Jane's Intelligence Review
March 1, 1998
SECTION: FOCUS ASIA; Vol. 10; No. 3; Pg. 26
LENGTH: 4804 words
BYLINE: Anthony Davis
DATELINE: Bruce Hawke
HIGHLIGHT: Rangoon has angrily denied that the Union of Myanmar is a'narco-state', but the mutually beneficial relationship between thejunta and the narco-barons, combined with a creeping criminalisationof the country's economy, does much to suggest otherwise. AnthonyDavis and Bruce Hawke review the Burmese slide into dependency.
BODY:
For the military junta of Burma (officially the Union of Myanmar),
international criticism over political repression and an abysmal
human rights record is scarcely new. More recent is a rising tide of
accusations levelled at the regime over its poor narcotics record
and charges that the cosy relationship between the government and
heroin traffickers is turning Burma into a 'narco-state'. For its
part, Rangoon has angrily dismissed the attacks as 'false
allegations' by Western critics that deliberately ignore its real
achievements in narcotics suppression.
As yet there appear to be no grounds on which the government can be
charged with direct involvement in the production or distribution of
narcotics as a matter of policy - for some analysts the baseline
definition of a 'narco-state'. Nevertheless, a compelling body of
evidence does suggest that in a range of areas the government is
moving perilously close to a looser definition of that term: it has
permitted and indeed encouraged the repatriation of narco-funds back
into an investment-strapped economy; there are recurrent reports of
complicity in the trade by field level military units; and
ex-insurgent drug dealers have enjoyed an impunity from
investigation or prosecution that has seen them emerge as a leading
force in the mainstream economy. Some are even participating in the
country's limited political process. As US Assistant Secretary of
State for International Narcotics Affairs Robert Gelbard wrote in
1996: "From a hard-headed, drug-control point of view, I have to
conclude that [the regime] has been part of the problem, not the
solution."
The events which drew the insurgents down from the hills of Shan
State and into company boardrooms in Rangoon can be traced back to
the late 1980s. Between 1987 and 1989 potential opium production in
Burma increased dramatically from an estimated 836 metric tonnes (t)
to 2,430 t, according to US State Department figures. To some
extent, new methods of calculating potential yield per hectare may
have contributed to the higher figures, but against a backdrop of
near ideal weather conditions and expanded cultivation there was
also a very real increase in production. Between 1987 and 1989 the
area under poppy cultivation increased 55 per cent from 92,300
hectares to 142,000 hectares and continued to expand.
Against this backdrop came hardly less dramatic political shifts. In
March 1989 the insurgent Communist Party of Burma (CPB), since 1968
Rangoon's most formidable military foe, collapsed. Dumping a
geriatric Maoist leadership, the party's increasingly
business-oriented military leadership splintered along ethnic lines
- Kokang Chinese, Wa and Shan - around the country's rugged
northeastern frontiers. Fresh from the bloody suppression of
democracy demonstrators and determined to prevent a link-up between
ethnic minority insurgents and ethnic Burman dissidents in central
Burma, the government moved swiftly to neutralise the guerrillas
with a series of cease-fire agreements. The verbal deals, of which
altogether 15 have now been made with ex-communist and non-communist
insurgent groups, stipulated that the insurgents would cease
hostilities against government forces and would be permitted in turn
to continue to bear arms, administer their areas and, critically,
participate in business activities in Burma's recently liberalised
economy. They were further invited to join an essentially
rubber-stamp national convention convened to draw up a new
constitution for the country.
The Narco Armies
- The first agreement was made in late March 1989 between the
regime's intelligence chief, (then) Brigadier General Khin Nyunt (he
is now a Lieutenant General), and military leaders of the CPB's
Kokang Chinese-dominated Northern Bureau, which comprised Kokang
District east of the Salween River and a swathe of territory also
along the Chinese border to the west of the river. This territory,
which includes some of the most intensely cultivated poppy fields in
the country, was dubbed 'Special Region No 1' and its troops , some
1,500-2,000 strong, became overnight a 'special police force'
otherwise known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army
(MNDAA). They were headed by CBP commanders Peng Jia-sheng and his
younger brother Peng Jia-fu.
- The second agreement came in early May with the militarily
strongest component of the CPB, the ethnic Wa. This established
Special Region No 2 in the Wa hills east of the Salween, south of
Kokang, with its headquarters at the former CPB HQ of Panghsang on
the Chinese border. In November 1,989 the ex-communist Wa linked up
with another ethnic Wa insurgent force operating near the Thai
border, the Wa National Army, to become the United Wa State Army
(UWSA) commanded by Pao Yu-chang with a China-born ex-Red Guard, Li
Zi-ru, serving as his deputy.
- In eastern Shan State the CPB's former 815 War Zone was
transformed into Special Region No 4 and its 3,500-4,000 strong
forces into the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA).
Controlling an opium-rich but sparsely populated swathe of territory
abutting China, Laos and Thailand, the NDAA is run by a 12-man
committee headed by two other former Chinese Red Guard volunteers:
Lin Ming-xian (Sai Lin) and Zhang Zhi-ming (Kyi Myint). Both are
known to have close links with Chinese military intelligence. Sai
Lin was subsequently appointed a special advisor to the National
Constitutional Convention.
- Finally, in late 1990, the 4th Brigade of the Kachin Independence
Army - which was then still fighting the government - broke away to
form the Kachin Defence Army (KDA) led by Mahtu Naw. Following a
cease-fire with Rangoon, the KDA territory, an ethnically Kachin
swathe of hill-country north of Lashio town, became Special Region
No 5. Fielding only around 800 armed troops, however, the KDA has
become subservient to the MNDAA.
Heroin's boom period
These former insurgent groups responded to the new situation in two
critical ways, the first being that all four factions became
increasingly involved in the production of high-grade No 4 heroin.
Under the dispensation of the CPB an opium poppy crop-substitution
policy had given way to a growing involvement in the opium trade as
Chinese financial and logistic support was cut back in the late
1970s. This involved both the party's local administration taxing
the opium crop as well as some errant commanders running their own
opium convoys south to heroin refineries on the Thai border.
Although there had been no heroin refineries operating in CPB
territory, all that changed in 9.
In Kokang district, Special Region No 1, various ethnic Chinese
commanders opened heroin refineries, among them Peng Jia-sheng and
brother Jia-fu, Yang Mao-liang and brothers Mao-xian and Mao-an, and
former CPB Northern Bureau treasurer Li Guo-shi. A burst of
production between 1989 and 1991 saw 23 new refineries opened. In
late 1992, a mini-war over control of the booming heroin trade
erupted between MNDAA boss Peng Jiasheng and the Yang clan,
traditional local rulers of Kokang. As a result of the swift
intervention of Khin Nyunt, an uneasy peace was restored, leaving
both players in the field but with the Yang brothers dominant.
To the south UWSA entry into the heroin trade was expedited by three
ethnic Chinese brothers, Wei Xue-long , Xue-gang and Xue-yin, who
had earlier been involved with Taiwanese intelligence and the WNA on
the Thai border. In late 1992 Wei Xuelong moved north to UWSA HQ at
Panghsang and before long had established a string of refineries in
the Wa hills. The Weis were to provide the commercial know-how and
international connections to complement the military muscle of Pao
Yu-chang and Li Zi-ru, transforming the UWSA into what has been
described as the world's largest armed narcotics trafficking
organisation. More recently UWSA has diversified its narcotics
production into methamphetamines, a logistically simpler production
process targeted at a booming Thai market.
In Special Region No 4 Zhang Zhiming and Lin Ming Xian had meanwhile
established themselves at the head of a 12-man regional committee
which also became heavily involved in narcotics production. Given
its sparse population, Special Region No 4 is not an area of intense
poppy cultivation, so much opium is brought in from Laos and other
areas of the Shan State to be refined into heroin there.
The KDA has been a late-comer to the trade but appears ready to make
up for lost time and in recent months has been assuming a new
prominence. However, it appears largely to be working for Kokang
Chinese interests, both in running refineries and in trucking opium
and refined heroin north to the border of India's Manipur State. As
narcotics interdiction has been stepped up, first along the Thai
border (the traditional export route for Shan State narcotics) and
more recently along the Chinese border (the favoured export route of
the 1990s), the porous border of India's rugged northeast has become
a major new route.
An enthusiasm for business
The second of the insurgents' post-cease-fire responses was a
demonstrated enthusiasm for the government's invitation to set up
businesses in the newly liberalised but still ramshackle economy.
