Caught in the Center of the Drug War

by Matthew McDaniels

The Akha Hill Tribe people are caught in the center of the Drug War in the Golden Triangle. Neglected and ignored, often persecuted, some 300 Akha villages line the border with Burma, an extremely odd victim of the war on drugs. Neither the DEA or USAID has any time for these people, though both heroin and amphetamine pass through their villages on the way into Thailand. No poverty alleviation efforts can be found. Neither Agency shows any awareness of these people, nor do they have any funds available for things as simple as clean water. Caught on the border, the Akha can hardly have much say in what flows through the border areas or not, neither have they much reason to be concerned. Few look out for them, and the Thai Forestry Department is busy taking the little rice lands they do have.

Some ten years ago, while the US was imposing its mandate to stop opium cultivation in Thailand, the US Embassy said nothing while Akha villages were forced to relocate. Hardships imposed under a ‘crop substitution' program were of no concern and the substitution program was largely a lie. The reality was a poverty substitution program. A consistent income of even a dollar a day is unheard of in this region.

The Thai Forestry Department is taking as much land as they can from the Akha in order to plant pine, eucalyptus and other tree plantations. It has never been clear who-all-else is involved in these ‘reforestation' projects. While the Thai Forestry Department works hand-in-hand with the Petroleum Authority of Thailand on these projects, Meechai who is an oil company board member, also runs PDA (Population Development Association) in Thailand, which pretends to help the Akha - on the back side of the knife cut. Now PDA and PTT joint project signs can be seen near the villages; a marriage made in hell!

Naturally, the result of the massive farmland theft is a terrible increase in poverty for the Akha - making methamphetamine pill trading one of the only viable alternatives to malnutrition and economic helplessness. Interestingly enough, a huge prison financed by the same oil/forestry interests, was built to address this problem in Chiang Rai.

Government-approved missions are attempting to dominate every Akha village. They believe that the Akha must see the world as Western Christians do and abandon their own culture. The missions have worked long and hard in Thailand to vilify the indigenous cultures with propaganda that usually focuses on the most likely to be misunderstood aspects of those cultures.

Akha villages do not convert wholly to being Christian. They have no reason to. So what the missions do is to find one person in the village that they can bribe with money and favors to become Christian, and then further bribe that person for each additional family he pulls along. This situation can be readily identified in the villages where there is a church and the pastor has a much nicer house than the rest of the villagers. Discussions with the villagers will lead to the fact that the pastor gets paid but also taxes the villagers, while they are forbidden to practice their culture and customs. Traditional Akha villages have no problem allowing a few Christian families in their villages, but pastors who can gain control of most of the families in a village will not allow the remaining families to follow tradition. The missions preach endlessly against Akha culture as being evil in itself.

As well, in violation of the 5th article on Genocide, young people are removed to lowland boarding schools, in particular young girls, so that the missions can control whom they marry. Additionally, it is very common to see non-Akha pastors married to Akha women in order to gain more control of the villages. Akha children who are removed seldom return to their culture or village and they are told that in order to receive the benefits of the boarding school they must be Christian. Parents do not understand the familial and cultural alienation that is intended on the part of the missions.

The behavior of the missions, which puts very little money into health, water or jobs in the villages, shows that their primary concern is to dominate and control the villages and tax them. The villages are used as means of drawing more money for the central mission from donors overseas. Setting up new boarding schools is a very easy project to get naive parishioners to finance, and brings in a large budget. Larger numbers of captive villagers and villages means increased budget.

The connections between American missions and the CIA are very clear. Both Paul W. Lewis and Gordon Young were/are employees of the CIA. Paul W. Lewis was a long time American Baptist Missionary working with the Lahu and Akha in Burma and Thailand. He was thrown out of Burma for his connections to the CIA. As well, he was known for his sterilization program on Akha women that he defends to this day. Many of these women died or were abandoned.

Hypocritically, Paul W. Lewis did all he could to collect Akha artifacts and portray himself as a sympathetic anthropologist, while the CIA was doing a huge heroin business in his Burma neighborhood. At the same time, Paul W. Lewis was systematically exterminating the culture in every Akha village that he tried to convert. To this day Paul W. Lewis is bitterly disliked by many Akha leaders who are trying to liberate their people from the mission domination seen in South East Asia since before the Vietnam War. Bill Young is the son of Gordon Young, a missionary in Burma also who did his best to portray a dim view of the Akha. Bill Young continues to work for the CIA and resides in Chiang Mai.

The hypocrisy of it all is not lost on the Akha. In the past they were punished for not growing their quota of opium, and even now the Akha in Burma have little alternative but to grow opium or gather the wood for the heroin pots. Burma oddly remains closed, and the hilltribes remains enslaved to a trade that makes billions of dollars for western profiteers who sell it on western streets. Add to this speed pills and all the drug-processing chemicals, which come primarily from the West and China. The chemicals flow through the Akha villages one way, the drugs the other, but the Akha see little of the money, over which they have no control. The Akha are ignored while immense sums are spent on the drug war, begging the question of what kind of war this really is.

Matthew McDaniel has been helping to organize the Akha villages into a coherent economic and political unit capable of ensuring the survival of their threatened culture. Originally from Salem, Oregon, he has been championing the cause of the Akha's plight since 1989. He delivers some level of first-aid service to 250 of the 300 Akha villages in Thailand with a fragmented and beat-up Toyota four-wheel drive pickup.

If you would like to help, donations by check or money order may be sent to:

The Akha Heritage Foundation
PO BOX 6073
Salem OR 97304 USA

Or contact us for more information.