Former narc officer fights drug war(2)

Police officers in the city of Ruili, Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar, check a car for drugs with the help of a trained dog. Photos by Chen Haining / Xinhua

He looked at the military as a good career, and joined the army as soon as he graduated from middle school.

After a year of basic training, when he developed outstanding shooting skills, Tian joined the border narcotics division.

Tian spent a further three months training at a border checkpoint in Yunnan, where he witnessed all drug trafficking, he says.

He had seen pregnant women who hid drugs internally. They were impoverished people from an ethnic group in Sichuan. Some of them gave birth and died while carrying the drugs.

"It is very difficult to arrest people for possessing small amounts, or to arrest pregnant women and ethnic people," says Tian. These trafficking mechanisms were halted in an operation in 2007.

The offers of large bribes were constant. Tian got a stipend of 300 yuan ($48) a month, but the drug dealers offered six-figure sums from suitcases filled with cash in exchange for their freedom when they were caught.

He understood why the first year of training had been so tough. "The training not only shaped our bodies but also our core values," he says. "We walked a line between good and evil. If not for the strenuous training, we might have succumbed."

Even so, sometimes the military gamekeepers turned poachers.

Tian once saw his former outdoor survival skills instructor in the mountains and realized he was trafficking drugs.

"I hid behind a rock. I could not aim my gun at my teacher," he recalls.

Tian fired into the air and the ex-soldier pulled out a gun and fired back. Bullets zipped around Tian's feet, but he stayed behind the rock and held his fire. After the man had run out of bullets, Tian showed himself and pointed his gun at the man's head.

The panic in the veteran's eyes faded when he saw Tian. He lowered his head and neither of them spoke. Tian escorted his teacher to the car in silence.