global Witness) to enforce their warnings of impending and widespread ecological damage to the country. ₁₄₇ The Swiss-based Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS), in fact, recently terminated its own timber monitoring contract in Cambodia because its agents were at risk in such a "Wild West" arena. ₁₄₈ The Thai/Burmese frontier has been an equally lawless domain for a long time, partially because of the number and positioning of feuding parties over resources, many of whom traffic in logs. Mr. Mya Than, the Coordinator of the Indochina Program at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, has estimated that 50,000 cubic tons of Burmese timber were being smuggled into Thailand every year in the mid-1980's. ₁₄₉ Ethnic insurgencies (like the Karen and Wa State Armies), drug lords, the Burmese military and corrupt Thai customs and police all had a hand in this traffic. Today, the commerce continues, but in less brazen, more circuitous pathways: it has come to light, for example, that timber is illicitly cut in large batches in Salween National Park and its sister Wildlife Sanctuary, transported across the border to Burma, and then re-exported to Thailand, with the label "Exported from Myanmar" on the logs. ₁₅₀ Although over 10,000 trees were cut down in this manner in August 1997 alone, a source reports that only 300 were eventually confiscated by authorities on the border. Bertil Lintner's map on timber concession areas between the two countries makes clear why this is so: the border, from the northern terminus at Laos to the famed "Three Pagodas Pass", not far from Bangkok, has been a necklace of adjoining timber concessions for years, stretching literally for hundreds of miles. ₁₅₁

A last forest frontier which is being consistently cut and then smuggled is the vast canopy of trees which sits astride the Malay/Indonesian border in Borneo. This is some of the most isolated and rugged terrain on earth -- a fact that has stopped illegal merchants of these trees only to a limited degree. The problem seems to be particularly acute on the Sabah (Northern) boundary with Indonesia; the Sarawak border, although longer and less easily watched, may be too inaccessible in large stretches for smuggling, unless this is happening by helicopter. In an interview with a conservation program director who insisted on anonymity, a scenario was sketched out similar to the Thai/Burmese frontier, whereby Malaysian loggers cross the border in Indonesia, and then float their illicitly-cut logs downstream the other way. ₁₅₂ Straight-out cross-border cutting is also being practiced, however: the authorities in Sabah seized 2.3 million ringgit worth of logs this past September alone, while at least five separate illegal operations were detected in the last half of 1997, according to the Sabah Forest Industries Enforcement Unit. ₁₅₃ The fruits of these investigations have lately strayed even farther off the border, however, as Indonesian authorities have made similar busts as far away from the frontier as coastal Samarinda. ₁₅₄ The picture that emerges from all of these seizures is that one of the world's oldest forests is rapidly disappearing: one more commodity to be fed into the international ring of contraband biota.

D. Consumer Goods

A fourth and final category of commodities that needs to be discussed in any examination of smuggling in Southeast Asia is what might be broadly defined as "consumer goods." This catch-all umbrella might be represented by almost anything that is illegally transited: cigarettes, automobiles, compact discs, pornography, even antique sculpture and religious items. For sheer numbers, in fact, this sub-domain is probably the largest of all the categories so far examined: in the first nine months of 1997, for example, Vietnam logged over 12,000 smuggling cases of goods (worth over 400 billion Vietnamese dong [$33 million U.S.], a number that is almost certainly a pale shade of the real figures. ₁₅₅ Government representatives of Southeast Asian nations acknowledge the disparity. "We can't catch the real smugglers" said one to the Far Eastern Economic Review recently, citing the traffickers' mobile phones and faster boats, which render them far better equipped than border guards on frequent occasions. ₁₅₆ Yet regional administrations have tried to combat contraband syndicates, using measures as diverse as stiff fines and newly-computerized customs services. ₁₅₇ The results have been disappointing. Smuggling of consumer goods is still booming in Southeast Asia, and the trend is leading nowhere but up.

It is difficult to point with accuracy at some nations more than others as being involved in these movements. The passage of contraband is so widespread in the region, especially in the case of consumer goods, that to single out certain borders or spheres seems unfair. Nevertheless, a glimpse at a few of these spaces can give us an idea as to how systemic this trafficking has really become, and what is being routed. Mya Than has published two tables outlining what passed back and forth illegally across Burma's frontiers in the mid 1980's: the items include chemicals, machinery, and medicines on the import side, as well as gems, livestock, and heroin exported into Thailand. ₁₅₈ The Sino-Vietnamese border is another transit-area of high volume for contraband; here garments, electric fans, and bicycles are "hot" items, mostly because Saigon restricts these items in an effort to protect domestic production. ₁₅₉ Maritime spaces should also be mentioned in the Southeast Asian context, however, as there is no shortage of consumer-good smuggling in this realm, either. In interviews conducted with Indonesian sailors on Jakarta's docks, I was told that passage of goods outside local waters to the country's next-door neighbors could easily be arranged ("bisa diatur"), while Indonesian workers interviewed in Singapore said that almost anything could be ordered from nearby Riau, if one knew the way. ₁₆₀ In the Philippines the situation is much the same; long coastlines and corrupt maritime patrols make for easy on- and off-loading, the opportunities stretching literally for thousands of miles. ₁₆₁

It is, perhaps, more enlightening to focus on sub-categories of consumer items, rather than nations, in exploring the movement of contraband commodities. Cigarettes are one frequently-trafficked good that illustrate patterns of interest: small yet relatively expensive, they are a fairly-common luxury item which nevertheless enjoys a near omnipresent demand in Southeast Asia. Singapore seems to operate as a kind of clearing house for smuggled cigarettes: Malaysians and Indonesians are constantly caught bringing consignments of cartons onto the island, sometimes selling them below street-value, other times trafficking in Indonesians kreteks (clove cigarettes), a slightly more expensive item. _162/a> Singapore also sends contraband cigarettes to Cambodia and Vietnam, where they are moved across borders in very large numbers. ₁₆₃ Finally, in the Philippines the navy is continually pursuing cigarette smugglers, who appear in quick motorized launches off Mindanao and Sulu in the South. Several stings at the end of last year netted millions of pesos worth of cartons -- in the above-mentioned ports, and also in warehouses in Manila. ₁₆₄

Cargoes of smuggled consumer goods in Southeast Asia are not always small, easy to transport items, however. Though the passage of small size and weight to high value ratio goods may be the norm, some larger-sized commodities possess big-sticker value which traffickers find difficult to resist. Motor scooters, for example, are sometimes found by customs agents stowed away in containers: Filipino customs patrols recently seized 29 scooters smuggled in this way, which were secreted to two coastal towns from an "unnamed neighboring country." ₁₆₅ Cars, too, make occasional long, illegal journeys through the region: Thai officials say that there are approximately 30 car-smuggling syndicates active in the kingdom (the cars are often sold to agents in neighboring countries), while 192 luxury sedans were smuggled into Malaysia over the course of last year. ₁₆₆ Cargoes can get even larger than this, however. Buses and even 10-wheeled trucks have been attempted to be smuggled out of Bangkok, while a media sensation ensued in November when a Boeing jet engine was caught en route to the Philippines, illegally exported from Guam. ₁₆₇