These were often joint ventures with government ministries or
military-owned holding companies. This process and the repatriation
of funds held offshore to finance it was greatly facilitated by a
concurrent liberalisation of foreign exchange policy. In 1989 the
junta dropped the previous government policy of confiscating bank
deposits or foreign currency that could not be proved to have been
acquired legally. It opted instead for a 'whitening tax' on
repatriated funds of dubious origin levied first at 40 per cent and
later reduced to 25 per cent. More importantly, a de facto
legalisation of the black market exchange rate of the Burmese kyat
prompted an influx of money from Hong Kong, Bangkok and elsewhere.
Solid evidence of the effects of this liberalisation became apparent
by mid-1993 when real estate prices in Rangoon and Mandalay
rocketed. The market rate of the kyat, which had been falling
rapidly for the two previous years, stabilised at around 110 Kyats
to the US dollar, despite an inflation rate conservatively estimated
at 20-30 per cent per annum, an anaemic (legal) export sector and a
growing volume of imports. The kyat remained at that level until
early 1996.
In 1992 the UWSA moved into Rangoon to establish an investment
vehicle that has since become one of the country's largest
companies: the Myanmar Kyone Yeom Group. Its impressively
diversified portfolio includes real estate, food processing,
finance, import-export and 'border trade', mining, tourism and
transport (although in the murky and ill-regulated world of Burmese
capitalism, the profitability of many of these ventures remains
questionable). The group also has branch offices in Thailand,
Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and the USA, giving it a significant
international reach.
The Kyone Yeom Group's Rangoon-based chairman and managing director
is a former insurgent military officer of Chinese descent, 'Colonel'
Kyaw Myint (aka Michael Hu Hwa), who heads a company board sprinkled
with other ex-guerrilla commanders and retired government military
personnel. An abrasive personality known to have attended board
meetings with a pistol strapped to his waist and flanked by
bodyguards, Kyaw Myint's transition to corporate culture has been
less than smooth. In 1997 the volatile colonel attempted to ensure
his own appointment as chairman of the Prime Commercial Bank, in
which Myanmar Kyone Yeom had earlier acquired a majority
shareholding. However, having a high-profile member of the world's
largest narco-army openly running a bank appears to have been too
much even for the government of Burma and his application was turned
down by the Central Bank. Kyaw Myint's continued efforts to push his
case eventually led to Prime Commercial being abruptly but quietly
closed down.
Myanmar Kyone Yeom has had better success in Burma's murky finance
industry. Since 1995 the group has established a nationwide
financial operation viewed by foreign analysts as a thinly disguised
money-laundering vehicle. The scheme involves a subsidiary, the
National Races Co-operative Society, offering a startling seven per
cent interest per month - or 84 per cent per annum - on term
deposits, a rate of interest that undercuts Chinatown's informal
banking network by a full two per cent. Interest rates in Burma are
by law capped at 16 per cent per annum while, in any event, finance
companies have no legal standing.
Most other companies run by former insurgents tend to keep a rather
lower profile. Yang Mao-liang, Kokang warlord and head of the MNDAA,
controls a rapidly expanding enterprise called Peace Myanmar Group.
It holds the franchise for Mitsubishi Electric in Burma and operates
a paint factory and liquor distillery producing well-known local
brands such as Myanmar Rum and Myanmar Dry Gin. MNDAA treasurer Li
Guo-shi has meanwhile opened a large consumer electronics showroom
on Merchant Street in central Rangoon in a joint venture with the
Ministry of Commerce. Despite being ousted in 1992 as MNDAA head,
Peng Jiasheng retains considerable influence in the group as
well as several refineries. At Nawngchio, south of Hsipaw, he also
runs a saw-mill and a sugar factory.
However, the real 'godfather' of Kokang and arguably the most
powerful businessman in Burma today is 63-year-old Lo Hsing-han
(pinyin: Luo Xing-han), one of the most venerable names in the Asian
narcotics trade. From lowly beginnings in Kokang in the 1960s, Lo
went on in the early 1970s to command a government-backed militia
based in Lashio. At the same time he was also allowed free writ to
run opium convoys south to heroin refineries along the Thai border.
