Pubdate: Wed, 30 Jul 2003
Source: Bangkok Post (Thailand)
Copyright: The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2003
Contact:  http://www.bangkokpost.co.th/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/39
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/opium

THAILAND REACHES OUT TO THE WORLD

Thailand welcomed a high-level team of officials from Afghanistan this week.
They want to see the successful crop substitution programme in Chiang Rai,
and learn two things - how it works, and how it can be applied in their
country.

It is the second major involvement in the post-Taliban Afghanistan by
Thailand, after a six-month construction project by the army in Bagram. It
builds on a sometimes hesitant but positive policy which started in earnest
with the peacekeeping commitment in East Timor, and which should continue.

The royal-sponsored programme of substituting profitable market crops for
opium is a major accomplishment, and is known in important international
circles. One might say Thailand has been too modest about this achievement.
In less than a generation, authorities conducted a multi-step project which
had only winners.

Farmers greatly increased their income and their futures with crops 10 or
even 100 times more profitable than opium.

Markets gained new Thai products, at home and abroad.

Roads opened up the North to residents and visitors.

Opium warlords like Lo Hsing-han and Khun Sa lost all influence and had to
leave the country.

This week, Mohamad Alim Razam, minister of light industry and foodstuffs,
will lead other top Afghanistan officials to look the project over. They
will concentrate on Doi Tung and the Mae Fah Luang Foundation, but will also
be able to look at some of the other related projects such as treatment of
drug addiction and the continuing crackdown on trafficking. Foreign drug
smugglers continue to move heroin both into and through Thailand.

If there is any justice, international aid for Afghanistan against its own
opium scourge will flow from this. As in Thailand, farmers in Afghanistan
are virtually forced to grow opium because of the lack of opportunity.
During the dark days of the Taliban, Afghanistan was the world's leading
opium grower, although the extremists managed to stop almost all opium crops
in their last year in power, leaving farmers with almost no income.

The liberation of the country last year has brought back this pernicious and
enslaving crop.

Thai expertise is badly needed, and the 24-member Kabul delegation seems
likely to request Thai help for a crop substitution programme.

Thailand seems likely to oblige, as it should.

It would be yet another indication the country is ready to help the less
fortunate. Thai army peacekeepers in East Timor continue to be the best
liked and most effective force in that brutally poor country.

The army engineers at Bagram, Afghanistan, were both popular and efficient
in their reconstruction jobs.

Not only is Thailand the world's top expert in crop replacement programmes.
More importantly, they work. Afghanistan and Colombia both need guidance to
develop plans so that farmers can empower themselves by growing higher value
market crops that also are more acceptable to society.

Burma has recently accepted a Thai pilot project, but has shown no
enthusiasm for expanding the programme.

It might be said that Thailand has a responsibility to try even harder to
help less well off countries in areas where Thais are experts.

The peacekeepers in East Timor, agricultural advisers in Burma - and perhaps
in Afghanistan - and the Bagram engineers should herald a modest but
insistent foreign policy development. Thailand is considering whether to
help out in postwar Iraq. The question involves politics, of course, but
should be settled chiefly on whether Thais can truly help Iraq. By reaching
out to the world in occupations in which the country is strong, Thailand can
build the country's image as a strong and dependable friend to the less
fortunate.
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MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk