METH INVADES THAILAND; AUTHORITIES TAKING ACTION

DOI KIU HUNG, Thailand -- In Southeast Asia's infamous poppy-growing
heartland known as the Golden Triangle, drug warlords have begun producing
large quantities of a methamphetamine -- known as "crazy medicine" -- that
is rivaling the traditional trade in heroin and prompting the U.S. military
to quietly train an anti-drug commando unit in Thailand.

Most of the drug production is occurring in Myanmar, also known as Myanmar,
where Thai military officials and Western drug control specialists estimate
as many as 50 large factories are synthesizing the substance.

Thai officials estimate as many as 800 million tablets of the drug -- about
80 tons -- will be smuggled into their country from Myanmar this year, a
figure one drug expert described as "unprecedented for a country the size
of Thailand."

Some of those pills are then shipped on to other Asian countries, Europe
and the United States, but most remain in Thailand, where methamphetamine
use has skyrocketed among teen-agers and young adults.

The abundance of crazy medicine, a form of speed called yaba in Thai, has
provided people who never could afford heroin with a quick, cheap high.

The Thai Health Ministry estimates that 3 million people, or about 5
percent of the population, regularly use yaba, making Thailand the world's
largest per capita consumer of methamphetamines, a level of drug abuse
comparable to the cocaine epidemic in the United States during the mid-1980s.

Thai military officials contend that most of the yaba from Myanmar is
produced by the United Wa State Army, a contingent of 15,000 tribespeople
in Shan state, Myanmar's easternmost province.

Western anti-drug agents regard the United Wa force, which is allied with
Myanmar's ruling junta, as one of the world's largest and best- armed
drug-dealing organizations.

Members of the Wa used to live near Myanmar's border with China, but they
have relocated to areas near the Thai border. Thai officials and Western
analysts said Beijing pressured the Wa to move to stem the flow of drugs
entering southwestern China.

"It was a very smart move," said a Thai military intelligence officer. "The
Chinese got rid of the Wa problem and gave it to us."

Intelligence sources said China has provided the Wa -- who are fighting
other ethnic groups in Shan state -- with weapons, including sophisticated
surface-to-air missiles, in exchange for help in constructing a network of
roads in areas they control.

The Chinese are building the roads in an effort to use Myanmar's ports,
which would provide China's navy with long-coveted access to the Indian
Ocean, the sources said.

The Wa's move to Thai border regions has transformed once sleepy hillside
villages into boomtowns with new schools, hospitals, homes, restaurants --
and large laboratories where methamphetamine is synthesized and opium is
refined into heroin.

From a fortified Thai border checkpoint here in Doi Kiu Hung, soldiers
scan the largest such town, Mong Yawn, which is surrounded by large
buildings intelligence officials said are drug factories.

"All this stuff, it's new," said Maj. Gen. Anu Sumitra, the army
intelligence chief for northeastern Thailand, where most of the smuggling
has occurred. "It was built with drug money."

Drug experts said it costs the Wa about 5 cents to make a yaba pill. They
sell it for about 30 cents to Thai intermediaries. When it reaches the
streets of Bangkok, it goes for as much as $2.

"Some of their factories have such sophisticated pharmaceutical equipment
that they can churn out more than a million pills a day," said one Western
anti-drug agent.

The influx of yaba pills has so alarmed Thai authorities that they have
asked the U.S. military to train an anti-drug task force of army commandos
and border patrol officers.

In a collaboration that is part of a new American effort to work with
foreign armed forces to stem the global drug trade, U.S. Special Forces
troops are training the Thai unit to interdict smugglers who traverse the
rugged hills that separate Thailand and Myanmar.

Although the mission in Thailand is far smaller than the widely publicized
American training program in Colombia -- which is receiving a $1.3 billion
U.S. aid package to attack its drug trade -- both involve an emphasis on
advanced combat and reconnaissance tactics.

And just as in Colombia, the U.S. anti-drug program here will involve
sharing satellite imagery and other intelligence information to help the
military identify targets, officials said.

U.S. officials here said the instruction, at an army base near the northern
city of Chiang Mai, began in May and is scheduled to end in October.

Much of the training will focus on using sophisticated night-vision
technology and flying American-made Black Hawk combat helicopters,
officials said.

U.S. and Thai officials said that 20 American soldiers will act only as
instructors and will not participate in interdiction missions. The Thais
plan to buy the Black Hawks.

One U.S. official said the Pentagon agreed to the Thai request because of
concern about the volume of drugs believed to be inundating the country --
and fear among U.S. anti-drug officials that unfettered smuggling into
Thailand could result in more yaba reaching U.S. soil.

"The Thais see the drug problem as their No. 1 security concern," the
official said. "But it is also a concern for the United States."