Fighting on a New Front in a Forgotten War

source : Asiaweek - January 19, 2001

BYLINE: BY WILLIAM BARNES, LOI DAI LENG, MYANMAR-THAI FRONTIER

A rebel army in Myanmar that once smuggled narcotics turns its guns on the drug traffickers in a bid for legitimacy

The dawn quiet in the jungle along the frontier between Myanmar and Thailand is broken by a solitary shout: "Go man go!" A squad of uniformed young men carrying an eclectic collection of guns jogs out of the woods. "Go man go," they chant back to their drill sergeant. Here in the middle of the Golden Triangle, in a village straddling the border, the latest recruits of an ethnic Shan warlord's small army are preparing to fight -- against the drug trade.

To those familiar with this lawless land where much of the world's opium is produced, that may come as a bit of a surprise. The Shan State Army has been fighting since the 1960s for the freedom the Shan people were promised at Myanmar's independence. Its fight was not always noble.

For years, the SSA's southern forces under the notorious druglord Khun Sa controlled a huge chunk of the world's opium supply. After Khun Sa signed a peace deal with Yangon in 1996 that allowed him to remain free in "retirement," the SSA and its cause faded from the world's attention. Now, in a quixotic bid for legitimacy and international support, its commander is assaulting the heroin factories and intercepting the mule convoys that are run by rival militias backed by Yangon's military junta.

"If I was doing it for the money, I would be a drug trafficker wouldn't I?" says Col. Yot Serk, a quiet-spoken lifelong soldier, aggrieved that Washington still lists him as a narcotics dealer. "I just see that life is hell for the Shan people under the Burmese. You don't think we'd be fighting like this if the [junta] were even a little bit reasonable?" In the last two years, the SSA says, it has destroyed seven drug refineries and seized more than 70 kg of heroin and two million methamphetamine pills.

The SSA's luck may be changing. Bangkok is furious about the flood of yaba, or amphetamines, that is flooding into Thailand from factories across the northern frontier. Thai generals seethe at the Myanmar army. It does raid drug production plants and burn poppy fields elsewhere. But it is also allowing the United Wa State Army, a Yangon-aligned ethnic militia which the U.S. calls "the world's largest armed drug trafficking organization," to expand its operations in Shan State along the border.

So while the Thai government dares not move openly against a prickly historical rival that is now a fellow member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, it keeps an eye on Yot Serk and discreetly applauds his successes. Thai authorities allow the SSA to operate freely in Loi Dai Leng -- where one side of the sole street is Thailand, the other Myanmar. About 100 fighters live here, out of a total SSA strength that experts estimate at two to three thousand. Thai special forces appear to be friendly with SSA counterparts, and Thai agents are said to cooperate with the ethnic army's anti-drug operations. "We check. We know that he does do these things. We support every drug fighter," says a well-placed Thai intelligence source.

But the open recognition and support by the international community that the SSA craves for its drug fighting campaign and independence aspirations remain elusive. That may be because Yot Serk was once Khun Sa's best fighter. Or it may be because some governments are still not persuaded that the 43-year-old commander is going straight. Meanwhile, pressure on the SSA continues to grow as the stronger Wa, who have traditionally operated in the hilly north of Shan State near the Chinese border, move thousands of their villagers into the historically ethnic-Shan lowlands nearer Thailand. And the forgotten war rumbles on.