Pubdate: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 Source: Nation, The (Thailand) Copyright: 2003 Nation Multimedia Group Contact: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1963 GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO REALITY Anti-drug moves in Burma need to be linked to a political solution in Rangoon Confusing and mixed signals have long been the hallmark of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in his handling of drugs and Burmese insurgent groups based on the other side of the border in the Burma sector of the Golden Triangle. For the past three years, the Thaksin government has been condemning the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a pro-Rangoon group that operates just a stone's throw from the Thai border, accusing it of being the main source of methamphetamines flooding into the country. The UWSA has been accused of everything from being a major threat to national security to assassination attempts against Thaksin, as his war on drugs has supposedly cut into their profits. Some senior Thai Army officers have publicly accused their Burmese counterparts of not doing enough to curb the illicit activities of the UWSA, and suggested that they were being bribed to turn a blind eye to the illegal activities. The UWSA has been called the world's largest armed drug trafficking group by the US State Department. A number of their commanders, including Wei Hsueh-kang, are wanted on drug-trafficking charges. But today the commander of Thailand's Third Army Region, Lt-General Picharnmate Muangmanee, will preside over the opening of a hospital in Mong Yawn, a UWSA stronghold adjacent to Chiang Rai's Mae Fa Luang district. The Thai-funded hospital in Mong Yawn is part of a bigger programme, the Yong Kha project, that is modelled after Thailand's Doi Tung crop-substitution project in what was once an opium-growing area in Chiang Rai province. Supporters of the Yong Kha project like to say that the aid is for the Burmese government - not the UWSA. However, it is well understood that the area in question is directly under UWSA control. However, it is not clear what purpose this Yong Kha project will serve. For one thing, the Doi Tung project was aimed at replacing what was then an opium economy with other crops. It took the Kingdom three decades and a lot of help from the international community to achieve some success. But the problems with Mong Yawn and the UWSA are not concerned with opium cultivation alone. They demonstrate the close relationship between Burma's illicit drug industry and its insurgencies. One insurgent group after another has turned to the production of opium, and, over the past decade, methamphetamines, to sustain their armies because of the absence of a political settlement between them and the Rangoon government. In other words, no anti-drug policy has any chance of success if it is not linked to a political solution acceptable to the central government of Burma and the several armed ethnic groups, some of which have entered cease-fire agreements but continue to engage in the drug business. The Thai government and the country's people will be better served if Thaksin goes beyond this simple political gesture to the Rangoon government and seriously addresses the root of the drug problem coming out of Burma. This means the government will have to comprehensively address issues such as the sources of financing for the drug production, the supply of precursor chemicals needed to make methamphetamines, the clandestine drug-making labs, and the smugglers who often engage in gunfights with Thai troops along the northern border. The Bt20-million grant to the Yong Kha project is a drop in the bucket when one takes into consideration the magnitude of Burma's drug industry. It's time the Thaksin administration woke up to the fact that Burma's illicit drug industry and ethnic insurgencies have long been two sides of the same coin. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake