THAIS WAGE BORDER DRUG WAR

Living a tough existence, Bangkok's soldiers are battling hard to hunt down
gangs that are turning the country into a haven for drug addicts

MAI LAN GATE (Mae Hong Son province) -- Dug in high up among the remote
rugged mountains bordering Myanmar are the frontline forces protecting
Thailand from the country's most insidious enemy.

By day, the men of 722 Company stand guard scanning the jungle and small
holdings that separate them from the Myanmar military and rebel ethnic Shan
army encampments across the demarcation line.

By night, they patrol the rough paths and slippery tracks along which the
heavily armed drug caravans silently make their way as they smuggle millions
of metaphemtamine pills into Thailand.

At this time of year their work is a thankless task. The monsoon rains have
arrived, turning the mud road to Mai Lan Gate into a river of sludge. Food
supplies can only be brought in by personnel carriers every few days, and
there is little comfort in camp.

The outpost is no more than a collection of rough bamboo huts with dirt
floors, hole-in-the-ground toilets and malarial mosquitoes for bed-time
companions.

Still, the troops are grateful for the moment. In a few days they will be
out on a gruelling seven-day patrol.

Living rough, they will sleep in foxholes protected from downpours by no
more than their rain coats as they hunt down the drug gangs that are turning
Thailand into a nation of addicts.

Company commander Capt Phongsathon Nibhaya, 28, says: ""It is very dangerous
because even though I have trained my soldiers, the drugs caravans have 20
armed troops and we have only 11 snipers.''

Although thousands of Thai soldiers, border police and volunteer forces are
strung out along Thailand's western border, they have an almost impossible
job controlling the flow of drugs, immigrants and produce that flood across
the border.

The area under 722 Company's command, around Mai Lan Gate in Pang Ma Pha
district and neighbouring Pai district, is one of rocky limestone pinnacles,
narrow ridges and steep plantations.

It is easy for the smugglers to cross the border unnoticed, laden with pills
manufactured in drug factories just across the border or further north in
ethnic Chinese Red Wa territory.

The soldiers under the command of the Third Army Region, which covers
northwest Thailand, reckon they can only halt 1 per cent of the amphetamine
pills. Long gone are the days when the armed forces boasted they could
control the flow.

With US help, the military all but eradicated Thai-based heroin and opium
production during the 1980s and 90s. But Thailand has already lost the war
against amphetamines and is now fighting a rearguard action.

This year an estimated 600 million tablets will hit the streets of villages
and towns across the country.

With an estimated 700,000 students, and tens of thousands of truckers, taxi
drivers, labourers, slum dwellers and high-society clubbers popping pills,
there is now almost no family in Thailand untouched by drugs.

The narco war is unlikely to be won any time soon.

Not only is there an insatiable demand for the cheap easy-to-make pills,
which can be bought for 80-100 baht (S$3.35-4.20) in Bangkok, but
criminologists and sociologists are calling for the drug to be legalised so
that it can be better controlled.

Despite pledges by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to
turn Myanmar into a drugs-free zone, the military government cannot, or will
not, crack down on the producers, many of whom are closely allied with
powerful regional military commanders or the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

Yangon's ceasefire deal with the ethnic Chinese UWSA is not one the junta
wants to tear up.

Allowing it to deal drugs appears to be the price for peace in Shan state, a
rebellious province with a history of competing ethnic aspirations for
autonomy. Caught in the middle are Thailand's dedicated soldiers.

Villagers, many of whom have relatives in Myanmar, either trek across the
border at night to collect their drug cargoes or have them delivered. They
are then taken on foot to the main road, a telephone call is made, the drugs
are collected; they then speed their way to every corner of Thailand.

Soldiers patrolling the Musso, Shan and Lisu villages say they have a pretty
good idea who is involved, the battery-powered TVs with satellite dishes,
the pick-up trucks and motorcycles standing outside bamboo-hut homes being
the give-away signs. But they rarely catch anyone.

The best they can hope to do is educate the villagers about the dangers of
their youth taking ya baa -- crazy drug -- as the pills are known.

The army suspects the nearby rebel Shan State Army under Yord Serk, a former
ally of the once-notorious drug warlord Khun Sa, and SPDC soldiers are
involved.

The Shan need to fund their skirmishes with the SPDC and the junta's
commanders are so distant from Yangon that they can run their regions as
virtual fiefdoms.

The Shan State Army denies drug dealing. Its SS Army News magazine details
in a ""Battle News'' column a series of counter-narcotics operations against
SPDC troops.

In one, beside a photograph of a dead junta soldier, the SSA says it burned
one drug factory down: ""This refinery was under the control of the local
commander of the SPDC and their drug producing partners.''

Short of the Thai army conducting cross-border strikes against the
refineries, a move debated by top brass, the only other way to halt the
drugs is at the highway checkpoints manned by police and soldiers that have
sealed off the provinces bordering Myanmar. Some have sniffer dogs like
Sheila, a 150,000-baht Labrador trained in Britain.

Last month, 22,000 pills were found in two separate hauls near Pang Ma Pha,
a drop in the ocean compared to the four million tablets discovered this
month in northern Lampang buried in a truck carrying gravel.

The smugglers are now so adept at evading the authorities they are switching
routes, bringing in drugs via Laos, and wising-up to the dogs.

Some plant plastic bags of amphetamine tablets inside cabbages while still
growing. The harvested cabbages are shipped into Thailand.

""They hide the drugs in converted tanks, in tyres, in the seats and the
bumpers. We can stop every car but we don't find the drugs,'' said one
checkpoint officer.

As a clearly frustrated Third Army regional commander Lt-General Wathanachai
Chaimuangwong said in one interview: ""What is the benefit of Thailand
becoming more democratic if the vast majority of its young people are
addicted to drugs?''