NIA targets traffickers to defeat drug lords

Agency is determined to stamp out cross-border trade in Southwest China. Aybek Askhar reports from Baoshan, Yunnan.

If it had not been for a flat tire, Liu Yanlei would not have moved his car, loaded with more than 100 kilograms of methamphetamine, from an underground parking lot.

In that event, he would have completed his sixth successful delivery.

"Liu was smart and a trustworthy deliveryman for the drug lords. Five successful deliveries had brought him a huge reputation, so when the signal of his car reappeared on my GPS (as he exited the parking lot), I knew it was once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said An Xiaohua, an officer with the National Immigration Administration in the southwestern province of Yunnan, who had placed a tracking device on Liu's car.

As he described the situation, An sucked in a lungful of cigarette smoke and tried to calm himself.

Even though the events happened two years ago, the 39-year-old veteran on the front line of China's long war on drugs can still remember the adrenaline rush he felt back then.

An is vice-captain of an investigation team with the Border Control Detachment at Baoshan, a city in Yunnan. He has been dealing with border issues since he graduated from the Yunnan Police Officer Academy in 2004.

"We had been following the car since the suspect loaded the drugs at the border, and we had already set a tracking device in it. Our preliminary investigation showed that Liu was carrying a large quantity of drugs, so we needed to wait until the distributors came and then take them down together," he said.

An's team had been working on the case for nearly two years on the border between Baoshan and Myanmar, close to the Golden Triangle, Asia's main opium-producing area.

Official statistics from the Yunnan authorities show that the province confiscated more than 35 metric tons of illegal drugs last year.

For decades, the province has topped the national table in terms of confiscation of narcotics.