The traffickers silver Ford pickup is filled with 400,000 tiny Yaba or madness drug pills, the cheap mix of methamphetamine and caffeine preferred by workers from Thailand to the Philippines. Each orange pill is about the size of the head of a straw and bears a WY stamp, marking it as manufactured by the United Wa State Army, one of many militias which operate beyond the control of Myanmar's ruling junta.

In what has been described as the worlds longest-running civil war, a bewildering array of ethnic armed organisations have been fighting the countrys military on and off for 70 years. In Myanmars north-eastern Shan State, warlords finance their armies by making narcotics in partnership with transnational organised crime syndicates. Its been much the same since the country won independence from British rule in 1948. The only thing that has changed is the product: opium fields have given way to even more lucrative ice factories.

Among the dead mans cargo in Thailand are two distinctive green packets of Guanyinwang Chinese tea. To those who know what to look for its a sign of quality. Inside each foil wrap is a kilo of high-grade crystal methamphetamine, largely made for export to more lucrative markets like Australia.

Its estimated that up to 70 per cent of the methamphetamine on Australias streets is cooked up in Myanmar. But its just part of a complex and shadowy production and distribution web. The base drugs, or precursors, largely come from China, shipped from legitimate chemical factories in hundreds of tonnes each year. The cash raised from drug sales is laundered through more than 200 casinos that have grown like a cancer through Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia over the last decade.

The narcotics are then shipped by air and sea through a sophisticated logistics network to the streets of Australia.

The Golden Triangle is the meeting point of three countries - Myanmar, Thailand and Laos - and it has long been the gateway for the regions drug trade. Its the perfect witch's brew of geography, crime and political interests that allows the drug trade to flourish. And its an industry that cannot possibly exist on this scale without the tacit or active support of some governments in the region.

A terrace farm in the largely poor Shan State in Myanmar.Credit:EPA

At a police checkpoint an hours drive north-west of Myanmars old royal capital Mandalay, trucks and cars rumbling south are cycled through a mobile X-ray machine. The unit has intercepted tonnes of narcotics and precursors since it was installed. This disruption of drug profits made it a target of militia forces in August. The strike with a rocket launcher didnt destroy the unit but, in a running battle, the retreating militia force killed more than a dozen police and soldiers.

Australian Federal Police liaison officer Jared Taggart is in his last week of a four-year posting working with Myanmar police. The AFP has a two-decade-long association with the country that began with attempts to stem the heroin trade. He admires his counterparts, saying that despite pitiful pay they are fighting on the front line in a battle that helps defend Australia. It's very highly likely that 60 to 70 per cent of the methamphetamines we see in our community have emanated from Myanmar-based production, he says.

Inside a drug lab in the jungles of Myanmar.Credit:Nine

He reels off the wins for law enforcement: In the last four years, our joint activities with Myanmar police force have resulted in the seizure of more than 22 tonnes of narcotics and 680 tonnes of precursor chemicals. That's more than $2 billion worth of drugs not making it to the shores of Australia. And that's probably more than 52 million hits of drugs that haven't made it into our community.

But with wastewater analysis showing Australians spent a staggering $8.6 billion in 2019 buying more than 11 tonnes of meth, this thin blue frontline is catching raindrops in a thunderstorm.

At a police base on the outskirts of Mandalay, Taggart leads a tour through a wired-off compound about the size of a basketball court; a quarter of its concrete floor is covered by industrial-sized drums holding 60 tonnes of chemicals used in the production of ice.

The primary ingredients in methamphetamine are ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. To make the illicit narcotic they have to be dissolved in a slush of solvents like drain cleaners, phosphorus, sulphuric and hydrochloric acid. Every kilo of meth yields five kilos of stinking toxic sludge thats flushed into the jungle. I think our community in Australia doesn't really have a strong sense of the harmful products that are going into what many may perceive to be very pure drugs, Taggart says. These are really base poisonous, harmful chemicals.

A drug lab in the Myanmar jungle.Credit:Nine

The only thing more toxic than the drug labs of Myanmar is the politics that makes it all possible. The country is awash with warring interests, which has left a large swath of Shan State under the control of dozens of ethnic armed organisations and militias.

Among the litany of peace deals and uneasy truces one was struck in the 1980s between the ruling military and the countrys most powerful ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army, which would have a dramatic effect on the drug trade. The essence of the agreement was captured in a report by the United States Institute of Peace as the United Wa State Army pledging to not fight against government forces in exchange for the freedom to pursue whatever business activities it chose. It chose to cultivate opium.

The report noted that deal enabled the UWSA to build a drug empire that outmatched anything [Myanmar] had seen.

The United Wa State Armys most profitable drug is now meth, and the billions it makes fund an army of more than 20,000 men. It has strong links with the Chinese Communist Party and its weapons, like most of the chemicals it uses for meth production, come from China. Its arsenal includes Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles, heavy artillery and armoured fighting vehicles.

An International Crisis Group report last year noted that the drugs trade would not be possible without high-level corruption in those countries including China, Laos and Thailand - through which large consignments of drugs or their precursors are smuggled.

China has a particular responsibility to prevent precursor smuggling; it is the main source of these chemicals, but has almost never intercepted shipments crossing its border with Myanmar.

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone is 3000 hectares of agricultural land on the Laos side of the Mekong River, leased for 50 years to the Hong Kong-based Kings Romans Group. It is one of 14 economic zones embraced by the cash-strapped Lao government and now incorporated as part of Chinas Belt and Road initiative to link Asia to Europe by land and sea. The groups chief executive, Chinese businessman Zhao Wei, won the land on a promise of jobs and prosperity.

But the US Treasury has declared Zhaos main business is running a transnational criminal syndicate. It has sanctioned Zhao and his associates for facilitating the storage and distribution of heroin, methamphetamine and other narcotics for illicit networks, including the United Wa State Army. The group is also accused of an array of horrendous illicit activities like child prostitution and sex slavery. Zhao denies the allegations.

The Kings Romans Casino in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos.Credit:Nine

Cranes crowd the horizon over the zone and at its heart is the Kings Romans Casino, which lures Chinese punters from a homeland where gambling is illegal. Its gaudy crown rises on the banks of the Mekong in the shadow of a massive golden hotel thats under construction. Inside the casino is a gauche collision of faux-classical European frescoes and statues. All the tables in one wing were devoted to a popular Asian card game, Tiger-Dragon, but this day there are few players and bored croupiers are falling asleep at empty tables.

Kings Romans is also notorious for trafficking endangered animals. Laos has declared the tiger extinct in the wild but there are tigers here - hidden from view and farmed for their body parts. Some restaurants in the zone once advertised tiger and bear on the menu until bad publicity from international organisation the Environmental Investigation Agency forced that trade underground and a tiger compound next to the casino was moved.

After several attempts we find an extremely nervous taxi driver who is willing to take us to the new, larger tiger farm. Past a quarry on the edge of the zone a narrow dirt road ends at a high-walled compound that rises up the side of a hill. The guard waves me off as I approach on foot and knows enough English to confirm that he is not Lao but Burmese.

He is familiar with another English word.

Is this the tiger zoo?

Yes, he nods.

Are there many tigers in here?

Yes.

Standing on the Thai side of the Mekong, Jeremy Douglas, regional representative for the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime, doesnt hide his contempt for Zhao Weis handiwork as he stares at the building just a few hundred metres away. It's an abomination, frankly, he says.

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Hes tracked the dismal rise of it and the other casinos that have bloomed in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, all aiming to draw Chinese cash. This is really in essence a massive governance failure, Douglas says. What we're looking at is some parts of some countries are not under control of government, so basically it's a free space for organised crime to do their business.

"And then of course you have places, like across the river here, where you can launder the money and then you have the market on this side. So it's got all the elements that organised crime needs to really do their work.

In three days spent on the border with Thai military and narcotics police, they make it clear that they believe they are battling both government failure in Myanmar and a Laos government that is patron to a criminal enterprise.

They show photographs of Zhao Wei in the front rank of a gathering of regional drug enforcement chiefs. An honoured guest of the Lao delegation, he arrived in an armour-plated Land Rover with six bodyguards and donated money to the regional war on drugs.

Zhao Wei, head of the Kings Romans Group, at a meeting of regional law enforcement officials.Credit:Nine

Do you have any doubt that Zhao Wei is involved in the drug trade? I ask the senior Thai narcotics officer who is scrolling through the pictures of the businessman and his entourage on his phone. Yes, of course he is, he laughs.

Seedy is too bland a description of the hotel in the Myanmar border town of Tachileik where we have arranged to meet a local drug dealer. The room stinks of stale cigarettes and in an ironic touch the wall over the bed is decorated with a painting of opium poppies. This is a place that does not try to hide its associations.

The dealer wears a black-and-red mask for the camera. Hes a relatively young man in his mid-thirties but his eyes have the faraway glaze of someone whose hope is lost.

He describes a world where the people who run the drug trade are untouchable, protected by their own armies, their wealth and their government connections. He doesnt believe the trade can be stopped, saying hes never seen a single holiday in trafficking. The more they lose the more they produce, he says.

A local drug dealer in Myanmar, who says he doesnt believe the trade can be stopped.Credit:Nine

While drug pirates are being shot and small dealers arrested, no warlords and few drug lords ever face justice.

But the AFP are tracking some of the big players. In June Australian Border Force officials found 1.6 tonnes of ice hidden in stereo speakers in sea cargo that arrived in Melbourne from Bangkok. It had an estimated street value of $1 billion.

Much of the consignment was wrapped in the distinctive Guanyinwang tea packaging, marking it as made in Myanmar. The seizure was linked to a drug tsar who first appeared on police's radar in 2011, Chinese-born Canadian Tse Chi Lop. Police have dubbed his network of five triads Sam Gor, for Tses Cantonese nickname Brother Number Three.

The AFP believes Tse leads the largest crime syndicate running drugs into Australia and he is the key target of an international investigation dubbed Operation Kungur.

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If that group controls, give or take, 50 to 70 per cent of the crystal meth trade hitting the streets of Australia, then they would be making $US8 billion a year, the UNs Jeremy Douglas says. And he of course would be the biggest player in that group. So we're talking about billionaires.

Police have dubbed a group of five known associates of Tse The Billionaires' Club.

Former AFP officer Roland Singor first identified Tse and says the meth trade in South-east Asia is now so big and profitable that rival groups have joined forces. There were a lot of turf wars between them and they've now come together as a united multinational corporate entity, if you like, Singor says. They have management centres throughout South-east Asia.

Singor says the syndicates operations are structurally separated so that the compromise of one unit does not affect the others. They're very cellular, he says. They have their own project teams and they answer back to Tse Chi Lop and his core group. And he answers to a broader community of investors and business partners.

Douglas hints that some of those business partners include governments. We're seeing some countries of this region essentially ceding bits of sovereignty, whether it's the special economic zone here or the parts of Shan State, these other special economic zones and casino zones that are popping up, Douglas says. These guys are buying parts of the region.

Chris Uhlmann is political editor for Nine News.

More here:

Inside the Golden Triangle, where warlords and drug barons reign - The Age