The newest and perhaps most economically-damaging case of smuggling consumer goods in the region has been the explosive rise of compact disc and VCD trafficking. Estimates vary over how much contrabanding there really is of these products in Southeast Asia, but almost all of the prognostications put the percentages extremely high. The international Federation of the Phonographic Industry says that at least 30% of music CD's are pirated in Singapore, while the Association of Recording Video Importers puts the rates on video CD's in Indonesia at an astonishing 99%. ₁₆₈ These numbers can be beaten, however.: Jack Valenti, the President of the US Motion Picture Association, says that fully 100% of all American films available on video in Vietnam are pirated versions. ₁₆₉ While the physical disc may be produced locally (but illegally) in some of these situations, what is being smuggled aside from the disc is the intellectual property of the performance. No Southeast Asian country seems immune from this high-tech contrabanding, from the economically-underdeveloped Philippines to relatively isolated Brunei. ₁₇₀ Industry executives have taken to offering rewards for information on traffickers, sometimes totally up to $50,000, as in Singapore recently. ₁₇₁

An important subset of the smuggling of video discs consists of the contraband trade in pornography. Conservative social norms in most Southeast Asian countries mitigate against the open sale of pornography as a kind of "cultural contagion" from the West. This has not stopped pornography from becoming one of the most eagerly-trafficked items in the region within the "consumer goods" rubric, however. In Malaysia, a Kuala Lumpur-based syndicate has been distributing foreign pornography throughout the country, apparently in great quantities: a recent bust in Johor Baru netted over 13,000 X-rated videos, but the smugglers have a large such fund, enabling their members to pay off oppressive bail. ₁₇₂ In Indonesia, where the proliferation of pornography is earning the widespread condemnation of the press as a threat to the moral fibre of the nation, Japanese porn featuring sadism and underage actresses is on sale in the street, at a price (with the current economic downturn) which translates to roughly $1 U.S. dollar per disc. ₁₇₃ Much of this material comes via Singapore, apparently smuggled on small boats via Batam. Finally, in Singapore itself, the Board of Film Censors estimates that roughly a fifth of all seized videos are pornographic, with prices in back-alley shops hovering around the US $12 mark per piece. ₁₇₄ The appearance of X-rated comic books (apparently geared toward teenagers) is also widespread. The numbers and vast diffusion of all of these items is unsurprising: with more disposable income available to them after decades of high growth, pornography quickly found a willing market, just as it did in the West.

What may be more surprising is that contraband computer software, also trafficked now on a large scale, is doing so well. Computer-ownership rates are still quite low in Southeast Asia, but this has not stopped the eager purchase of smuggled computer software on a very large scale. A study by the International Planning and Research Corporation found that 97% of software in Indonesia was pirated, costing the industry U.S. $197.3 million in revenues last year; this ratio means that Indonesia has the world's second-highest rate of software piracy, right after Vietnam. ₁₇₅ Consumers in Indonesia don't seem to mind that the product they're buying may be inferior or flawed compared to the original; official support-services for software are still primitive there anyway, so many people are willing to take their chances. ₁₇₆ In Thailand, the Business Software Alliance has indicated that it hopes to reduce the rate of piracy from about 80 to 60% of all sales over the next five years, while in Malaysia the same organization has been instrumental in the government's handing out of stiff new fines to software transgressors. ₁₇₇ Smuggling of software has continued on a vast scale, however, particularly in China: the BSA estimates that the industry is losing (even big name players like Microsoft and Lotus) almost $19 billion a year, just between China and its new "special autonomous region", Hong Kong. ₁₇₈ Many of these programs are smuggled down to Southeast Asia. A recent editorial in the Straits Times laments that traffickers in these goods are hardly punished: within hours of arrest, most are back on the streets, briskly selling their software again. ₁₇₉

It is not only extremely new consumer goods (such as computer software) but also extremely old items that have entered the illegal commerce circuit in Southeast Asia. Art treasures, for instance, also travel. The market in smuggled art and artifacts has skyrocketed in recent years, helped along by instability and insurgencies in the region, but also by fantastically-high art prices. This sort of plundering isn't new; attacking armies in Southeast Asian history regularly carried off artifacts as booty, but the sight of sculpture being loaded into the backs of trucks (as was happening in Cambodia as recently as February) is still seen all too often. ₁₈₀ Unscrupulous dealers can look through a catalogue in Bangkok, and point out pieces they desire: workers will be dispatched with saws and chisels in hand, and Cambodia loses more of its already-diminishing cultural heritage. ₁₈₁ Local corruption and poverty work hand in hand to facilitate this commerce, but the end destinations for goods are almost never local, as evidenced by recent repatriations of stolen pieces to Cambodia from Thailand, England, and France. The U.S. has also recently returned statuary to the region, in this case Thai sculptures that were stolen by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. ₁₂ The key to checking this sort of commerce may be increased awareness, and, above all, funds: UNESCO is now assisting Laos on how to better watch over their own widely-dispersed monuments, some of which had started disappearing. ₁₈₃

In the information age, however, perhaps no consumer good is more desired than those slips of paper which allow us (or our money) to travel freely -- in other words, "documentation", in the widest sense of the term. Southeast Asia has become a fertile field for all kinds of scam artists and smugglers who traffic in enabling or verifying documentations: whether these be visas, passports, employment passes or credit cards. In Indonesia, recently, a ring was smashed which had been counterfeiting maritime documents and stamps: the sailor reference letters, completeness books, and harbor-master approval documents are the tools which allow mariners exit and entry to that country. ₁₈₄ A similar scam which smuggled official documents into Vietnam was recently broken up in Hong Kong, while others have been unearthed to get illegal aliens into Singapore. A massive operation against an international credit-card smuggling scheme based in the Philippines (but staffed by an American, two Germans, a Spaniard, and an Australian) wound up in December; the Filipinos involved, however, managed to slip away. ₁₈₅ Finally, a visa and forged identity-card making sting was recently discovered in Malaysia; the authorities impounded computers, laser printers, scanners, and a private xerox machine, all used to smuggle people into that country. ₁₈₆

Though we can organize many of these consumer good smuggling rings into syndicates and categories, a fair amount of this commerce is simply local and situation specific. Middlemen or merchants discern a need that can be fulfilled by contrabanding; there is no multi-million dollar operation for production and dispersal, just a simple and quick response to local supply and demand. Any number of items fall into this "general" rubric of everyday smuggling in Southeast Asia; this is the broad current of graft upon which the "marquee" items (such as drugs, guns, and human beings, the favorites of newspaper headlines) essentially ride. We can elucidate just a few of these movements here: the passage of unrecorded (and untaxed) beer onto the coasts of Malaysian Sarawak; tons of used clothing transiting through Cambodia en route to Vietnam; dictionaries spilling through Indonesia, pirated and possessing the blessing of no known copyright. ₁₈₇ Fuel is sold in Cambodian waters by Thai crews looking for a quick buck, while a barge was recently impounded for stealing Malaysian sand to bring to Singapore. ₁₈₈ The cargoes don't stop there; they also include dressed dogs intended for the dinner table in the Philippines, and a carload of contraband "Christmas cheer" which was seized in Islamic Brunei. ₁₈₉ These are among the more prosaic items traveling silently through the region, which we often read about only when their owners have the misfortune of being caught. Yet they make up a wide river of goods, the true extent of which we will never know. One thing seems sure, however, in an examination of these items and their circuitous, long-range movements: cross-border smuggling, with its long and illustrious history in Southeast Asia, will not be coming to an end anytime soon.

Conclusion: Back to the Future

The phenomenon of contrabanding in Southeast Asia has deep roots which reach into the very foundation of the region's historical experience. Even a cursory examination of the topic reveals that many of the patterns of the past continue unobstructed into the present: the only thing that changes is the generation of Southeast Asians involved. The opium that used to be transited in sailing ships across the East Indies archipelago is now carried overland by Golden Triangle runners; human cargoes of women who also passed through these seas now (more often than not) are also trafficked overland, usually to brothels in Bangkok and Phnom Penh. The counterfeit currencies which colonial administrators fought so hard against are now merely replaced by counterfeit US dollars, churned out by Pyongyang plants and into Southeast Asian circulation. Searching out the old documents of contraband in the region thus provides us with many patterns echoing the present; many of the same cargoes are still alive and en route, even if they are taking different paths to get to their destinations.

Why should this continuity not surprise us? For one thing, certain similarities between structural conditions in Southeast Asia then and now have not really changed; a casual visitor to the region two hundred years ago and today would see a definite evolution, but some factors would remain the same. Much of Southeast Asia still possesses long, under-protected (and underpoliced) coasts: the kind of coasts that gave the Dutch V.O.C., the Spanish in the colonial Philippines, and the Vietnamese emperors fits, all in dealing with illegal "spillage trades" from their immediate neighbors. The same is true for overland frontiers on the mainland: the pure density of forest tracks across borders, connecting people who States have sometimes tried to separate (both classically and today), is also bewildering and difficult to control. Complicating the situation still further has been the persistence and survival of various highly-organized trade networks who criss-cross the region (Chinese, Indian, Boyanese, Tai, etc.), who make enforcement of commerce across sovereign boundaries even more difficult. Singaporean spice merchants I spoke with in the early 1990's didn't care that Vietnam was still technically closed to private commerce: their cinnamon and cassia were profitable on international markets, so ethnic Chinese cousins in Saigon were instructed to send the bark abroad, in any way that they could. ₁₉₀

Nevertheless, there are new forces working against smuggling in Southeast Asia which run counter against the maintenance of continuity and tradition. The most powerful of these must be integration: the organization of governments and agencies in the region to fight against smuggling as a united, inter-locking front. Interpol, the ASEAN regional forums, and various bilateral initiatives are the hallmarks of this integration, and may prove to be effective partnerships against contrabanding over time and large distances. Technology is also being harnessed by regional capitals to fight smuggling as never before, and in a variety of ways: infrared night goggles, computers, and even coordinated satellite tracking (with the USDEA, for example) are all being tested, especially in the war against drugs. A recent by-product of regional economic troubles may prove to be the most lasting of all these initiatives, however: the new emphasis on efficiency, as Southeast Asia is forced (by the IMF, among others) to clean up corruption and cronyism, and thus eliminate some of the channels through which smuggling traditionally runs.

The future is not all rosy, though. The frequency and volume of illegal goods caught in Vietnam, for example, shows how far authorities there will have to go to acclimate to the new, free-wheeling market capitalism that is sweeping the country's shores; the courts can simply not keep up with the number of smuggling cases brought before the bench. ₁₉₁ The town of Riuli on the Sino/Burmese frontier, meanwhile, has become a new Wild West, dealing in smuggled girls, smuggled drugs, and smuggled AIDS at an alarming (and increasing) rate. ₁₉₂ And in Indonesia, the movement of narcotics has become an utterly commonplace transit, not just peddled by vast syndicates anymore, but by petty heroin dealers living far from any border, who deal directly into communities and schools. ₁₉₃ The two images of exploding commerce and contraband in Southeast Asia will thus have to exist uneasily side by side. On the one hand, there will be the skyscrapers and banks of computers, ringing the stock exchanges of the capitals; on the other, ships will continue to sail with unknown cargoes and holds, while forest paths are walked by quiet people in the dark. Both will be emblems of history's -- and globalizations's -- imprints upon the region.

Acknowledgments:

In the course of researching this article I completed many interviews with various kinds of people in Southeast Asia -- sailors, laborers, farmers, customs agents, law enforcement officials, and scholars, among others. These interviews took place in several countries in the region. For reasons that should be readily apparent, everyone with whom I spoke about contemporary smuggling in the region agreed to do so only under the condition of anonymity.

---

Notes:

Note 1: "Perederan Bebas Pornografi Tingkatkan Pelecehan Seks" Suara Permbaruan, 11/19/97, p. 6; "Malaysia Slams the Door on a Troubled Neighbor" International Herald Tribune, 9/22/97, p. 1; "The 10 Billion Dollar Black Market in Endangered Animals" New York Times Magazine, 2/16/97, p. 30. Back.

Note 2: I had the opportunity to interview the crews of small Burmese thambans (or sampans) that coasted down to Penang, Malaysia, in 1990; the crews described a rampant smuggling trade by sea of a large band-width of items, including the above-mentioned commodities. Back.

Note 3: For explications of the two systems, see Hermann Kulke "The Early and the Imperial Kingdom in Southeast Asia" in David Marr and A.C. Milner, eds., Southeast Asia in the Ninth to Fourteenth Centuries Canberra, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australia National University; and Bennet Bronson "Exchange on the Upstream and Downstream Ends: Notes Toward a Functional Model of the Coastal State in Southeast Asia" in Karl Hutterer, ed., Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia: Perspectives from Pre-History, History, and Ethnography Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Southeast Asia Program #3, 1977. Back.

Note 4: Irfan, Nia Kurnia Sholihat Kerajaan Sriwijaya: Pusat Pemirintahan dan Perkambangannya Jakarta, Grimukti Pasaka, 1983; also O.W. Wolters The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History London, Lund Humphries Publishers, 1970. Back.

Note 5: Muhammad Yusoff Hashim Kesultanan Melayau Melaka: Kajian Beberapa Aspek Tentang Melaka pada Abad Ke-15 dan Abad Ke-16 Dalam Sejarah Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia, 1990, p. 236-70; also, Dato Khoo Kay Kim "Melaka: Persepsi Tentang Sejarah dan Masyarakatnya" in Omar Farouk Bajunid Esei-Esei Budaya dan Sejarah Melaka Kuala Lumpur, Siri Minggu Kesenian Asrama Za'ba, 1989. Back.

Note 6: See especially Sarasin Viraphol Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1652-1853 Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1977 and Jennifer Cushman Fields From the Sea: Chinese Junk Trade with Siam During the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1993. Back.

Note 7: Dian Murray Pirates of the South China Coast 1790-1810 Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1987. Back.

Note 8: W.F. Wertheim Indonesie van Vorstenrijk tot Neo-Kolonie Amsterdam, Boom Meppel, 1978, p. 22, for example. Back.

Note 9: Elsbeth Locher-Scholten Sumatraans Sultanaat en Koloniale Staat: De Relatie Djambi-Batavia (1830-1907) en het Nederlandse Imperialisme Leiden, KITLV, 1994, Chapter II; also Mary Somers Heidhues Bangka Tin and Mentok Pepper: Chinese Settlement on an Indonesian Island Singapore, ISEAS, 1992. Back.

Note 10: Edgar Wickberg The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850-1898 New Haven, Yale University Press, 1965, p. 80-93. Back.

Note 11: D.S. Sardesai British Trade and Expansion in Southeast Asia (1830-1914) Bombay, Allied Publishers, 1977, p. 136 passim. Back.

Note 12: See James Francis Warren Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore (1880-1940) Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1993. Back.

Note 13: See, for example, the Dutch Consul General in the Straits Settlements Lavino to the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, 14 December 1888, #915, in Archief Buitenlandse Zaken, Doos #199, Algemeene Rijksarchief, Den Haag (Netherlands); also Nota Over de Invoering van Staatstoezicht op de Werving van Inlanders op Java en Madoera Bestemd voor de Buitenbezittingen of voor Plaatsen Buiten Nederlandsche Indie met Uitzondering van de Kolonie Suriname, Batavia, Landsdrukkerij, 1907, p. 8. Back.

Note 14: James Francis Warren The Sulu Zone (1768-1898) Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1981, p. 109. Back.

Note 15: James Ingram Economic Change in Thailand Since 1850 Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1955; see Table X in the Appendix for a larger view. Back.

Note 16: Usra, Abrar Hoegeng: Polisi Idaman dan Kenyataan (Sebuah Autobiografi) Jakarta, Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1994, p. 223-28. Back.

Note 17: Lloyd Gardner Approaching Vietnam: From World War II to Dien Bien Phu New York, Norton, 1988, p. 179-212; and William Shawcross Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979, p. 211. Back.

Note 18: Dare to Strike: Twenty-Five Years of the Central Narcotics Bureau Singapore, 1996, p. 17-19; 42. Back.

Note 19: See Thongchai Winichakul's discussion on this; Thailand was a partial exception to this pattern in Southeast Asia. Thongchai Winichakul Siam Mapped Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1994. For a theoretical discussion on the nature (and evolution) of borders, see J.R.V. Prescott Political Frontiers and Boundaries London, Unwin Hyman, 1987. Back.

Note 20: "Bersaing Di Langit Terbuka BIMP-EAGA" Suara Pembaruan, 11/25/97, p. 16; and "Mindanao Bakal Unggul Di Timur ASEAN" Suara Pembaruan, 1/25/97, p. 17. Back.

Note 21: Bertil Lintner Cross-Border Drug Trade in the Golden Triangle Durham (UK), International Boundaries Research Unit. 1991, p. 55 passim. Back.

Note 22: "Drive Set for Border Trade" The Nation (Thailand), 12/4/97, p. B1. Back.

Note 23: "Lao-Myanmar Border Co-Operation Discussed" Vientiane Times, 9/24/97, p. 1; "Border Market -- Big Problem for Vietnam" Vietnam Economic News, #40, 10/1/93, p. 4-5; Teh-chang Lin "The Development of Mainland China's Border Trade" Issues and Studies: A Journal of Chinese Studies and International Affairs, July/96, p. 42-53. Back.

Note 24: "Border Talks Start" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/21/97, p. 14; "Border Openings Should Increase Thai Trade" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 2/7/97, p. 13; "Vientiane and Loei Meet on Border Security Issues" Vientiane Times, 10/15-17/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 25: "Pos Pelintas Batas RI-Filipina Ditambah" Kompas, 12/10/97, p. 8. Back.

Note 26: "Tahun 2001 Palembang Punya Bandara Internasional" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/19/97, p. 7. Back.

Note 27: "Second Link a Boost for Trade Ties with Other Asian Nations" Straits Times, 6/27/97. Back.

Note 28: "Tenaga Willing to Supply Power to Sumatra via Bridge Link" Straits Times, 6/29/97; "Malaysia Undecided Where Bridge to Indonesia Will Begin" Straits Times, 6/26/97. Back.

Note 29: "Immigration Plaza to be Built at Border Town" Straits Times, 7/9/97; "Land-Linked, not Land-Locked" Vientiane Times 9/17-19/97, p. 9; "More Funding for Tax and Customs Administration Reform" Vientiane Times 10/25/97, p. 1. Back.

Note 30: "Burma Road" Far Eastern Economic Review 11/6/97, p. 16-17. This is to say nothing of the other descending "pincer" of Chinese influence into Southeast Asia, Beijing's claims on the Spratley and Paracel Islands. See "Laut Cina Selatan, Tambang Emas Masa Depan" Kompas, 12/4/97, p. 7. Back.

Note 31: "Thai Mekong Patrol Officers Threaten Lao Cargo Boat Crews" Vientiane Times, 10/15-17/97, p. 1-2; "Eye-Witness Accounts Given on Lao Cargo Boat Incident" Vientiane Times, 10/18-21/97, p. 14, 20. Back.

Note 32: "TNI AL Usir 10,096 Kapal" Kompas, 12/5/97, p. 8; "Efektivitas Gelar Unsur Laut Perlu Pemikiran Konsepsional Lebih Lanjut" Angkatan Bersenjata , 11/27/97, p. 12; "Pangarmabar: Situasi Keamanan Laut di Wilayah Barat Terkendali" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/24/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 33: "Perahu Dari Manado Hanyut 3,000 Km" Suara Pembaruan, 11/25/97, p. 1. Back.

Note 34: "Other ASEAN States Urged to Follow S'pore-KL Joint Approach to Crime" Straits Times, 6/10/97; "Vietnam, Cambodia Police Sign Police Accord" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/19/97, p.8; "Lao Police Delegation Back From Interpol Meeting in Beijing" Vientiane Times, 9/20-3/97, p. 4. Back.

Note 35: "More Ships" Straits Times, 12/22/97; "Eye on Ships" Straits Times, 6/7/97; "Seminar on New Lao Mapping and Survery Network Held in Vientiane" Vientiane Times, 11/5-7/97, p. 4; "Border Market to be Opened" Jakarta Post, 11/10/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 36: "Jemaah Haji Paspor Hijau Tetap Dilarang" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/19/97, p. 7; "K.L. To Launch Passport with Electronic Security Devices" Straits Times, 7/27/97; "New Regulations on Border Passes to Thailand" Vientiane Times, 10/29-31/97, p. 20. Back.

Note 37: "Korupsi, Dampak, dan Solusinya" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/11/97, p. 4. Back.

Note 38: "48 Oknum ABRI Terancam Dipecat" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/25/97, p. 12; "Police Captain Nabbed" Straits Times, 7/16/97. Back.

Note 39: "Hooked on Smuggling" Far Eastern Economic Review 6/9/97, p. 34; "Graft Up" Straits Times, 12/20/97. Back.

Note 40: "Sugar Daddy" Far Eastern Economic Review, 11/23/97, p. 27-30; "Smells in High Places" The Economist, 5/28/94, p. 32-3; "Guingona Says Sotto Bought Shabu Chemical" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/27/97, p. 1. Back.

Note 41: "Policeman Was Found With Obscene Videotapes" Straits Times, 6/7/97. Back.

Note 42: "HK Official Says Cambodia a Criminal Haven" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/24/97, p. 14; "Safe Haven for the Mafia" Cambodia Times, 8/25/97, p. 1. Back.

Note 43: "Crime to Rise in the Asia Pacific" Vietnam News, 11/1/97, p. 7; "Organized Crime Threatens Asia-Pacific Stability" Borneo Bulletin, 11/1/97. Back.

