ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, Burma’s drug lords have reached agreements with the country’s military government according to which they can engage in any kind of business in exchange for cease-fire deals with the central authorities. This has enabled them to more than double Burma’s drug production since the late 1980s — and to engage in other lucrative businesses such as illegal aliens smuggling. The situation in Burma — and the Golden Triangle — underwent even more dramatic changes in the late 1980s. It began with a massive uprising for democracy that swept through nearly every town and major village in Burma in August-September 1988. Millions of people demonstrated against military rule and socialism, which had brought the country to the brink of total economic collapse. Trade and commerce — both legal and illegal — replaced revolutionary ideology as the main pursuit of the people living along the Yunnan frontier and in the Golden Triangle.
