BANGKOK - Thailand's policy of attempting to improve diplomatic and economic ties with Burma has undermined attempts to stop the flow of narcotics across the porous Burmese border, says leading Thai senator Dr Kraisak Choonhavan.
Kraisak, chairman of the Thai Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, is a strong critic of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's policy shift toward closer engagement and the avoidance of any confrontation with Rangoon and its drug-trafficking ally the United Wa State Army (UWSA). In a recent interview with Asia Times Online, the senator charged: "The government has bent over backwards to please the generals in Rangoon, the Burmese are dictating to us."
The softly-softly approach with the prickly Burmese generals appears to be at odds with the latest Thai intelligence reports predicting a flood of methamphetamine pills swamping the Thai market this year. While Thaksin stresses the importance of friendly diplomatic relations with Yangon, up to a billion yaba ("crazy medicine", as the Thais refer to speed) tablets from the UWSA-controlled drug laboratories inside Myanmar's Shan are expected to be smuggled across the border this year. Thailand already has an estimated 250,000 addicts and is now facing an epidemic of yaba addiction.
Thailand's northern military command has classified the nation's top security threat as the drug operations across the border masterminded by ethnic Wa and Chinese, who in recent years have seized control over most of the Shan territory of eastern Burma.
About half of the Wa army is used by the Burmese army as a border security force along much of the 850-kilometer frontier with Thailand. Shan sources estimate the Wa control 80 percent of the opium-heroin trade and all the methamphetamine laboratories, which produce the easy-to-smuggle pills.
About this time last year Thai soldiers engaged in periodic clashes along the border with Burmese army and their ethnic-Wa allies in a bitter war of words and bullets. Since the 1989 ceasefire agreement with Yangon, the Wa armies have stopped fighting the government and formed a de facto alliance. The 20,000-strong UWSA has acquired heavy artillery and anti-tank weapons, making it the most heavily armed drug mafia in the world.
Thaksin has made sure there will be no repeat of last year's confrontation with Burma's generals by his recent replacement of key army commanders who favored a tougher approach.
Wa drug baron Wei Hsueh Kang is wanted both in Thailand and the United States for drug trafficking. The US State Department has put a US$2 million reward on his head.
In talks with Bangkok during 2002, the Burmese junta showed no interest in the Thai request to crack down on Wei Hsueh Kang's operations. But Rangoon did insist on the removal of Thai army chief General Surayud Chulanont and of the commander of the 3rd Army (which patrols the Chiang Mai region of northern Thailand), as well as an end to the so-called "provocative operations" of Task Force 399 along the border as preconditions for friendly Burma-Thailand relations.
By the end of 2002 the Thaksin administration had obliged on all three counts. The two key generals were replaced, and Task Force 399 has been scaled down and removed from the border.
Kraisak commented that General Surayud was "the first professional army chief in modern Thai history and highly conscientious in the field of combating drug traffickers". The Thai senator argued that the transfer of a highly respected army chief at the behest of Burmese generals is "humiliating - our national pride is being trampled on for speculative business gains".
Thaksin has opted for closer relations with Rangoon with a strong emphasis on increased business ties as the best way to prod the generals in the direction of shutting down the Wa's burgeoning drug empire. Cooperation, not confrontation, is the hallmark of the new track in Burma-Thailand relations.
In November, General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the Thai defense minister, disclosed bilateral cooperation on four megaprojects: the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Salween River by Thailand's MDX company, a coal mine in a Burmese town opposite Prachuap Khiri Khan, a port project in Tavoy, and a Mae Sot-Rangoon road project.
"Joint development will make border areas more open and help eliminate bad people, minority people and bad things hidden along the border and ensure greater security," said the defense minister, who has been linked with Thai logging companies and other private business interests in Burma. General Chavalit also claimed "drug production would decline if minority people were cleared from border areas through peaceful means".
This business-first agenda is deeply resented by many in the Thai military. General Anu Sumitra, former military intelligence chief in the Chiang Mai (3rd Army) region, declared in a letter to the Bangkok Post: "The defense minister and the prime minister have business interests in Burma. To protect those business interests, they are even prepared to sacrifice the dignity of our army," a statement that reflected the sentiments of many current senior officers.
Thaksin has ordered a domestic crackdown on illegal drugs but with major operations ordered to stay well clear of border suppression that might antagonize the Wa and their allies, the generals in Rangoon.
Privy councilor and former prime minister Prem Tinsulanond has also expressed concern about the prospect that there was no end to the methamphetamine invasion, and apparently favors retaining Task Force 399 as the frontline defense against unwelcome imports from the Wa drug lords.
The Thai government and others who advocate the soft-engagement approach with Yangon argue that the generals and the Wa leaders really want drug eradication. An agreement to phase out opium production in the Wa-controlled territory by 2005 has been widely publicized. However, no such pledge has been made about stopping the methamphetamine trade.
Senator Kraisak and other analysts argue that the power of the generals has long been closely wedded to the Wa-Chinese narco-economy, estimated to be worth more than $550 million a year, and that without these narco-profits fueling banks and business in Rangoon, the economy would have collapsed long ago. Wa investments include the Burma Mayflower Group, the Hong Pang corporation (directly linked to heroin trafficker Wei Hsueh Kang), and Rangoon Airways.
There is no sign that the Thai government, for all its friendly overtures, is having any impact on Wa narcotics production. On the contrary, the evidence points to an expanding Wa drug empire. New drug laboratories have sprung up at Myawaddy in the west where they can pump pills into central Thailand, by the banks of the Mekong, and also in Kachin state, which extends the yaba plague to both Laos and India.
"The new Thai approach is a complete failure," said Senator Kraisak. "Thaksin's policy only makes it easier for the drug traffickers. Our military are now reluctant to engage with intruders on the border - this boosts the confidence of the Wa soldiers."