Border official from Cambodia stops a car intending to cross over to Viet Nam.
For two decades, Police Colonel You Knourn has woken up at 7 a.m.—on the good days at least—preparing himself for another demanding day at Bavet’s Anti-Drug Department. His routine is often unpredictable. Some days, he spends his time reviewing paperwork and coordinating with immigration officers. But on others, there’s no time to rest—drug seizures often happen in the middle of the night.
When his phone rings at 2 a.m., he knows what it means. He drags himself out of bed, rushes to the office, and checks in with immigration. In those moments, the job becomes a 24/7 responsibility, where sleep is a luxury and each hour could lead to a breakthrough.
Khourn lives and works in Bavet, a town on Cambodia’s eastern frontier. In the shadow of Bavet’s glitzy casinos and neon lights lies a web of organized crime. Once known as a gateway for traders crossing from neighbouring Viet Nam, the city has earned a more sinister reputation in recent years—as a main artery in Southeast Asia’s drug trade.
By coordinating operations, investing in advanced technologies, sharing intelligence, and enhancing the skills of border forces, agencies are working to dismantle drug routes in the region, striking back against organized crime.
At the centre of this effort is the Border Liaison Office (BLO) network. Led by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the network connects frontline law enforcement from key border towns like Bavet with counterparts across other towns in the region to detect, intercept, and neutralize threats at the borders. For years, the BLO network has proactively reduced the movement of illicit drugs across borders and sent a strong message: that the region is united and resolute in dismantling the criminal groups behind them.
Border officer Police Colonel You Knourn stands at checkpoint between Cambodia and Viet Nam.
“Without the BLO, it would be much harder to track criminals and coordinate with our counterparts in Viet Nam and other countries,” Knourn explains. This collaboration ensures that operations don’t stop at the border, allowing teams on both sides to work together and apprehend traffickers more effectively.
Knourn has been trained in various occasions by UNODC on drug searches and instruments, including the Lateral Flow Biosensor Test, a test used to detect the presence of specific substances, including drugs, by showing a colour change on a test strip. These tests are portable and provide quick results, making them useful for on-the-spot testing at border checkpoints.
“It’s impossible to see all the drugs. We need the tests to help us see what our eyes cannot,” says Knourn, who has now become a trainer himself.
The drug trafficking routes between Cambodia and Viet Nam are part of a larger, intricate network that spans Southeast Asia. Bavet, on the border with Viet Nam, is a critical link in this chain. The town’s porous border and rapid development make it an ideal transit point for drug syndicates with heroin, methamphetamine, and other synthetic drugs being smuggled into Viet Nam and beyond. Vice versa, drugs originating from Viet Nam have also been intercepted originating from Viet Nam to feed Bavet’s growing casino industry.
The proximity of countries in the Mekong—Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam—makes it a hotspot for traffickers. Weak law enforcement in some parts, vast remote areas, and cross-border criminal networks allow narcotics to flow with relative ease, feeding the growing drug demand in urban centres and pushing the limits of regional security cooperation.
“One country alone cannot succeed,” said Riku Lehtovuori, Regional Coordinator of Law Enforcement and Training Affairs at UNODC’s Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. “This fight requires a collective effort to reach a collective goal, which is to stop the trafficking. How can we do this? One, by bringing the state-of-the-art knowledge and resources down to the operational level, and two, by having communication channels in place that allow law enforcement agencies to share information and take coordinated action.”
Despite the long hours and high pressure, Knourn finds satisfaction in the investigative side of his work. One of his most memorable cases involved a frozen fish container truck that had been suspiciously rerouted from another country into Cambodia. Instead of intercepting it immediately, the officers at the country of origin deliberately allowed the criminals to continue their journey, informing Knourn and his team through the BLO mechanism so that they could monitor them closely. Thanks to cross-border cooperation, they successfully dismantled the operation and caught the traffickers in Bavet.
In another case, a man abandoned his motorbike at the Bavet border and managed to flee into the bushes toward Viet Nam after Knourn’s team discovered drugs in his bag. But they had valuable evidence: the criminal’s motorbike and license plate. Working with Vietnamese police in the BLO post on the other side of the border, they managed to arrest him at his home. It helps, Knourn says, that he speaks Vietnamese. “Language, and the will to share information, are key.”
Knourn’s dedication to his work means he only sees his family in Phnom Penh every two weeks. It’s not an easy life, he admits, but for him, protecting his country—including his children—from the drug trade and working with his regional counterparts is what keeps him hopeful.
