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Illegal Trades Across National Borders of Mainland Southeast Asia

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2010 / The Trade in Human Beings for Sex in Southeast Asia.

Mainland Southeast Asia, or Indochina—as it has long been known due to its position between India and China—has been marked by decades of modern trafficking in illegal goods. Illegal trades in Mainland Southeast Asia are numerous, extremely diverse, and most likely increasingly complex. Of course, human trafficking and drug trafficking are two of the most prominent illegal trades of the area: human trafficking, in relation to the huge regional prostitution market it feeds—Thailand being worldwide infamous for that reason; and drug trafficking, in relation to opium and heroin produced in bulk in the ill-famed Golden Triangle. Complexity arises from the fact that human trafficking and drug trafficking can be said to be linked in some places and to some extent, whether drug consumption by prostitutes—and by many of their clients—is concerned or whether economic havoc created by excessively brutal and rapid eradication of illicit crops pushes women into prostitution. However, as we will see, complexity is even increased by the fact that many other illegal trades feed off these two major trafficking activities and their existing, and sometimes congruous, networks. Some of these trades may, at some point, contribute to one another; they may also proceed, to some extent, from propitious specific regional dynamics (trafficking in drugs and arms in the context of armed conflicts for example). It is this great diversity and complexity of illegal trading of Mainland Southeast Asia that this paper deals with, focusing on two of its most pervasive phenomenon: drug trafficking and human trafficking.

Opium. Uncovering the politics of the poppy

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2010 /Harvard University Press.

The book sets out to expose the politics of opium. In particular it explores the world’s two major regions for illicit production of opium and heroin – the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand and the Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. These remote mountainous regions of Southeast and Southwest Asia produce more than 90 per cent of the world’s illicit opium. The book reveals how, when and why illicit opium production emerged and what sustains it. The text exposes the real drivers of the modern day trade in opium and shows why a century of international effort, and forty years of a US-led war on drugs, have failed to eradicate it.

Production agricole de drogues illicites et conflictualités intra-étatiques : dimensions économiques et stratégiques

Pierre-arnaud Chouvy & Laurent Laniel / 2006 / Cahiers de la sécurité.

À travers des cas d’étude choisis parmi les principales régions productrices de drogues illicites au monde (Afghanistan, Afrique de l’Ouest, Birmanie, Bolivie, Colombie, Maroc et Pérou), cet article brosse un panorama mondial dans l’objectif de mieux comprendre comment ces productions peuvent soit favoriser l’émergence de conflits, soit faciliter leur prolongation ou, à l’inverse, prévenir certaines crises. Ce sont ainsi les relations complexes qu’entretiennent l’économie agricole des drogues illicites et les conflictualités qui sont analysées dans le contexte déterminant du sous-développement et de la mondialisation.

Yaa Baa: Production, Traffic and Consumption of Methamphetamine in Mainland Southeast Asia

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy & Joël Meissonnier, 2004, Singapore university Press - Irasec.

The abuse of methamphetamines in Southeast Asia has become a major problem over the past decade. Thailand has been particularly hard hit: methamphetamine abuse now affects all sectors of Thai society. In the early 1990s, methamphetamine manufacturers moved their laboratories across the border into Burma, and began large-scale production. The new cheaper product, yaa baa or 'madness medicine', flooded the local market and it has also been found in Europe and the United States.

The authors analyse the growth of methamphetamine production in Burma in its political context, which makes the book valuable. There are many books about opium and heroin production in the Golden Triangle, but this is the first about methamphetamines. This book fills an important gap in the literature about the Golden Triangle.