Note 44: "Cabby Gets 6 Years for Selling Counterfeit Money" Straits Times, 6/28/97; "Canadians Bagged Holding Bad Bills" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily", 2/6/97, p. 11; "Fake US Dollar Bills Printed at Three Pyongyang Plants" Straits Times, 6/29/97; "Japan Busts Counterfeiting Ring" Straits Times, 6/19/97. Back.

Note 45: "Seek UN Help to Fight Money Laundering, Interpol Urges" Straits Times, 10/21/97; "The Disappearing Taxpayer" The Economist, 5/31/97, p. 13 passim. Back.

Note 46: "Gun Find at Airport" Cambodia Times, 10/27/97, p. 1; "Man Nabbed in Rifles Case" Cambodia Times, 11/10/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 47: "Polisi Sita 225 Karung Amonium Nitrat" Kompas 12/2/97, p. 8; "Pelempar 'Bom' Rumah Hakim Ditangkap" Suara Pembaruan, 11/18/97, p. 18. Back.

Note 48: "Spread of Small Arms Threatens Stability Worldwide" Straits Times, 10/27/97, p. 14. Back.

Note 49: "560b Drug Trade Beats Car Sales Worldwide, Says UN Official" Straits Times, 7/24/97. Back.

Note 50: "Indonesia Sudah Lama Jadi Pemasaran Narkotika" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/4/97, p. 12; "Philippine Police Seize Huge Volume of Drugs This Year" Vientiane Times, 10/29-31/97, p. 6. Back.

Note 51: "PM Warns of Takeover by Drug Merchants" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 4/24/97, p. 12; "Medellin on the Mekong" Far Eastern Economic Review, 9/7/95, p. 29-30; "Medellin on the Mekong" Far Eastern Economic Review, 11/23/97, p. 24-6. Back.

Note 52: "Dadah MusushUtama Masyarakat" Pelita Brunei, 7/2/97, p. 1 Back.

Note 53: Bertil Lintner Cross Border Drug Trade in the Golden Triangle, International Boundaries Research Unit, Durham (UK), 1991, p. 4. Back.

Note 54: Ibid., p. 1. Back.

Note 55: "Khun Sa's Drug Trade in Hands of Wa Rebels" The Nation (Thailand), 11/1/97, p. A2. They kill border patrols, and bribe judges as well; see "Two Cops Killed in Ambush by Gangsters" New Straits Times (Malaysia), 11/28/97, p. 21; "Two More Thailand Judges Fired Over Drug Suspect" Manila Bulletin, 11/19/97, p. 7. Back.

Note 56: "Thailand Vows to Destroy Opium Fields" New Straits Times, (Malaysia) 11/27/97, p. 21; "800 Kilos of Heroin and Opium Put to the Torch in Myanmar" Straits Times, 7/18/97. Back.

Note 57: "Lagi, Pembawa Heroin 3.7 kg Ditangkap" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/8/97, p. 1. Back.

Note 58: "Tide of Southeast Asian Heroin Continues" China News, 7/30/97, p. 12; "Chinese Police Seize Seven Kilos of Heroin" Viet Nam News, 11/14/97, p. 8. Back.

Note 59: "Anguish: Tears from Viet Cop Who Turned Drug Trafficker" Straits Times, 7/3/97. Back.

Note 60: "Cambodian Pot Rife in Europe" The Nation (Thailand) 11/6/97, p. A3. Back.

Note 61: "Biggest Bust" Straits Times, 12/22/97; "Record Singapore Pot Haul Linked to Cambodia" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/29/97. It seems the cargo may have belonged to Mong Reththy, an adviser to Second Prime Minister Hun Sen. See "You Hockry Asserts Marijuana Linked to Mong Reththy" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 4/24/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 62: "Polisi Tangkap Pedagang Ganja" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/24/97, p. 6; "Polres Tanah Karo Temukan Ladang Ganja: Satu Ton Ganja Disita" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/3/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 63: "Ramos Orders PNP: Step Up War on Drugs" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/8/97, p. 15; "Marijuana Plants Eradicated in Lai Chau" Viet Nam News, 11/14/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 64: "Ganja Ring" Straits Times, 6/26/97; "Big Ganja Haul" Straits Times, 7/14/97. Back.

Note 65: "Checking Ecstasy Pills Problem" New Straits Times (Malaysia), 11/20/97, p. 14; "80 Discos Nationwide Involved in Ecstasy Trade" Straits Times, 7/13/97; "Man Caught with 4kg. of Ecstasy Pills Could be Singaporean" Straits Times, 10/15/97. Back.

Note 66: "Daerah Sekilas: Batam" Kompas, 12/5/97, p. 9; "Dibekuk di Batam, Penyelundup 100,000 Pil Ecstasy" Kompas, 12/4/97, p. 8; "Drug Smugglers Caught in the Act" Jakarta Post, 12/2/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 67: "Ditumbuk dan Dibakar, 9,314 Butir Ecstasy tak Bertuan" Kompas, 12/9/97, p. 3; "Pilot Freed" Straits Times, 6/28/97. Back.

Note 68: "The Deadly Pill Road" The New Paper (Singapore), 6/7/97, p. 12; The prices for ecstasy tablets in Indonesia can be found in "Polres Salatiga Bekuk Dua Remaja Pengedar Ecstasy" Suara Pembaruan, 11/19/97, p. 18. Back.

Note 69: "The Myanmar-Thai Connection in Drug Smuggling" Straits Times, 11/11/97; "Thais Losing Fight Against Abuse of Amphetamines" Straits Times, 6/5/97. Back.

Note 70: The person in question has agreed to speak only under the condition of anonymity. Back.

Note 71: "Thai-Burma Talks on Drugs Up" Manila Bulletin, 11/20/97. p. 4. Back.

Note 72: "Angeles Shabu Lab Raided; 3 Chinese Nabbed" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/11/97, p. 6; "Drug Dealers Find 'Open' Market in Philippines" Straits Times, 6/21/97. Back.

Note 73: "Dua Pengedar Ekstasi Ditangkap" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/3/97, p. 6; "Drug Situation in Sabah Serious: Ong" Borneo Bulletin, 11/10/97, p. 4. Back.

Note 74: "Pakistanis Tried for Trafficking Heroin" Jakarta Post, 12/1/87, p. 3; "Drug Bust" Straits Times, 6/26/97. Back.

Note 75: "4 Chinese Nabbed in Drug Swoop" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11.10/97, p. 24; "3 Die in Drug Bust" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/19/97, p. 20; "Drug Dealers Find 'Open' Market in Philippines" Straits Times, 6/21/97. Back.

Note 76: Dare to Strike; Twenty-Five Years of the Central Narcotics Bureau, Singapore, 1996, p. 75. Back.

Note 77: "65 WN Nigeria Ditangkap Selundupkan Heroin" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/17/97, p. 6; "Lagi, 2WN Nigeria Ditangkap Simpan 3.6 Kg Heroin" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/12/97, p. 12; "More Nigerians Arrested for Heroin Possession" Jakarta Post, 11/12/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 78: "104,919 Butir Ecstasy Dibakar" Kompas, 12/3/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 79: "5 Held on Heroin Charges" Manila Bulletin, 11/20/97, p. 1; "Nigerian, Two Pals Held for Heroin" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/20/97, p.20; "Nigerian Caught Smuggling Heroin" Jakarta Post, 9/2/97, p. 6. Back.

