GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO REALITY

Anti-drug moves in Burma need to be linked to a political solution in
Rangoon

Confusing and mixed signals have long been the hallmark of Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in his handling of drugs and Burmese
insurgent groups based on the other side of the border in the Burma
sector of the Golden Triangle. For the past three years, the Thaksin
government has been condemning the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a
pro-Rangoon group that operates just a stone's throw from the Thai
border, accusing it of being the main source of methamphetamines
flooding into the country.

The UWSA has been accused of everything from being a major threat to
national security to assassination attempts against Thaksin, as his
war on drugs has supposedly cut into their profits.

Some senior Thai Army officers have publicly accused their Burmese
counterparts of not doing enough to curb the illicit activities of the
UWSA, and suggested that they were being bribed to turn a blind eye to
the illegal activities.

The UWSA has been called the world's largest armed drug trafficking
group by the US State Department. A number of their commanders,
including Wei Hsueh-kang, are wanted on drug-trafficking charges.

But today the commander of Thailand's Third Army Region, Lt-General
Picharnmate Muangmanee, will preside over the opening of a hospital in
Mong Yawn, a UWSA stronghold adjacent to Chiang Rai's Mae Fa Luang
district.

The Thai-funded hospital in Mong Yawn is part of a bigger programme,
the Yong Kha project, that is modelled after Thailand's Doi Tung
crop-substitution project in what was once an opium-growing area in
Chiang Rai province.

Supporters of the Yong Kha project like to say that the aid is for the
Burmese government - not the UWSA. However, it is well understood that
the area in question is directly under UWSA control.

However, it is not clear what purpose this Yong Kha project will
serve. For one thing, the Doi Tung project was aimed at replacing what
was then an opium economy with other crops. It took the Kingdom three
decades and a lot of help from the international community to achieve
some success.

But the problems with Mong Yawn and the UWSA are not concerned with
opium cultivation alone. They demonstrate the close relationship
between Burma's illicit drug industry and its insurgencies.

One insurgent group after another has turned to the production of
opium, and, over the past decade, methamphetamines, to sustain their
armies because of the absence of a political settlement between them
and the Rangoon government.

In other words, no anti-drug policy has any chance of success if it is
not linked to a political solution acceptable to the central
government of Burma and the several armed ethnic groups, some of which
have entered cease-fire agreements but continue to engage in the drug
business.

The Thai government and the country's people will be better served if
Thaksin goes beyond this simple political gesture to the Rangoon
government and seriously addresses the root of the drug problem coming
out of Burma.

This means the government will have to comprehensively address issues
such as the sources of financing for the drug production, the supply
of precursor chemicals needed to make methamphetamines, the
clandestine drug-making labs, and the smugglers who often engage in
gunfights with Thai troops along the northern border.

The Bt20-million grant to the Yong Kha project is a drop in the bucket
when one takes into consideration the magnitude of Burma's drug industry.

It's time the Thaksin administration woke up to the fact that Burma's
illicit drug industry and ethnic insurgencies have long been two sides
of the same coin.