sparse in areas where black voters live prompting accusations of voter suppression north korea's state media says the leader came leader kim jong un has suspended plans of military action against south korea tensions rose after activists in the south through propaganda leaflets across the border at least 2 syrian soldiers have been killed and 4 others wounded in israeli airstrikes the missiles hit a military outpost in the city of swayed in. the saudi led coalition fighting in yemen says it intercepted a ballistic missile heading towards riyadh 8 to drones and 3 ballistic missiles have been fired towards the kingdom since monday who 3 rebels say they plan to launch even more a spokesman for the rebels claimed they attacked the saudi defense ministry and those are the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera in about half an hour after one a one east good buy. a global pandemic mass protests demanding change economic recession and geopolitical tensions not to mention the

small matter of a looming election join me steve clemons in conversation with leading voices on the bottom line your weekly take on u.s. politics and society on al-jazeera. record breaking amounts of methamphetamines are being seized the cost asia. massive calls of killings and crystal meth are flooding the region. some of it reaching as far north as japan and as far south as a stray lead in new zealand. where does it all come from me in mar the biggest meth producer in the world. little. old world has lost before it can struggle. one the one east travels to the borders winds of mean mark twain best to keep what's driving asian meth through and why

authorities are powerless to stop it. this is the so-called golden trying a border region known for its beauty and the tories for drugs. behind these mountains is myanmar we're standing in thailand and over there is a highway making it really easy for traffickers to bring drugs over the border and straight to the cities of thailand it's a perfect combination of geography infrastructure supply and demand. were on the frontline of the drug war. joining a thai military patrol trying to stop the massive flow of methamphetamine coming

across the border. colonel. is the leader of the troll. he's overseen some of thailand's biggest violent busts. there. covers more than 30 kilometers of the border. many encounters and gun fights.

this team killed 5 traffickers doing the bust but there are always more willing to take their chances. traffickers with backpacks full of meth can run across the border few minutes. depends on the size of. backpacks are just one way to traffic mess and the staggering amount is coming in authorities estimate that they're only catching about 20 percent of it. another way they try and stop the flow of drugs at checkpoints along these border provinces. time military and police search buses and trucks where large stashes could be hidden. the checkpoints are designed to catch traffickers by surprise and today the authorities have had

a big win. ringback this is what 300 kilograms of the crystal meth looks like. soldiers carry out of their bundle for the camera. ringback known on the street says this high purity form of the drug is the most expensive kind if it reached australia these drugs would be worth $100000000.00. look what you know isn't. going to. buy. i. phone. number or more.

money it's with thailand's narcotics control board he tracks the patterns of trafficking he says in more than 30 years on the job he's never seen a time when so much crystal meth is being seized on average there has been a bust every week if. the 1000. and for the producers seizing this amount is that a big hit for them. the money. to push. the 20. the drugs the do make it across the border get distributed among dealers. the trade is so lucrative it outweighs the threat of life sentences. this former dealer agreed to meet with us if we disguised his voice

and appearance. crap about. i would buy the pills for $2.50 and then i sell it for nearly $4.00. for 5 years he sold thousands of these red pills a day they're known locally as you. just. leave him my they delivered the drugs to me and back. at 1st they gave me small bags of $200.00 pills. but it was $2.00 pills a bag. and then $4000.00 and then up to 10 balls. for how long does it take you so. it doesn't take long. just a day. his profit 110000 pills could be as much as $13000.00 did you ever think back what you were doing with hurting other people and if you

did why did you continue with the lack of you know at 1st i thought this was wrong . but after a while i was making money so i didn't think too hard about it going to meet. the demand for meth across asia has never been higher. growing economies are being fueled by workers riding away in jobs. many laborers used which means crazy medicine to help them work long hours while those who can afford it use the pricier crystal meth or ice to party hard. stories about mess addiction regularly in their. i don't call. at all. times and what happens. and it's.

