The American term "wild west" - conjuring lurid images of lawlessness,

prostitution and gun-fighting - has been used so often to describe Cambodia's hardscrabble

northern border towns that it's intriguing to meet one of its real-life sheriffs

face-to-face.

Chou Pi Chhoura, chief of Stung Treng penal police office, is the top anti-drug-trafficking

official in Stung Treng province. Assisted by only a 10-man officer corps, he has

the enormous, unenviable task of stalking the innumerable smuggling routes that snake

across the border with Laos through deep jungle and an intricate web of Mekong waterways.

Pi Chhoura is no John Wayne. In fact, at 47 he's a bespectacled family man with two

young children, and serves as a part-time youth basketball coach. His provincial

office is ordinary enough; it's only the lethal arsenal of machine guns and shoulder-fired

rocket launchers leaning in the corner that hint at a life of stakeouts, stings and

undercover operations. Pi Chhoura is the brave face of a grim situation.

"I am very concerned about my safety and the safety of my family, but this is

my duty," Pi Chhoura told the Post. "Even with 100 men we could not stop

the smugglers. It is a shame for our authorities."

A two-day tour of anti-drug smuggling operations in Stung Treng is a trip to the

faulty frontlines of Cambodia's own war on drugs. The 2005 National Authority for

Combating Drugs (NACD) report listed methamphetamine pills - known locally as "yama"-

as the nation's most heavily used drug, and named Stung Treng as their biggest point

of entry. The province has a roughly 200-km-long border with the Lao provinces of

Champasak and Attapeu. Even local authorities admit that the border is porous.

So far this year, Pi Chhoura and his men have made four major busts, made five arrests

and confiscated 80,799 pills. All the operations were based on undercover investigations

stretching back months, and several required days of waiting deep in the wilderness.

In his five years as head of the local drug squad, Pi Chhoura has found smuggled

heroin and cannabis, but this year it has been only yama.

"Ever since the Thai crackdown on drugs, the meth being made in Burma is coming

down the Mekong and through Stung Treng," said Graham Shaw, NACD technical adviser.

"As to what volume is being brought into Cambodia, we just don't know, nobody

knows."

According to Shaw, yama is made on an industrial scale in the Wa region of Myanmar

(Burma) and most of the pills found in Phnom Penh are stamped with the WY logo of

the United Wa Army.

Provincial drug enforcement forces do not receive funding from the NACD's $250,000

annual budget.

"This situation is extremely difficult for the government to combat," Shaw

said. "It would be a difficult border for any country to police. You've got

jungle, many tributaries of the Mekong, malaria - it's a tough area."

Confounding terrain

Leaving Stung Treng town on a rural road soon reveals swaths of dense jungle penetrated

only by ancient footpaths that disappear into darkness. Pi Chhoura says the topography

gets increasingly grueling as it nears the Lao border, and that only local foresters

can decipher the maze of ancient, canopied pathways.

"The smugglers are very smart: they travel at night and use trails that we don't

know about," Pi Chhoura said. "There are very few people living in the

area. Sometimes there is only one village for 100 km. There are some villages where

only a few residents can speak Khmer. They walk the yama through the jungle to isolated

villages where they make the drop-off to drug dealers."

The river presents its own challenges. Although Pi Chhoura explains that the majority

of contraband is smuggled over land and road, the river has been a major smuggling

route for centuries. Its multitude of islands, sandbars and fluctuating seasonal

flows make it nearly impossible to monitor.

"We don't have the transportation, budget or resources to crack down on drugs

on the river," he said. "We know that sometimes the smugglers go straight

down the river. But sometimes they travel on land for awhile and then get back on

boats downstream. There are many boats on the river, we could never check them all."

As bad as the jungle and the river are, it's the new highway that troubles him the

most. The ASEAN highway, financed almost entirely by China, is still under construction,

but it is already in heavy use by travelers crossing the border.

"Smuggling is increasing because of the road," he said. "They can

travel it day or night. The government has a policy not to use checkpoints along

the road. We can only stop a car and search it if we have very clear information.

The road will be good for travelers and for business, but it is also a good opportunity

for smuggling."

Local military police interviewed in Stung Treng said that they are also concerned

about regulating the new highway. One mid-ranking military policeman said they are

worried about stopping the wrong car for fear of pulling over a government official,

or worse, a superior officer.

Jungle chessboard

Like many field operatives, Pi Chhoura has developed a grudging respect for the smugglers

with whom he matches wits in the wilderness. He says the majority of the smugglers

he has apprehended are hardly glitzy drug lords - most are poor foresters who are

exploited by unscrupulous gangsters. These yama "mules" are merely used

for their knowledge of the terrain and unassuming appearance. He says they are rarely

armed and he does not believe they are drug users.

"The people in the remote districts are very poor," he said. "Many

of the villagers cross into Laos and back every day to look for work or to sell forest

goods. The drug dealers pay money to people who know the area. It is easy to attract

them, and then the drug dealers stay in Laos where we cannot reach them."

Pi Chhoura can even laugh at some of the smuggling tactics he encounters. He said

the small pills are easy to hide and are invariably found deep inside bedrolls, bags

of rice or sacks of clothes. He chuckles at the time his team busted a yama smuggler

who had hidden his stash inside segments of bamboo.

"We noticed a man carrying bamboo through the forest," he said. "Then

we realized that there was no reason for anyone to be carrying bamboo into Cambodia.

Look around: there's plenty everywhere to just cut down."

More recently, a months-long undercover operation found that a major shipment was

going to be smuggled through a remote jungle village. His team trekked by foot to

the town and stayed in the bush for two days waiting for the culprits. Discouraged,

they were about to give up when he noticed a small group entering the town.

"We noticed that a group of hunters had entered the village from the jungle

and didn't come to the market. We knew immediately it was the smugglers: who would

walk days through the jungle to a village and not go straight to the market?"

But Pi Chhoura does not take his difficult task lightly. He says he is saddened to

see more young people and sex workers using yama in his hometown Stung Treng. He

says only more resources and help from the government and NACD will stem the unrelenting

flow of yama through his province. He laments the lack of drug-sniffing dogs.

"I recognize that drugs are crossing into our area. It is hard to control them,

and it makes our region look very bad."