Burma, rife with instability from decades of military control, has become a steadily growing hub of international crime.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated in 2023 that over 120,000 individuals may have been “held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams.” Far from hardened criminals, these are victims who are deceived by fake job offers or shady honeypot schemes, trafficked across international borders and coerced into committing criminal acts under threat of physical or psychological torture.
The financial hit across the world has been far more than a blip: The Treasury Department estimated that in 2024, Americans lost over $10 billion to “Southeast Asia-based scam operations” — a 66% increase from the previous year.
The buck does not stop at online scams. The 2021 coup Burma experienced has only worked to increase crime in the Golden Triangle, with the country overtaking Afghanistan in 2023 to become the world’s largest producer of opium.
Production of synthetic drugs in the region has also exploded. In 2024, regional authorities seized 236 tons of methamphetamine in East and Southeast Asia — much of it traced to labs in Shan State in eastern Burma. These figures are likely not representative of the true scale of the trade; methamphetamine prices in Thailand have steadily declined since 2017 — and drastically since 2013 — signaling growing supply.
The simple reality is that the majority of the drugs produced in Burma do not stay within the country’s borders. In 2024, 5.9 tons of heroin were consumed domestically, while between 52 and 140 tons were “potentially exported” according to a 2024 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report.
Criminal groups are able to maintain and grow their operations because of the ignorance — and, in many cases, the direct support — of the junta government. Smacking of the state-led Captagon trade under former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the junta has long permitted the movement and production of illicit substances within its territories, with troops and officials widely accused of facilitating and profiting from the trade of drugs.
While many anti-junta groups participate in these illicit activities as well, it is important to single out the junta for its overarching responsibility to combat lawlessness in Burma. It is the junta that is the, admittedly loosely recognized, governing authority of the country. People looking in on the conflict must not conflate the responsibilities of non-governmental rebel or paramilitary groups with those of the junta, an established state actor that signed on to a rigid social contract with its citizens.
After overthrowing the democratically elected National League for Democracy in 2021, the junta bears full responsibility for the collapse of the rule of law in the country and the boom in illicit markets that has inevitably followed. It tore apart already feeble democratic institutions — ones it had already worked to undermine during the brief civilian government — and fostered an atmosphere where corruption and criminality go unchecked.
This is not a modern problem; it is one built on decades of military capture. Junta control, led by two distinct groups from 1962 until 2011, created a system of paralyzingly weak institutions, gave the military widespread power and made the judiciary completely subordinate to military authority.
It is a system that has allowed opportunist commanders like Colonel Saw Chit Thu — who, since early 2024, has distanced himself from weakening junta control, at least on paper — to expand their personal criminal enterprises in Burma at the expense of millions.
Put bluntly: This chaos didn’t suddenly appear when the junta reclaimed power in 2021. It is the predictable outcome of decades of institutional decay, hollowed out by corrupt military leaders and local strongmen who have turned state failure into profit. Until the very system that the current Burmese state runs on is remodelled in its entirety, every attempt to tape it back together will result in similar failure.
