The EconomistSeptember 7th 2019 Asia 492 was not purely a show of grace and favour:
she had to complete gruelling training with
her men. She now holds the rank of gen-
eral. His official concubine, a former nurse,
was promoted to major-general this year.
While crown prince, the king made his pet
poodle, since deceased, an air marshal.
Since he came to the throne almost
three years ago, the king has increased the
clout of the monarchy in various ways, dis-
pensing with a regent when he is abroad
and taking direct control over the adminis-
tration of all crown property. He has also
inserted himself into the administration of
the army. A new unit, the Royal Command
Guard, has been created at his behest. It in-
cludes many of his former bodyguards. Its
5,000-odd soldiers will be under the direct
command of the monarch and will be sta-
tioned in the heart of Bangkok. At the same
time, an infantry regiment and a cavalry
battalion that were instrumental in past
coups have been ordered out of the capital.
This will make it much harder for the army
to launch coups without securing the sup-
port of the king in advance.
King Vajiralongkorn has stoked faction-
alism, too, weakening the bond between
the army and the government that it in-
stalled. Mr Prayuth and his deputy prime
minister, Prawit Wongsuwan, are both for-
mer army chiefs. They rose up through the
Queen’s Guard, elite troops from a regi-
ment within the army’s Second Infantry Di-
vision. The current army chief, Apirat
Kongsompong, belongs to the King’s
Guard, a faction nestled instead within the
First Infantry Division. The king himself
once served in it. General Apirat must retire
next year and his most likely successor is
also from the King’s Guard.
During the reign of the king’s father,
Bhumibol, the relationship between the
armed forces and the monarchy was am-
biguous. The king’s advisers had a role in
the appointment of senior generals, but
then again, most of them were former gen-
erals themselves. The king never visibly
opposed the many coups that took place
during his reign, but he did once give a
dressing down to a coup leader who had
violently suppressed public protests, caus-
ing the offending general to resign.
Under King Vajiralongkorn, the ambi-
guity has diminished. Mr Prayuth has
meekly complied with even the most awk-
ward of the king’s demands, agreeing, for
instance, to change the text of the new con-
stitution even after Thai voters had signed
off on it. The king left the generals squirm-
ing by declining to accept the crown for al-
most two months after his father’s death,
in an unexpected show of modesty. “Pray-
uth’s days are numbered,” predicts Paul
Chambers of Naresuan University. And
when the inevitable happens and the army
next mounts a coup, the king will be in a
commanding position. 7
D
rug producersin Afghanistan have a
new line. The country responsible for
growing around three-quarters of the
world’s opium, as well as mountains of
hashish, is diversifying into methamphet-
amine. The amount seized by the Afghan
authorities is increasing exponentially,
says the un’s Office on Drugs and Crime.
Police hauled in a meagre 4kg in both 2013
and 2014. In the first six months of this year
the tally was 650kg.
This sudden rise has caught authorities
by surprise. Afghanistan’s meth boom ap-
pears to have begun in its western neigh-
bour. Iran has long had its own meth pro-
blem, but a crackdown there has hobbled
producers. Some may have relocated to the
lawless western deserts of Afghanistan. Af-
ghan migrant labourers have probably
learned the meth business in Iran, then
brought it home.
Afghan meth operations have a twist,
says David Mansfield of the London School
of Economics. Drug producers normally
extract meth’s main precursor, pseudo-
ephedrine, from over-the-counter medi-
cine for colds and flu. But governments are
trying to track and restrict sales of such
medicines, which have become a lot more
costly and difficult to obtain. So Afghan
producers have switched to another
source: the ephedra bush. These red-ber-
ried shrubs grow widely in arid parts of
Asia and have long been a staple of herbal
medicine to treat asthma, congestion and
other breathing problems, since they are anatural source of pseudoephedrine.
These days, Mr Mansfield says, many
heroin factories in Farah province, on the
border with Iran, are also cluttered with
buckets full of soaking ephedra leaves, in
preparation for making meth. Switching to
this plant-based method has halved pro-
duction costs, he reckons. Meanwhile,
farmers tell him, the price of ephedra
leaves has tripled in a year.
Where the meth is going is not clear.
Much probably travels back to Iran. In July
Brigadier-General Masoud Zahedian, Iran’s
counter-narcotics chief, complained that
four tonnes of the stuff had been seized on
his country’s border with Afghanistan
since March. But Afghanistan also has its
own domestic demand. Meth is popular in
Pakistan, too. Some might find its way far-
ther afield.
How might this new drug affect Afghan-
istan’s war economy? Opium and its profits
permeate the conflict, providing not just
livelihoods for poor farmers, but also fund-
ing for insurgents and easy money for cor-
rupt officials. Ephedra, known locally as
oman, could be a new source of wealth in
areas which have so far not cashed in on
opium. The bush grows best above 2,500
metres (8,200 feet), and is thus suited to
different provinces from opium. But no
one knows for sure where ephedra is being
farmed in Afghanistan or in what quanti-
ties. The un plans to start satellite and
ground surveys to measure the crop, just as
it does with opium poppies.
Afghanistan’s innovative producers are
not the first to use ephedra to make meth.
Chinese and Burmese villagers have been
known to do so as well. But Afghanistan’s
lawlessness and its ready-made distribu-
tion networks, thanks to the other drugs
produced in the country, along with the ex-
tremely low cost of farming, could soon
make it a fearsome competitor in the global
meth business. 7.ISLAMABAD
Enterprising drug barons are
branching outNarcotics in AfghanistanMeth in the
madness