Smugglers, Thai Agents Play a Cat-and-Mouse Game

It is all clear in no man’s land. At the nod of a lookout, another load of contraband goes up the ladder and over the wall.

Smuggling is the No. 1 business in southern Thailand. Padang Besar is the main field office. Here on the Malaysian border, it is a 24-hour operation. In no man’s land, a 50-yard-wide strip bounded by matching Thai and Malaysian border walls, the goods pile up, awaiting an opening. The lookouts keep an eye peeled for customs agents. The agents watch for known traffickers.

“We know who they are and they know who we are,” said Anan Pananan, customs chief for southern Thailand. “It’s a game of cat and mouse.”

It is also a game of unequal teams. Anan has about 300 agents, the majority assigned to routine work at the 14 border customs posts. The smuggling syndicates have an army.

“We call it the ‘ant army,’ ” Anan said. “They live right on the border. They’re just the small guys, but they’re good.”

Special Squad Picked

The customs chief has recruited a special squad, 50 picked men, to battle the army, a 1980s version of Eliot Ness and the Untouchables against Frank Nitti and the Chicago Mob. So far it has been a nonviolent struggle, a game of wits, but the stakes are high.

Anan’s men seized $2 million worth of contraband last year, which he admits must be a small percentage of the smugglers’ total. A tour of the shops of Hat Yai, the major city of the south, gives evidence of what slipped though the customs net: Japanese stereos, French perfume, Scotch whisky--anything of portable size for which the demand is high and the customs duty is 50% or more.

Smuggling is a particular problem to the governments of Thailand and other developing nations because customs duties are an important source of revenue. In Thailand, duties represent more than 30% of the government’s receipts.

A related issue is corruption. “Money can buy everybody,” observed Anan, referring in this instance to customs officers. “This is our main problem.”

Agents make a starting salary of $65 a month. A soldier of the “ant army” might make twice as much.

Southern Thailand has a reputation for lawlessness. The per capita crime rate in the port city of Songkhla, for instance, is six times as high as that in Bangkok, the capital.

According to authorities, smuggling networks or syndicates are put together when an opportunity arises. The profits, while large, are not sufficient to support a full-time organization.

A major operation is bankrolled by a financial big shot, usually Chinese, these authorities say. Others in the network often have some relationship--family, school, previous business associates. “A purely Chinese operation has a sort of ‘godfather’ structure,” said a Songkhla resident who has investigated the smuggling business.

The “ants,” who move the goods across the border itself, are locals hired by the day.

Cat-and-Mouse Game

In smuggling country, the cats and mice watch each other closely. Anan recounted some examples:

-- His men, ensconced in a second-floor room of a Padang Besar bordello, were watching the border wall. A truck backed up to the wall and a swarm of “ants” filled it with five-gallon tins. The agents noted that the tins appeared to be light, probably empties. They radioed a waiting customs car not to bite at the decoy shipment. As the watchers anticipated, the smugglers’ truck returned to the wall. The empties were tossed over the top and replaced by tins full of dutiable vegetable oil. The truck took off and the chase was on.

-- On another occasion, Anan’s men received word that contraband would be moving on a Bangkok-bound train. Agents laid plans to board the train after it left the border, but the scheme leaked. The train never left the station.

At the border, Anan lamented, “ant army” lookouts keep customs vehicles under constant surveillance.

“When one moves, everything stops,” he said.

But on a recent day, two foreigners and a group of Thais, including two uniformed customs agents, walked through the no man’s land at Padang Besar and found the “ants” relatively undistracted from their business. If an outsider looked directly at them, they would pause and set down their cargo. If they were climbing one of the ladders placed against the wall, they would stop and retreat to the ground.

But the minute the outsider turned his head, activity would resume.

Wall Begets Wall

The Malaysians built their wall at Padang Besar several years ago, set back from the border. The Thais responded with a wall of their own last year, directly on the border. The space between, no man’s land, is technically Malaysian territory, but it is patrolled by neither side and has become a sort of smuggler’s warehouse area, complete with storage buildings.

Goods come over the respective walls and are held in no man’s land until the coast is clear, usually at night, to be moved out.

The walls themselves have become a matter of controversy. The Malaysians are now building a wall that will run the width of the Malay Peninsula. The Thais have built walls only near normal border crossings, and they openly question why the Malaysians are so ambitious with their efforts.

“It’s really a reflection of two different outlooks on life,” a foreign resident of the area said. “The Malaysians look across their wall and wonder about the easygoing, often lax ways of the Thais. The Thais look south and puzzle over the law-and-order Malaysians. They don’t really understand each other.”

Anan, the customs chief, said he has received threats, including one from a big-time smuggler who remarked casually in a telephone call: “Remember, a bullet costs only 10 baht (40 cents).” But, he said, he cannot do his job if he worries about threats.

While both sides carry arms, neither, to this point, has chosen to get into a shooting war. The customs agents would be badly outgunned in such a contest.

So the game is usually played out on the roads. The goods come over the wall in small parcels. They are loaded onto motorbikes, which carry them to a collection point, moving through the rubber groves that blanket the south. Customs vehicles cannot follow in the narrow trails between the trees.

Souped-Up Pickup Trucks

At the collection point, the contraband is transferred to souped-up pickup trucks--”faster than anything we have,” said Visanu Uboncholket, Anan’s top aide. The drivers are paid $40 a run, plus a $40 bonus for getting through, and they are first-rate, he said.

The trucks usually travel in convoy. The truck carrying the goods is preceded and trailed by scout cars or motorcycles. The drivers are in touch by radio.

The customs agents, in their pickups, watch the roads or lay an ambush if they have a tip. Since guns are not used, the object is to ram the truck carrying the contraband. The trick is to pick the right truck, and to avoid being detected or blocked by the scout cars.

“We have to very careful,” Anan said. “We don’t have many cars.”

Money and morale are often on Anan’s mind. In an effort to boost the latter, he recently borrowed some of the former. His men are given a reward when they seize contraband, but it takes several months for the money to make its way through the bureaucracy. So Anan took out a bank loan to have cash on hand for rewards, and he is repaying the loan with the government funds when they come through.