Edging toward war: Drugs and land disputes spur military battles between Thailand and Burma
Source : Jonathan Manthorpe, The Vancouver Sun(Feb 24)
The two-decade-long era of peace and cooperation among the 10 countries of Southeast Asia is under severe strain after a serious battle between the armies of Thailand and Burma.
Both countries have moved heavy reinforcements to their border in the "Golden Triangle" -- Burma's opium poppy-growing highlands -- after a bloody battle 10 days ago in which scores of the Rangoon junta's soldiers were killed.
In both Rangoon and Bangkok there is much chest thumping and sabre rattling as years of mutual frustration bubble up into rumours of war.
Whether these tensions now boil over into conflict -- something Southeast Asia has not seen between countries since Vietnam's 1979 invasion of Cambodia and, peripherally, its border war with China in 1986-87 -- seems to be in the hands of fate and happenstance.
The timing of the clash between Thailand and Burma itself breeds uncertainty. It came as the new Thai government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was easing itself into office after last month's election.
This coincides with a tussle for power among the generals in the Burmese military regime.
Thaksin's victory owed much to an appeal to strong nationalist sentiments among Thais.
Those instincts have been goaded into widespread anger against the Burmese regime in recent months over the targeting of young Thais by drug producers and traffickers operating out of the Golden Triangle.
Hundreds of thousands of Thai young people, mostly children of the influential middle class, have become addicted to a form of the drug "ecstasy" being smuggled in from factories in the Golden Triangle operated by drug lords of the United Wa State Army, an ethnic minority under the patronage of the Rangoon junta.
The purposeful targeting of their children has outraged Thais, who in the last 40 years have been largely successful in eradicating their own historic opium poppy growing, heroin addiction and trafficking problem.
Soon after the addiction epidemic became apparent Thailand moved some of its best military units up to its jungle-covered, mountainous northern border with Burma.
Rumour quickly began to surface that Thailand was employing mercenaries and allies on cross-border raids to destroy drug tablet factories.
Most persistent are reports that the Thai military has been arming and helping members of the Shan State Army against the Wa and their drug factories.
The Shan have for 40 years been fighting for independence from Burma, but in recent months thousands of their people have crossed the border into Thailand to escape attacks from the Wa aimed at driving them off their traditional lands and expanding the drug-producing region.
There is no doubt the Shan army has been retaliating with strikes into Burma from refugee camps in Thailand.
Burmese troops were in a running battle with one such Shan rebel group on Feb. 9, when a barrage of mortar shells fell in the Thai town of Mae Sai, killing three people.
Thai troops were quickly dispatched and discovered a contingent of several hundred Burmese government soldiers inside Thailand.
In the engagement, 19 Thai soldiers were captured and held by the Burmese who set up a defensive point on a hilltop.
The Thai captives managed to escape in the following hours and the Bangkok army launched a full-scale assault on the Burmese, sweeping them off the hilltop and back across the border. Scores of the Burmese soldiers were killed in the battle.
In the days since the battle, both sides have heavily reinforced their troops in the region. Rangoon is believed to have deployed its well-armed Light Infantry Division. Bangkok has sent two armoured regiments with about 100 light tanks, as well as holding on alert two squadrons of fighter-bomber warplanes.
This bristling situation is now alive with flying barbed words. Burma has accused the Thais of arming and supporting the Shan in an effort to frustrate what Rangoon claims are its own efforts to stem the drug trade.
Bangkok says it was a clear cut case of Burmese abuse of Thai sovereignty. Thai newspapers have been full of more outraged invective against the junta, even suggesting Thailand should withdraw from the organization that has helped establish regional security over the last three decades, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Thaksin, the new Thai prime minister, has been forced to put off his planned fence-mending visit to Rangoon and to distance himself from his past close commercial relationship with the Burmese junta.
In one of those paradoxes of the human condition, a calming effect on the situation may come from the new Thai defence minister, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh.
Chavalit is a former army general who was prime minister in the 1990s under the banner of his personal political party, New Aspiration.
Chavalit funded the party from the proceeds of hardwood timber smuggling from Cambodia and Burma when he was a regional military commander. He is a soldier who has always shown more interest in money-making than in fighting.
This may prove a useful attribute in this situation, except -- and it's a big caveat -- Chavalit is already being criticized publicly by senior serving generals for appeasing the Burmese and demeaning Thailand's national honour.