If ever there was a country in need of a program to identify the players, it is cloistered, xenophobic Burma. Particularly in the uncharted "Golden Triangle," where a slice of northeastern Burma meets Thailand and Laos, the situation is a demographer's and political analyst's nightmare. Remnants of a Kuomintang army that fled China at the time of the Communist takeover vie with independent warlords for control of the region's rich opium crop, while armed independence movements representing a bewildering host of ethnic and tribal groups periodically challenge the Rangoon government of General Ne Win.
Now another threat has arisen. Since...