Commentary: Myanmar’s struggle is exacerbating a flood of meth throughout Southeast Asia | USAEMALL.com

A REGIONAL CRISIS

Of particular note is the role maritime routes play. The boat carrying the crystal meth seized by the Indian Coast Guard last November was intercepted 8 nautical miles from Barren Island, a volcanic island due east of India’s Andaman and Nicobar island chain, and roughly southwest of Yangon.

The crew on the boat had a satellite phone and was using Starlink to navigate. Intelligence sources believe the shipment originated in Tachilek in Shan State just across the Thai border from Mae Sai, and was shipped via Yangon, bound for several foreign markets including Australia and Japan – probably after being subdivided somewhere en route.

In July 2024, Indonesian authorities seized 106kg of crystal meth from a vessel off the Riau Islands. Three Indian nationals were arrested. Reports citing sources said the crystal meth was bound for Brisbane, Australia.

Meanwhile, it appears that Sabah, Malaysia, has also emerged as a new hub, with fishermen often recruited to ferry drugs across the Myanmar-Malaysia-Indonesia-Philippines route.

For instance, authorities confiscated 1,143kg of crystal meth in Sabah and Sarawak last year, nearly three times the amount the previous year.

The volume of crystal meth seized from boats is mirrored by higher volumes of drugs seized per shipment on land routes.

Thailand’s northern and northeastern borders with Myanmar and Laos respectively remain the busiest trafficking corridors. The porous route to India through that country’s northeast is also increasingly a problem for law enforcement.

In January this year, Thai forces in Chiang Rai province, for instance, seized over 1 tonne of crystal meth assessed as headed for markets in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

And just last week (Jul 11), security forces in Zokhawthar, a town in India’s Mizoram state on the border with Myanmar, challenged two men with backpacks who then shed their packs and jumped into a river which they crossed into Myanmar. The packs revealed methamphetamine pills worth over US$13 million.

That was just one of almost daily seizures of thousands of methamphetamine tablets in northeast India, where rising local drug addiction has long been a worry. In parts of the region, like Manipur, the flow and use of drugs across the border feed into ethno-nationalist tensions entwined with mafia-like politics fuelling barely contained internal conflicts.

In terms of methamphetamine transit as well as use in Southeast Asia, Thailand remains an epicentre. Seizures of the drug, in both tablet and crystal form, continue to rise.

With little methamphetamine pills known as “yaba” retailing locally for only around 20 baht or less than US$1 each, stemming the tide is a daily battle for Thailand’s Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB).

“It’s a nationwide epidemic” said Ms Sritrakool Waeladee, director of the foreign affairs bureau of the ONCB, at a recent briefing at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand.

In 2024, Thailand seized more than 900 tonnes of controlled precursor chemicals, while meth tablet seizures rose by over 55 per cent from 2023 to 2024.