Note 80: "Containers of Garments Top 'MintZoom' Cargo Manifest" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/31/97, p. 14; "Cambodia Marijuana Seized in Vietnam" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/20/97, p. 2; "Drug Traffic Arrests" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 4/28/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 81: "Over 100,000 Ecstasy Pills, Marijuana Go Up in Flames" Jakarta Post, 12/3/97, p. 3; "Singaporean Arrested for Drug Smuggling" Jakarta Post, 11/4/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 82: Dare to Strike; Twenty-Five Years of the Central Narcotics Bureau, Singapore, 1996, p. 62 Back.

Note 83: Again, the person in question has agreed to speak only under the condition of anonymity. Back.

Note 84: "ASEAN Police Chiefs to Step Up War on Drugs" Straits Times, 6/6/97; "Mekong Nations Join Hands to Fight Drug Scourge" Straits Times, 7/12/97. Back.

Note 85: "Thailand and Cambodia Agree on Drug Fight" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 5/2/97, p. 15; "Laos and China Agree to Co-Ordinate Drug Efforts" Vientiane Times, 11/5/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 86: "Two Nations Halt Anti-Drugs Gains" Bangkok Post, 9/6/97, p. 10; "Drug Fight Officials Meet Today" Viet Nam News, 11/26/97, p. 1. Back.

Note 87: "Thai Anti-Drug Drive Hurt by Economic Slowdown" Vientiane Times, 11/26/97, p. 7; "Silk: The Great Anti-Drug?" Vientiane Times, 11/19/97, p. 11. Back.

Note 88: "Drug Dealers Get Death Penalty" Jakarta Post, 11/7/97, p. 6; "58 Detained in Raid on Gang Using Turf Club as Drug Den" Straits Times, 9/14/97, p. 26 Back.

Note 89: "Tighter Drug Checks to be Implemented" The Nation (Thailand) 11/13/97, p. A2; "Private Sector Joins War on Drugs" The Nation (Thailand) 11/12/97, p. A2; "Equipment Control a Way to Curb Synthetic Drugs" Straits Times, 7/27/97. Back.

Note 90: M.M. Kritz and C.B. Keely "Introduction" in their edited volume Global Trends in Migration: Theory and Research on International Migration Movements Staten Island, Center for Migration Studies, 1981, p. xiii-xiv. Back.

Note 91: R. Cohen The New Helots: Migrants and the Internatinal Division of Labor Aldershot, Avebury, 1987, p. 40. Back.

Note 92: E.S. Lee "A Theory of Migration" in J.A. Jackson (ed.) Migration: Sociological Studies (2), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 282-97. Back.

Note 93: W. Petersen "International Migration" in R. Turner, (ed.) Annual Review of Sociology Palo Alto, Annual Reviews, 1978. Back.

Note 94: "Labour Migration in Southeast Asia: Analysis, Cooperation Needed" TRENDS (Journal of the Intitute of Southeast Asia Studies, Singapore), 9/27/97. Back.

Note 95: "AIDS Time Bomb Ticks Away Among Asia's Migrant Labor" Viet Nam News, 11/2/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 96: "Illegal Workers Dumped Far From Shore" Straits Times, 11/18/97. Back.

Note 97: "Colour-Coded Tags for 1.2 Million Foreign Workers" New Straits Times (Malaysia), 11/27/97, p. 4; "Foreign Workers May be Sent to Key Sectors" New Straits Times (Malaysia), 12/8/97, p. 14. Back.

Note 98: Adi, R. Beberapa Aspek Tenaga Kerja Kontrak Internasional Jakarta, Research Center Atma Jaya University, 1986. Back.

Note 99: See the sources mentioned in J. Vredenbregt De Bawaenners in Hun Moederland en in Singapore Leiden, Luctor et Emergo, PhD Thesis in Cultural Anthropology, 1968; also M. Witlox "Met Gevaar voor Lijf en Goed: Mekkagangers in Nederlands-Indie in de 19de Eeuw" Islamitische Pelgrimstochten (ed. W. Janssen and H. de Jonge) Muiderberg, Coutinho, Netherlands, 1991, p. 26. Back.

Note 100: "Bangladeshi Workers Conned into Paying Thousands to Work Here" Straits Times, 6/8/97; "Bangladeshi Team to Help Weed Out Dishonest Agents" Straits Times, 6/19/97. Back.

Note 101: "Raid Flushes Out Illegal Workers From Water Tank" Straits Times, 8/8/97; "Suspects Tell How They Sneaked Into Singapore to Get Work" Straits Times, 7/24/97; "Man Paid Illegal Workers Not to Testify at his Trial" Straits Times, 7/28/97. Back.

Note 102: Nota Over de Invoering van Staatstoezicht op de Werving van Inlanders op Java en Madoera Bestemd voor de Buitenbezittingen of voor Plaatsen Buiten Nederlandsche Indie met Uitzondering van de Kolonie Suriname, Batavia, Landsdrukkerij, 1907, p. 8. Back.

Note 103: "Kawin Sepak-bola Itu Masalah Biasa" Jawa Pos, 1/10/92; ""Belum Lelaki Kalau Belum ke Malaysia" Jawa Pos, 1/14/92. Back.

Note 104: "Rules of the Game" Far Eastern Economic Review, 5/23/96, p. 66; "70 Illegals Rescued From Capsized Boats Off Muar" Straits Times, 7/27/97; : "The Sting" Straits Times, 10/27/97; "4 Soldiers Held in Johor Murder Case" Straits Times, 6/7/97. Back.

Note 105: "Army to Supervise Indoesian Labor Export" Jakrata Post, 9/4/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 106: "Police to Target Hiring of Illegals" The Nation (Thailand), 11/24/97, p. A2. Back.

Note 107: "Dangerous Addiction: Thai Businesses Depend on Illegal Immigrants" Far Eastern Economic Review, 5/23/97, p. 67. Back.

Note 108: "Thailand to Deport Illegal Aliens" Jakarta Post, 12/4/97. Back.

Note 109: "Thailand Tangkap Pekerja Gelap Myanmar Dalam Tindak Kekerasan" Suara Pembaruan, 11/24/97, p. 7; "Hadsaifong District Authority Talks to Illegal Emigrants" Vientiane Times, 9/17-19/97, p. 11; "Slaves to the Law" Far Eastern Economic Review, 5/23/97, p. 64. Back.

Note 110: See James Francis Warren Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore (1880-1940) Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1993. Back.

Note 111: "Arrests in Singapore" Manila Bulletin, 11/12/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 112: "Cackdown on Rings That Bring in Foreign Call Girls" Straits Times, 7/14/97; "First Students, Then Call Girls" Straits Times, 7/22/97. Back.

Note 113: "Banyak Wanita di Bawah Umur Melacur" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/25/97, p. 7; "Fishermen Involved in Prostitution" Jakarta Post, 11/29/97, p. 2; "Banyak Tempat Hiburan Jadi Tempat Prostitutsi" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/12/97, p. 6. Back.

Note 114: "Alleged Call Girls Detained" Borneo Bulletin, 11/12/97, p. 1; "Pimps Jailed, Call Girls Fined" Borneo Bulletin, 11/13/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 115: See, for example, Nicholas Bornoff Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage, and Sex in Contemporary Japan London, Grafton, 1991. See also "2 Arrested" Straits Times, 7/3/97. Back.