In 1973 Lo broke with Rangoon and joined the ethnic Shan insurgent
opposition, but he was lured across the Thai border, arrested by
Thai authorities and extradited to Rangoon, where he served seven
years in Insein jail for 'insurrection against the state'. Released
under a 1980 amnesty, Lo was soon back in the militia business in
northern Shan State, however - again with government backing. His
followers re-established themselves at a new base at Salween Village
near Nampawng, south of Lashio.
Although he now lives in Rangoon, Lo has been a crucial figure in
brokering peace deals in his native Kokang. In March 1989 it was
with his assistance that junta intelligence chief Khin Nyunt secured
a cease-fire deal with the CPB's Northern Bureau so swiftly.
Similarly, when in November 1992 hostilities erupted between the
Yang and Peng clans over control of the trade, it was Lo who sat
with Khin Nyunt at a government guest-house in Lashio to broker a
peace pact between the warring factions. Analysts are also convinced
that Luo's involvement in the drug trade continues, albeit at a
greater remove than in his younger days. A 1996 Australian Bureau of
Criminal Intelligence report refers to Lo simply as a 'major player'
in the Burmese narcotics trade.
Following the liberalisation of the economy, Lo founded the family's
flagship company, Asia World, in June 1992, with his
Western-educated son Steven Law acting as managing director. Since
then Asia World has expanded from an import-export and trading base
into bus transport, housing and hotel construction, a supermarket
chain, manufacturing as well as major infrastructure projects, most
notably Rangoon port development and the upgrading of the national
highway between Mandalay and Muse on the Chinese border. As one
diplomatic report describes it, Asia World is Burma's "fastest
growing and most diversified conglomerate".
Lo is well connected internationally. He enjoys a close personal and
business relationship with Malaysian-born tycoon Robert Kuok.
Business that began with the importing into Burma of Kuok's cooking
oil expanded to include the sub-contracting of Kuok Group projects
in Burma, including the construction of the Traders and Shangrila
hotels in Rangoon. Lo subsidiary Kokang Export Import & Construction
later took a 10 per cent holding in the US$85 million Traders Hotel,
while the Myanmar Fund, an institutional investment vehicle managed
by Kuok's Hong Kong- based Kerry Securities, bought a 25 per cent
stake in Asia World Co Ltd.
The Lo family has also established a home away from home in
Singapore, with the Singaporean Government investment arm, the
Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GSIC), earlier
owning a 17.2 per cent share in the Myanmar Fund (which was wound up
last year due to adverse publicity and heavy losses). In 1995 Steven
Law married Singaporean businesswoman Cecilia Ng at a glittering
Rangoon wedding attended by eight serving cabinet ministers and
Singapore's ambassador to Burma. The Los, both father and son,
remain frequent visitors to the island republic, but the welcome
extended to the family in drugs-tough Singapore has not been
universal; in 1996 Steven Law was refused a visa to the USA on
suspicion of involvement in narcotics trafficking.
Another celebrated Burmese narcotics trafficker apparently following
in the pattern set by Lo Hsing-han is Zhang Ji-fu, far better known
as Khun Sa. The Sino-Shan warlord finally surrendered to the Rangoon
government in January 1996, moving from the base of his Mong Tai
Army (MTA) near the Thai border to Rangoon. Taking with him boxes of
cash in various currencies, he has re-established himself there in
comfortable semi-retirement. His growing business interests are
handled by three of eight children: two sons (Sam Heung, managing
affairs on the Thai border, and Sam Seun, running a gems and jade
business between Rangoon and the north) and a daughter (Mee Daw, who
is understood to oversee her father's financial interests).
His legal investments include real estate in Rangoon - some of it
confiscated from its occupiers by the government - as well as two
casino projects. One is under construction near Tachilek while
another is planned to be built on an island off Kawthaung, opposite
the Thai coastal city of Ranong. Both projects are joint ventures
with politically well-connected Thai businessmen.
At the same time, evidence points to an ongoing involvement in the
narcotics trade. Sources in Shan State recently confirmed that armed
Khun Sa loyalists are still operating in his original stamping
ground, Loi Maw, as well as near Tangyan and on the Thai border. Sam
Heung, meanwhile has based himself at Tachilkek, where, in addition
to managing his father's casino interests, he also serves as de
facto 'governor' of the Ho Mong area. According to Western
intelligence sources, he has opened one or more amphetamine plants
in the Ho Mong area for which local army units provide protection.
Given the opaque, secretive nature of Burma's government and
commerce (public access to company registration information, for
example, is not permitted), much remains unclear about many of the
businesses operating today. Not lost on analysts of the narcotics
trade, however, has been the sudden and remarkable growth enjoyed by
Burma's only private bank with full foreign exchange facilities: the
Myanmar May Flower Bank. Since near bankruptcy in 1995, it has
expanded to open branches across the country.
Founded in 1994, Myanmar May Flower Bank is part of the Myanmar May
Flower Group, whose ethnic Chinese chairman, Kyaw Win, has emerged
as Burma's new high-profile entrepreneur. From humble beginnings in
a border village and an education in Mandalay, Kyaw Win emerged in
the 1980s largely as a result of his association with Thai logging
tycoon Choon Tangkakarn, owner of Pathumthani Sawmills (a
businessman understood to have attracted the attention of Western
narcotics intelligence officials). In 1989 Choon and Kyaw Win
co-operated in a logging venture in a Rangoon government-granted
concession which happened to be in an area abutting the Thai border
controlled by Khun Sa's MTA. The success of that venture
necessitated an understanding between Khun Sa on the one hand and
Kyaw Win and Choon on the other. Also understood to have been
involved in the arrangement was Rangoon's then Eastern Region
commander, Lieutenant General Maung Aye (now army chief). Maung
Aye's association with Kyaw Win, which dates back to his lengthy
tenure of the Eastern command, continues today.
In 1990 Kyaw Win moved from Thailand back to Rangoon to establish
the May Flower Trading Company. The bank opened in 1994 and in 1996
was granted a full foreign exchange licence by the government.
Banking sources in Rangoon attribute this unique privilege to Kyaw
Win's relationship with General Maung Aye. In September 1997 the
Myanmar May Flower group's growth continued with the acquisition of
Yangon Airways, one of Burma's two private domestic airlines.
Following the sale by its Thai owner, the loss-plagued carrier added
two improbable destinations to its routings: Lashio in northern Shan
State, and Mergui, a seaport on the Andaman coast. Neither are noted
as tourist or commercial centres.
Conclusions
In the final analysis, the quiet take-over of Myanmar's
private-sector economy by narco-barons and their associates allows
for one charitable interpretation: the junta is prepared to turn a
blind eye to the process in the overriding interest of securing
peace, integrating insurgent-held areas into the national mainstream
and promoting economic development - if necessary with dirty money.
In terms of this analysis, Burma's ruling junta evidently feels it
has the upper hand over the major traffickers, whose activities are
well known to the regime's ubiquitous Directorate of Defence
Services Intelligence (DDSI).
Some analysts, prepared to credit the junta with a long-term
narcotics strategy, argue that the government may even hope that
over time today's drug lords, attracted by the prospect of making
real money legally, may mellow into legitimate business tycoons. One
senior Rangoon-based diplomat puts it this way: "Just as the
government wants to deal with opium cultivators by showing them a
different way to make a living, so it is trying to deal with leaders
by showing them too there's a different way of making a living -
'We'll let you go 'legit', if you stop your refining and
trafficking.'"
Proponents of this argument point to the government's more muscular
approach to narcotics interdiction in the field. Over the past year,
military units have attacked opium convoys and some refineries,
while drug seizures have risen - achievements the government
trumpets at every opportunity. It has also, albeit to widespread
incredulity, promised the enforcement of 'opium-free zones' in
border areas by 2000.
However, successes in narcotics interdiction, as well being recent
and far from uniformly effective, also remain decidedly relative.
What modest efforts Burma was once making were suspended in 1988
when US aid and a limited US-funded chemical spraying programme were
cut after the bloody suppression of the democracy movement. Since
then, seizures of heroin in any year have never exceeded 500 kg -
less than one per cent of potential annual production. Figures for
opium seizures as a percentage of the potential crop are even less
impressive.
