China’s planned pan-Asia railway network, reaching from Kunming in the north to Singapore in the south, is a signature project in Beijing’s One Belt One Road (Obor) initiative.
The economic benefits, if the 3,900 km network connecting all mainland Southeast Asian states with the Middle Kingdom goes forth as planned, could be enormous. There may also be troublesome aspects to countenance too, however: namely an increase in cross-border drug trafficking.
Infrastructure upgrades facilitate the exchange of people, goods, and culture. Yet they can also empower criminals seeking easier and speedier access to new destinations. Transporting illicit drugs via high-speed rail is nothing new.
The Taiwan High Speed Rail line that runs the length of the island’s west coast is an established pipeline for drug runners. In China, arrests of drug traffickers on its high-speed rail system are not uncommon.
One of the latest and most curious cases involved a Chinese smuggler returning from Myanmar with a batch of hollowed-out dragon fruits containing 1,031.28 grams of methamphetamine tablets.
The planned network is currently only moving ahead on the central sections connecting Kunming, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, with regional geopolitics stalling the eastern and western routes. Given its reach, this line is the most crucial, however.
The country that stands to benefit most is the landlocked, impoverished nation of Laos. An upland nation of 6.5 million people, it currently only has a very meager railway. With the central line in place, its leaders hope to make it a land-linked regional transit center.
Construction officially commenced in December 2016 for the Laotian portion of the line. Running from the China-Laos border to the capital, Vientiane, the route’s total length is 414 km, with bridges and tunnels comprising 62% of a line that traverses rough mountainous terrain.
There are to be 32 stations along the route, along which passenger trains will travel at 160-200 km per hour. The project will be completed in the year 2021. The Thai portion connecting Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima will also begin construction this year.
Laos is the focus here because it is the starting point of the Southeast Asian drug trade
High-speed rail suits individual drug runners perfectly, with passengers typically allowed 40 kg of luggage per person. At present, traveling from northern Laos to Bangkok takes close to 30 hours by automobile, and even longer during the rainy season. The Luang Namtha to Vientiane drive can be exceptionally draining due to the terrain. But with high-speed rail, a run from northern Laos to Bangkok will easily be reduced to a comfortable five to seven hours.
Laos is the focus here because it is the starting point of the Southeast Asian drug trade. The recent arrests of prominent Laotian drug lords confirmed the rising status of Laotian nationals as leader players in the regional trafficking web.
Alarmingly, the distribution network of Laotian drug lord Xaysana Keopimpha, mapped by the Thai Narcotic Suppression Bureau, followed almost the exact route of the central line. Drugs purchased from jungle depots near Laos’ border with Myanmar were then transported down to Vientiane before crossing into northeastern Thailand, Bangkok, and onward to the entire region.
Unfortunately, Laos has an underdeveloped anti-trafficking infrastructure. According to the US State Department, it is a major regional narcotics transit hub. Besides having porous borders, a security vacuum appears to exist in certain provinces.
The Lao police are underpaid and susceptible to corruption, while local elites – including allegedly relatives of former prime minister Thongsing Thammavong – are known to share ties with drug kingpins. Furthermore, in the absence of an existing railway system, Laos has no experience in railway security. It is the weakest link in the Southeast Asian anti-narcotics nexus.
While the pan-Asia railway project will move enormous amounts of people and goods across mainland Southeast Asia, it is clear there may be downsides too. Countries in the region can expect a rise in drug trafficking, and the international community must give special attention to Laos in order to nip it in the bud.
When land is open up and people have easy access for materials as well as for selling their agricultural produce, there is really no.point producing narcotic. 99% of farmers in lowland can survive with cash crops or other agriculture produce, certainly those in open up land can do the same.
Along with the new openness, the flies like smugglers, druggies, pimps and sex workers and other illegals etc. will inevitably follow the new trails.
Let us destroy all bridges, railroads, roads, ports — to stop drug trafficking! The idea is absurd. It is the economic development and optimism for future that will be the end of the drug trafficking profitability. So far, all we are getting from theWest are all kinds of attempts to slow down or outright sabotage connectivity, infrastructure, trade and mobility through wars, regime changes, expansion of terrorism. As a result, EU blocked a vital gas pipeline, South Stream to transport gas from Russia, accross Black Sea to Bulgaria and the rest of Balkans, to Europe. This defied economic logic, but empires do not worry about such things. Empires are only concerned with power over others. So, toll booths are to be placed accross the globe, so the inferior nations cannot control their fate. Various straights, channels, canals, roads, ports — all become a target. Syria is being kept from connectivity with Iraq, to prevent gas pipeline from Qatar/Iran joint field to be transported accross Iraq, Syria to Turkey and on to Europe. Kurds are doing the job on Syria’s borders, but not all of the border. This is why when Syria pushed ISIS out on its way to Al-Tanf, US stepped in to stop Syrian army, playing rear guard to ISIS — to prevent this major road to become cleared of ISIS and Iraq-Syria border post be secured betweoen two countries. A toll booth has been placed there in the form of US base. But both countries are determined to secure other border posts, and not all of them can be blocked. However, this merely illustrates the point. So, how much blocking is needed to prevent connectivity from China, accross countries of EEU (Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus), to EU border in Poland? This one cannot be controlled, as Poland dares not tell Germany to block land trasit to China. Everything is made to block China’s planned route from Greek port, accross Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary and central Europe. Using Albanian minority in Macedonia, for example. All is being done to bully Qatar to break relationship with Turkey, and plans for gas pipeline. Now, that Turkey is part of trio of regional powers shepharding the peace process for Syria in Astana — Russia, Turkey and Iran are enemies.
But it will backfire, as it is already backfiring. No roads or rail was necessary for the tsunami of refugees to reach Europe. They came in rubber boats, accross hills and corn fields of Balkans, cutting barbed wires on borders all the way to Germany, Sweden, Norway to the North, and Greece, Italy, France and Spain to the South.
Placing toll booths is not the answer. Controlling the globe is not the answer. Funding terrorists is not the answer. Global security and FREEDOM TO TRADE AND INTERCONNECT is the future. Not the freedom of trade, as trade is not a living being — and is just an empty word if people and countries do not have the freedom to trade with their neighbors.
This includes the freedom to be left alone, as it is at times what a person or a country needs. Let them be.
This is why we have such thing as sovereign countries that control borders
This is a job for countries and their institutions — to control crime and prevent criminals from operating cross-borders with impunity. And it is the very globalists that are for open borders, and less sovereignty of states. But the very globalists will be the first one to point out the problem with the connectivity if such connectivity is being established by states that are outside the control of globalist cabal.
People keep forgetting the bigger picture. Like all the articles written before by the many authors who contributed to this website on the OBOR, they are always quick to point out the debt loads those poorer nations will have to suffer and carry if they should participate in having those projects established in their own countries, and conveniently avoiding to mention the enormous economic and social benefits that will certainly accrue. Now, the ‘clever’ author of this article picks on another negative of having the high speed rail connection throughout the SE Asian nations-drugs. This problem can easily be solved if those countries take a lesson from Malaysia and Singapore. These 2 countries faced serious drug problems from about half a century ago. But today, one can almost say this is not a problem any more. Why? Because, if a persson is caught with just a minimal few grams of the any drug under the prohibited list, he/she is "KAPUTT!"; No matter young, old, girls, male/female, grand mother, etc etc, NO GOOD! They all go to the gallows! No amount of pleading will save that person. Not even from the president or prime minsiter of the country that the person belongs to. And this draconian law is still being enforced even now. It behooves anyone travelling to Malaysia and Singapore to very carefully read and heed the warning in small print on the disembarkation card he is required to fill up before landing. BE WARNED! They hang you. Not even Donald Trump can save you(assuming you are a US citizen).
The idiot who wrote this nonsense does not dare to show his name. A chickenshit coward. LOL!
So, because a person may become a criminal, we should not beget babies.
What a ridiculous point of view.…Are you saying this Pan-Asia rail project should be stopped because “China’s pan-Asia rail network” might facilitate the drug smuggling?
All countries along the proposed rail network are sovereign states; all have the full power to Control their borders, customs, immigration, etc. etc.
The ocean is an open highway for drug cartels to smuggle drugs from South America to the United States. Do you want to ban the ocean traffic, too?
Watch the US Coast Guard seize a narco sub laden with more than 5,600 pounds of cocaine
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-coast-guard-seize-narco-submarine-cocaine-pacific-ocean-2016-10