Mong La Area:
Home to the NDAA (National Democratic Alliance Army) formed in 1989 from the CPB is in control of the Mong La town. It is in kengtung District of Shan State and is a border town, adjoining China. The town gained notoriety for its casinos and night life, located some two hundred and fifty kilometees from the Thai border town od Mae Sai.
NDAA entered into ceasefire with Muanmar Army in 2011,but insurgency and illegal activities on wild life trade especially rhino horns(especially the famous Kaziranga one horned rhinos)had put it into international spotlight. In 2019 Yongbang Blockchain Special Economic Zone (SEZ) was inaurgurated by China in Mong la.It is a significant border crossing from Shan State to Yunnan in China and the town resembles remarkably Chinese. Mong La Special District came after an undstanding with the local militias that began to operate since the CPB splintered in 1989. A Wa populated region, that is made a Special Region for political considerations, that in recent times gained notoriety for being a gamblers haven, for the Chinese.
Post 2021 junta takeover Muse and Chin She Haw are blocked by warring factions in the Shan State, which puts Mong la the most sought after access route to China. The Golden Triangle that forms part of Mong la is also a hub of meth production in Myanmar. Mong la is called Shan State Eastern Special Area 4 with the NDAA controlling the region, which maintains a steady relationship with the Three Brotherhood Alliance that launched the Ops 1027 in October 2023.
A recent report titled Trends in Organized Crime(2021) notes, how trade between Mong la and China increased multifold due to the tourist boom to the area. The report analysed that “This cross border trade strengthens China’s long standing connections with Northern Laos and eastern Myanmar. However ,it also facilitated cross border trafficking of contraband and provided opportunities for crime groups to diversify into new illegal markets in the borderlands of Golden Tringle”. Laos followed suit by operationalising it’s new policy in their part of the Golden Triangle, called GTSEZ , that gathered enough notoriety as a SEZ. The group that operates majority of the casinos are the King Romans Group, that is registered in Hong Kong.
In 2018 the US Treasury Department had put the group in its list of “transnational Criminal Organization”. The dynamics of the wildlife trade by Chinese criminal gangs that operate out of Aftica, used to outsource the work of similar poaching activities to cross-border gangs. For the poaching activities of Kaziranga one horned rhinoceros the activities of a Churachandpur based cartel are well documented.
Conclusion:
Why SEZs are the most dangerous hotshots of Criminal activities in South East Asia.The answer to this lies in the geopolitics of the region.In 2016 issue of Cross Currents: East Asian History and Cultural Review, authors Alessandro Rippa and Martin Saxer writes, that “Mong la’s success is based on a network of gamblers, smugglers, ex-Communists rebel Army leaders, and drug lords” which is nearly accurate picture of interplay of narcotics- crime nexus and cold war games played out within the Golden Triangle.