what weapon in my wow yeah. oh yeah by a wide angle bro i babson it. at all i thought that by. but the majority of users are everyday people. tip is a single mother who works several jobs to support her 2 children who live with their parents. she says she regularly uses you stimulating combination of methamphetamine and caffeine to help you concentrate at work. it's like when i become super focused on what's in front of me i stay on task. and i just sit there and human. and. easy to get body bags for but have to go to the dealer twice 1st to place my order and

then have to wait hours if not days to go pick it up and now i can pick it up right away. each pill costs $3.00 tip says many people have become users. in some cases users can work in exchange for their pills i have one here some people just work it off by doing manual labor they don't have to pay for a. tip uses almost every day but denies she's the nat act. even though i use i never let my kids never let them have it they never even seen it. meth production is cheap and large scale estimates vary between 216000000000 pills a year that's more than the number of coffee starbucks or. most of it is

made in state which has ready access to precursor chemicals from china. it also has roads leading into thailand where the finished product is then trafficked to other countries. has become an ideal hiding place for meth labs thanks to decades of civil wars. vast areas of the state are still controlled by armed groups both rebels and government forces. the drug trade is a huge money maker for all sides. the most powerful of the rebel groups is the united states army they used to be famous for their heroin smuggling authorities in myanmar and thailand think they're now in the meth business. journalists are rarely given access.

but they have recently appointed a spokesperson. by phone. time to answer questions. he's surprisingly upfront about drugs being produced in wa territory but insists that it's all in the past. i don't. get a lot. do you think there are any labs and your territory right now. partner. hope oh. no drug with sporadic rains in televised drug burnings their true involvement in the

meth training is difficult to prove. the only one allowing us to see for ourselves is the shan state army sound. it is shot on stage today. a celebration of resistance against the mean more military. all you know and i don't know no one. is the defacto leader of this territory. once it does in the book dissolve he loved his mother and then. as this army shows off its fighting skills shine people from across the state parade in their best outfit. it's an expensive affair for an army still fighting

a civil war. yet circuit his soldiers are considered rebels by many in myanmar but here he is loved . and what he says is obeyed no stranger to the drug trade he once fought alongside the infamous drug kingpin couldn't stop who was known for trafficking heroin worldwide but these days he says the territory he controls is drug free like i am all government global policy bill yarmulke. you know yarmulke many. about won't involve one car i don't know what.

this policy might sound harsh but it has popular support. that. we the people children and adults don't want addicts are the people of the shan state army so we know all the drugs we young and old men and women all agreed this holds and. is a former addict who joined the army to get clean. i would take 10 pills a day and $3.00 to $4.00 pills at a time. when i went to work i secretly took the pills without my family knowing the me and were done with but when they found out we fought along the way. they were disgusted with me. he used to live in an area ruled by a patchwork of militias their dealers were easy to find. when

i bought it i bought it from a policeman. people told me he was both a dealer in police. work. he was part of a militia group not afraid of anything. going on a. says drugs or so and messed with authority only tough policies like death threats can stop it. yes you get by how the world says drugs are a huge problem. and the rebels get all their money from the roads. but that's not true and we're radek eating drugs we're not getting money from drugs at all. but reports suggest some armed groups in myanmar earn money by providing safe passage for the traffickers i ask him if it's true. to know if they pass

through here we arrest them what is your source of income if not drugs we do tax everything not related to drugs. my timber gems my cattle awful we could plenty of money from that. if we're mixed up with drugs our nation going to progress with the international community wouldn't accept us because it's immoral that's why i've decided to fight drugs. if we see a meth lab we shoot it up no conversation when we get rid of them. but those who have worked in n.t. narcotics here are more skeptical. john whalen is a bit tired united states drug enforcement agent he worked with the da inside myanmar for 25 years the chance to hurt me sound told me that they're serious about eradicating drugs in their territory how seriously i mean i personally i wouldn't

take them very seriously if said there for years put on shows for the benefit of the west more or less to say that they're serious about it. but they still benefit from the trade they have to fund their army they have to pay them somehow feed them somehow so there's too much financial benefit for them to be out of the trade. denies any involvement and orders his right hand man to take us on a patrol. to prove it. major hunk leads us to an area where he says they've destroyed methamphetamine labs. we've made sure that the truck traffic. into our area that. he brings me to a base on their border. and