More broadly, however, the notion that Rangoon's corruption-riddled
regime is able or willing to oversee the transition of a powerful
and well-entrenched narco-mafia into respectable businessmen is
probably naive. Certainly, as Burmese heroin production has soared,
the traffickers have evinced no interest in turning their backs on
narcotics in favour of legitimate business. In January 1991 Kokang
warlord Peng Jia-sheng assured visiting diplomatic and UN officials
of plans to end heroin production in Special Region No 1 within one
year and eradicate opium production within seven, but the opium
poppy still blooms in Kokang and heroin production in the area
continued its relentless rise during the early 1990s. The Yang clan
appears equally set in its ways. In 1994, Yang Mao-liang's younger
brother, Yang Mao-xian, was arrested by exasperated Chinese
authorities while visiting China and was executed in October of that
year for smuggling large shipments of heroin into the People's
Republic. In April 1996 a Chinese police task force intercepted a
consignment of 598.85 kg of No 4 heroin in Guangzhou - the biggest
single drugs bust in China's history. Subsequent investigations
revealed the shipment had been driven by Kunming- and
Guangzhou-based Chinese traffickers in several vehicles from Longtan
Village in the Kokang District of Burma - not far from Yang
Mao-liang's military headquarters at Xi-ou and a nearby refinery.
Chinese sources pointedly noted that before crossing back into China
the heroin-laden vehicles were waved through a Burmese army
checkpoint in Kokang, no questions asked.
Indeed, in the field, up to the battalion and regiment level,
military complicity in both production and transportation of
narcotics and crucial precursor chemicals (notably acetic anhydride)
has been longstanding, a situation aggravated by the collapse of the
kyat and the dire conditions faced by most army units in the field.
Under circumstances such as this, the evidence suggests that
narco-traffickers view their situation in Burma today rather
differently from the junta. Apparently confident of the impunity
with which they can operate, they appear to be making investments
and building for a long-term future as fathers retreat into
comfortable semi-retirement and sons and daughters take up the reins
of more broadly based business empires. As one narcotics
intelligence source puts it: "They feel they have the generals in
their pockets."
To date there is no hard evidence to support the contention that
military involvement in the trade has been orchestrated from Rangoon
as a matter of policy. However, the repatriation and laundering of
narco-profits as well as the impunity enjoyed by the barons has
clearly become institutionalised: a 'don't-ask' policy over the
source of funds used by Burma's new generation of narco-capitalists
has been adopted at the highest level of government. Nor,
interestingly, is there anything to suggest that the anti-corruption
purge of late 1997 has affected the operations of major
narco-traffickers. Despite the sacking of several powerful ministers
notorious for blatant corruption and the arrest of scores of their
subordinates, it appears to be business as usual for the
narco-barons. Significantly, on 11 December 1997 an article in the
state-run vernacular press announced the black-listing by the
Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development of UWSA's
Myanmar Kyone Yeom Group for 'submitting false accounts'. However,
following meetings between Wa leaders and junta chief Lieutenant
General Khin Nyunt, the minister responsible, technocrat Brigadier
General David Abel was abruptly shunted to an inactive post.
Whether Burma deserves to be branded a 'narco-state' remains finally
a subjective and intensely political question. In inviting Rangoon
into its club last July, the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) clearly chose to overlook the government's transgressions in
the narcotics field - not least given concerns over growing Chinese
influence in Burma. By contrast, the USA, Europe and Australia have
been far less ready to indulge the junta and have voiced their
criticism of its dubious narcotics record.
Either way, in Burma itself the reality is a creeping
criminalisation of the national economy: narco-capitalists and their
close associates are now involved in running ports, toll roads,
airlines, banks and industries, often in joint ventures with the
government. No less disturbing is the military regime's growing
dependence on narco-dollars to keep a desperately floundering
economy above water. This wary but mutually beneficial relationship
between the junta and the narco-barons is a habit that is likely to
prove ever harder to break. Ultimately, the survival of both may
depend on it.
Authors
Anthony Davis and Bruce Hawke are freelance journalists based in
Bangkok.
GRAPHIC: Photograph 1, The 'godfather' of Kokang: 63-year-old former opium warlord Lo Hsing-han has been both in and out of favour with Rangoon, but remains arguably the most powerful businessman in Burma today. All photographs: Anthony Davis; Photograph 2, Rangoon port, where Lo Hsing-han's Asia World Co is involved in an upgrading and development project.; Photograph 3, Burmese troops on the move in northern Shan State in requisitioned civilian trucks. Both the uniforms and the vehicles have certainly seen better days.