The soldiers drop to the forest floor as their lieutenant barks an order and the men quickly meld into the lush hillside’s dense foliage, weapons poised.

“This part is about patience,” says Lt Ketsopon Nopsiri, as he inspects his men’s drill positions on a misty Saturday morning. “Once we have the intel, we scout a place for the ambush. Sometimes it’s hours before the smugglers come. But then everything happens very rapidly.”

In these mountainous pine forests in the heart of the Golden Triangle, Thai soldiers are embroiled in a sometimes deadly standoff, as they struggle to stem the surging flow of illicit synthetic drugs flooding across the unmarked border with Myanmar.

In 2024, Thailand seized a record 130 tons of methamphetamine, according to a report last week from the United Nati

See Full Page