what to read. what about the other 11. more than 11. in our control. everyone knows who is producing the drugs it's in the news. the narcotics. man mars on government. money. why isn't anyone destroying those labs that's what i'd like to know your answer points the finger firmly at groups aligned with the military i think the biggest drug producers are the pro-government militias. which are allied with the. army they make the most drugs because they can operate in many areas. for decades the meum are military struck

ceasefire deals with rebels and turn them into pro-government militias by giving them more autonomy and turning a blind eye to their illicit activities. a recent raid in a pro-government militia territory uncovered 2 meth labs capable of producing 10 tons of meth among the $7000000.00 of lab equipment they found a pill stamp with the infamous w y the same as the pill the dealer we met was selling. back in thailand i tracked ringback down japan. from the law who ethnic group he led a militia aligned with the government. 'd 'd know he lives in exile. japan says fighting alongside the myanmar military cross to ms lag. he says he was never involved in making drugs but in its tax from drug trafficking it was a source of income for his people. in his day the drug being trafficked was heroin

. there are rules about how much and where you have to pay whenever they cross into our territory they need to pay. more than 20 years later he says the meth business operates the same way. for you. at great risk he offers to take us to meet a current militia leader in pro-government militia territory. we agreed to meet at a border town called touchy like high authority call it the hub of meth trafficking . right now. it's a dangerous to our journey for japan he's made a lot of enemies here are we now in paramilitary areas this.

is what is. 000000 militia and then militia. he says many of the militias here are involved in trafficking. so where we just passed we paid. was to the drug court. we passed through more than 4 pro-government militia territories it's not safe for us to make too many stops. to pat says the new roads have accelerated the mess train only she will. not look. good will. they use the main routes now. most labs have been discovered just a few kilometers off the highway but this is as close as we can get without risking our safety. was such

a. good look at. all which. we arrive at a villa. run by the pro-government militia japan warns us not to ask too many questions like to pet this leader says his village would not survive without allying with the government. well michel much of the little money. will do all up with the i want to. use the harassment may have stopped but the village still has to find a way to earn money. to put love a. lot of people going on as if most.

people and. i broach the sensitive topic of methamphetamine how are they getting their guys. to do the job. for all the world so it's all just goes for what you want also what was little i thought all the trouble of having. to pet makes light of a tense situation. and it's time to leave. back in the van japan insists that providing safe passage for drug traffickers is one way for these poor ethnic groups to survive. the next. but. got to watch. but for japan the real culprit is the myanmar military. in short as long as the myanmar military exists the drugs will continue to exist. from

generation to generation for a fugitive drug kingpins myanmar has been the only place where they have found safe haven. the only place they can. when i went east made multiple attempts to contact me mars drug enforcement division but received no reply for that in the capital yangon john will increase it's likely military officers turn a blind eye to the meth trade but doubts they are manufacturers is the military directly involved in the military unlikely are they allowing it to occur in their areas of operation yet they are. it's a deadly cycle drugs fund the wars and the wars provide the perfect camouflage to keep the drugs flowing the narcotics trade meth trade certainly fuels the conflict proceeds from them the narcotics trade are used to fund militia groups providing

weapons providing food pay the soldiers so that's certainly not helpful to the peace process. mean more civil war long assessments of corruption of the created biggest meth problem. from the little red room to turns of crystal meth. there are incredible profits to be made because of the engine demand. and where there's demand there will always be supply.

in germany's capital there is a barber like no other is that what it is to have him on iraq not basra cross what you have. but as he said he changes he's moving with the time. and going on the road. the stories we don't often hear told by the people who live down. the master barber of bringing this is europe on al-jazeera. in uncertain and isolating times the listening post cuts through the noise you've been looking at another side of this story out for march the information around the outbreak but the myth of the listening post on al-jazeera. as protests rage over police brutality and corona virus grips the nation campaigning on the election trail has been forced to take a back seat will the presidential candidates ever hit the road and so very brand of

politics to americans before the votes follow the u.s. elections on a. we're now seeing a disturbing surge of infections the top u.s. infectious disease expert dr anthony fauci one's progress against covert 19 is threatened by rising cases in several places as president donald trump visits one of the emerging hotspots are a zone up to address student supporters.