Introduction: Illegal Trades Across National Borders

Abstract

Mainland Southeast Asia--or Indochina as it has long been known owing to its position between India and China--has been marked by decades of trafficking in illegal goods. Illegal trades in Mainland Southeast Asia are numerous, highly diverse, and most likely increasingly complex. Of course, two of the most prominent illegal trades defining the area are human trafficking and drug trafficking, human trafficking in relation to the extensive regional prostitution market it feeds, with Thailand being infamous the world over for that reason; and drug trafficking in relation to opium and heroin produced in bulk within the similarly 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 likewise 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 across Mainland Southeast Asia that this book deals with, focusing on five of its most pervasive phenomenon: drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking, wildlife trafficking and illegal logging, and the trade in counterfeit goods and contraband.