Note 116: "Australia Attracts Sex Workers" The Nation (Thailand) 9/5/97, p. A3. Back.

Note 117: "Asian Sex Slaves" The New Paper (Singapore) 9/12/97, p. 35. Back.

Note 118: "The Neighborhood Trade in Women" The Nation (Thailand) 12/9/97, p. A5. Back.

Note 119: "New Law Targets Human Trafficking" The Nation (Thailand) 11/30/97, p. A3. Back.

Note 120: "Authorities Get Nowhere in Fight Against Prostitution" Cambodia Times, 7/14/97, p. 8. Back.

Note 121: "Flesh Trade Continues to Thrive" The Nation (Thailand), 9/5/97, p. A3. Back.

Note 122: "Alarming Exploitation of Children in Asia" Manila Bulletin, 11/7/97, p. 11. Back.

Note 123: "Innocents Who Have Seen Too Much -- What Can Be Done?" The Nation (Thailand), 12/2/97, p. A2. Back.

Note 124: "Police Aim for Child Sex Suspects" Phnom Penh Post, 10/24 - 11/6/97, p. 2; "Second Pedophile Suspect Arrested" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/5/97, p. 8. Back.

Note 125: "Child-Trafficking Suspect Questioned in Rome" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/13/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 126: "Pelajaran Dari Filipina: Pemberantasan Pelacuran Anak" Kompas, 12/1/97, p. 20. Back.

Note 127: "Pagsanjan, Surga Pedofil" Kompas, 12/1/97, p. 21; "24 Austrailans Banned" Manila Bulletin, 11/5/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 128: "The Ten Billion Dollar Black Market in Endangered Animals" New York Times Magazine, 2/16/97, p. 28. Back.

Note 129: "Populasi Harimau Sumatera Terancam dan Mengancam" Angkatan Bersenjata 11/25/97, p. 5; "Toothless Environmental Laws Keep Wildlife Trade Healthy" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/10/97, p. 3. For the important place of the tiger in Chinese culture and its indigenous pharmacopoeia, see Edward Schafer's fascinating study The Vermilion Bird,: T'ang Images of the South, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967, p. 228-9. Back.

Note 130: "Drugs and 40 Tusks Seized in Manila" Straits Times, 7/10/97; "3 African States May Get to Sell Ivory to Japan" Straits Times, 6/20/97. Back.

Note 131: "Cultural Gulfs Snag Conservation Efforts" Straits Times, 6/13/97. Back.

Note 132: "Restaurateur Fined For Having Exotic Animlas in Fridge" Straits Times, 12/20/97, p. 51. Back.

Note 133: "The Big Task" Vientiane Times, 9/13-16/97, p. 12 passim. Back.

Note 134: "The Ten Billion Dollar Black Market in Endangered Animals" New York Times Magazine, 2/16/97, p. 30. These items are prized by collectors, not epicures. Back.

Note 135: "Foiled -- Plot to Smuggle Out Rare Turtles" Straits Times, 9/13/97; Photo with Caption, Indonesian Observer, 9/9/97, p. 4; "Endangered Tortoises Seized From Mini-Mart" Straits Times, 6/5/97. Back.

Note 136: "Ornithologist Exposes Threat to Rare Birds" The Nation (Thailand) 11/29/97, p. A1. Back.

Note 137: "Foreign Botanists Stealing Plants From Endau Rompin" New Straits Times (Malaysia), 12/1/97, p. 1; "Ramos Cracks Down on Herb Hunters" Straits Times, 12/2/97. Back.

Note 138: "Two Thais Killed on Border" The Nation (Thailand) 11/26/97, p. A6; "Eagle-Wood Trees, Once Abundant, Now Driven to Extinction" Viet Nam News, 11/16/97, p. 7. Back.

Note 139: "Fate of Jalied Thais Linked to 'Trat 11'" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/12/97, p. 1, 8; "31 Arrested In Sihanoukville for Illegal Fishing" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/6/97, p. 11. Back.

Note 140: "209 Unit Pukat Harimau Dimusnahkan" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/8/97, p. 8; "Navy Catches Filipino Boats" Jakarta Post, 11/29/97, p. 2; "Chinese Fishermen on Trial" Jakarta Post, 9/5/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 141: For illegal mining and extraction see "DENR Cracks Down on Illegal Mining" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/25/97, p. 15; also "Pailin Residents, Thai Firms Cash In On Post KR-Gem Rush" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/19/97, p. 9. During a fieldwork trip to the Thai/Burmese border near Mae Sot in the early 1990's, I saw gems being traded in back alleys of Mae Sot town, not just on the main strip of gem shops; some of the merchants who were engaged in this commerce also had attack rifles loaded in the backs of their jeeps. Gem smuggling is huge business on this frontier, as it is on the Thai border with Cambodia as well. On the Burmese boundary, the shallow draught of the Moei River (about 4 feet) makes gem smuggling very easy -- I was able to wade across the border into Burma about a mile north of the Mae Sot/Myawaddy check point with no problems -- a motorized patrol skiff, manned by Burmese border guards, came down the river only infrequently. Burmese traders I spoke with said the dangers of this commerce were very real, however -- someone had been shot trying to transport contraband goods only the week before I had gotten there. For a discussion of the area, see Mya Than's "Myanmar's External Trade" ISEAS Current Economic Affairs Series, ISEAS (Singapore), 1992, p. 59; also his "The Golden Quadrangle of Mainland Southeast Asia: A Myanmar Perspective" Economics and Finance Working Paper #5, ISEAS (Singapore), 1996, p. 13. Back.

Note 142: "5 Taiwanese Held For Logs" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/1/97, p. 16; "Smugglers Leave Central Pine Forests Bleeding" Viet Nam News, 11/23/97, p. 9. Back.

Note 143: "RCAF to Focus on Loggers Again" Cambodia Times, 8/18/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 144: "Logs Seized in Mekong River Raid" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 4/14/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 145: "Thais, Cambodians Meet to Discuss Logging" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/13/97, p. 2; "Police Blame Thai Business for Koh Kong Logging Rise" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 4/23/97, p. 7. Back.

Note 146: "Timber Trucks Load Up in Ratanakkiri" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/10/97, p. 13. Back.

Note 147: "Teng Boonma Enters the Logging Business" Phnom Penh Post, 10/10/97, p. 8; "Group Presents Evidence of Illegal Log Deal" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/23/97, p. 11. Back.

Note 148: "Swiss Group Pulls Out of Timber Monitoring Deal" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/17/97, p. 13. Back.

Note 149: Mya Than's "Myanmar's External Trade" ISEAS Current Economic Affairs Series, ISEAS (Singapore), 1992, p. 58. Back.

Note 150: "Amid State of Decay, Crime Pays" The Nation (Thailand), 11/15/97, p. A4; "RF to Seek Closure of Border Checkpoints" The Nation (Thailand) 11/12/97, p. A3. Back.

Note 151: Bertil Lintner Cross Border Drug Trade in the Golden Triangle, International Boundaries Research Unit, Durham (UK), 1991, p. 29. Back.

Note 152: A parallel contraband, crossing the Borneo land border but moving in the opposite direction, (Malaysia to Indonesia), this source told me, is the commerce in bullets and firearms, which are much cheaper and easier to procure in Sarawak and Sabah than they are in Indonesian Borneo. Back.

Note 153: "Another Illegal Logging Op. Detected in Sabah" New Straits Times, 11/27/97, p. 6; "Logs Worth $1.2m Seized in Illegal Logging Raid in Sabah" Straits Times, 9/11/97; "Timber Theft Near Malaysian Border" Jakarta Post, 9/4/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 154: "Ribuan Meter Kubik Kayu Illegal Disita di Samarinda" Suara Pembaruan, 11/23/97, p. 6; "Timber Thieves Caught in the Act" Jakarta Post, 11/20/97, p 2. Back.

Note 155: "Customs Well Short of Plan" Viet Nam News, 11/19/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 156: "Struggle or Smuggle" Far Eastern Economic Review 2/22/97, p. 26 passim. Back.

Note 157: "Officials Get Tough With Errant Traders" New Straits Times (Malaysia), 11/29/97, p. 9; "Customs to be Computerized" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 3/18/97, p. 6. Back.

Note 158: Mya Than "Myanmar's External Trade" Currnet Econmic Affairs Series, ISEAS, 1992, p. 57-8. Back.

Note 159: "Border Market -- Big Problem for Vietnam" Vietnam Economic News #40, 10/1-8/93, p. 4. Back.

Note 160: These interviews were conducted with Bugis sailors on Jakarta's Sunda Kelapa docks in August and September of 1998; I cannot give the names of crew memebers (or their ships) for obvious reasons. These sailors, in fact, spoke of the true "outlaws" in Indonesian waters as being the maritime police -- agents who can shake down passing ships with near impunity. Interviews were also conducted with Indonesian laborers (in a variety of occupations) in Singapore. Back.

Note 161: "Believe it or Not" Far Eastern Economic Review, 10/27/97, p. 23. Back.

Note 162: "Cigarette Haul" Straits Times, 7/19/97,; "Cigarettes Smuggled in Car Compartment" Straits Times 7/5/97; "$6.3m Fine for Cigarette Smuggler" Straits Times, 6/23/97. Back.

Note 163: "Struggle or Smuggle" Far Eastern Economic Review, 2/22/97, p. 27. Back.

Note 164: "Smuggled Champion Cigarettes Confiscated" Manila Bulletin 11/10/97, p. 20; "Blue-Seal Cigarettes Seized" Manila Bulletin, 11/1/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 165: "Agents Seize 29 Smuggled Scooters" Manila Bulletin, 11/19/97, p. 12. Back.

Note 166: "Syndicates Making $1.2m Yearly From Stolen Vehicles" Straits Times, 6/6/97; "Customs Seized 192 Luxury Cars Smuggled in Via Causeway" Straits Times, 11/3/97. Back.

Note 167: "Boeing Jet Engine Smuggle Try Foiled"Manila Bulletin, 11/15/97, p. 12; "Syndicates", Ibid., Back.

Note 168: "The Fine Line on Pirated Goods" Jakarta Post 8/31/97, p. 1; "Report Music Pirates and Get Paid", Straits Times, 10/16/97, p. 38; see also "Importer Resmi LD/Video Statis Perlu Ditinjau Izinnya" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/27/97, p. 9 Back.

Note 169: "VN Bootleggers Targeted" The Nation (Thailand) 12/6/97, p. A6. Back.

Note 170: "War Agaisnt CD Piracy" Boreno Bulletin, 11/1/97, p. 1; "Pirated Video Seized", Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/18/97, p. 16. Back.

Note 171: "Report Music Pirates and Get Paid", Straits Times, 10/16/97, p. 38 Back.

Note 172: "Porn Video CD's Seized" Straits Times, 7/25/97; "Smut Peddlers Supplied by KL Based Syndicate" Straits Times, 10/27/97. Back.

Note 173: "Peredaran Bebas Pornografi Tingkatkan Pelecehan Seks" Suara Pembaruan, 11/19/97, p. 6; "Pemutaran Film Porno Masih Terus Berlangsung di Medan" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/13/97, p. 7; "Traders Flog New-Release Movies and SkinFlicks" Jakarta Post, 8/31/97, p. 9. Back.

Note 174: "Rise in Number of Pirated Tapes, VCD's Seized" Straits Times, 11/29/97, p. 60; "Pornographic Tapes and CD's Easily Available Here" Straits Times, 11/10/97. Back.

Note 175: "The Fine Line on Pirated Goods" Jakarta Post 8/31/97, p. 1 Back.

Note 176: "Pirated Software: Your Gain and Loss" Jakarta Post, 8/31/97, p. 9. Back.

Note 177: "BSA to Target Provinces" The Nation (Thailand) 12/9/97, p. F2; "Malaysia Tougher on Piracy" The Nation (Thailand) 12/9/97, p. F2. Back.

Note 178: "Hong Kong Haven for Pirated Software" Borneo Bulletin, 11/21/97, p. 16. Back.

Note 179: "Swift Action Needed to Deal with Software Pirates" Straits Times, 7/24/97 Back.

Note 180: "$120,000 in Artifacts Seized From Smugglers" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily 2/7/97, p. 14. Back.

Note 181: "Campaign to Return Stolen Art Treasures" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 2/12/97, p. 7; ""Cambodian Artifacts Returned by Thailand" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 1/29/97, p. 9. Back.

Note 182: "US Returns Sculpture Stolen from Temple" The Nation (Thailand) 11/8/97, p. A2. Back.

Note 183: "Safety Measures Needed for Ancient Cultural Artifacts" Vientiane Times, 10/4-7/97, p. 15. Back.

Note 184: "Five Nabbed for Falsifying Shipping Documents for Crew" Jakarta Post, 11/3/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 185: "Cops Bust International Credit Card Ring" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 12/1/97, p. 2. Back.

Note 186: "Couple Arrested for Forging IC's and Visit Passes" Straits Times, 11/7/97,. Back.

Note 187: "100 Smugglers Caught" Borneo Bulletin, 11/10/97, p. 4; "Premier Warns of Illegal Garment Exports" Weekly Review of the Cambodia Daily, 4/9/97, p. 9; "Halting Print Pirates is not an Open Book" Jakarta Post, 8/31/97, p. 9. Back.

Note 188: "Thai Traffickers Need Money For Release" Weekly Review of Cambodia Daily, 3/24/97, p. 1; "2 Fined For Stealing Sand" Manila Bulletin, 11/20/97, p. 4. Back.

Note 189: "500 Kilos of Dog Meat Seized in Bacolod Port" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/10/97, p. 14; "Bootleggers Jailed" Borneo Bulletin, 11/17/97, p. 4. Back.

Note 190: These interviews were carried out among Chinese medicine and marine-goods sellers in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, all under the auspices of a year-long Thomas Watson Fellowship in 1990. Back.

Note 191: "Market Officials Bust Smugglers in Binh Dinh" Viet Nam News, 11/27/97, p. 3. Back.

Note 192: Interview with Edith Mirante, Director of Project Mage, and also her book, Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993. Back.

Note 193: "Diringkus, Oknum Mahasiswa Jadi Bandar Heroin" Angkatan Bersenjata, 11/15/97, p. A6. Back.