THAILAND'S WAR ON DRUGS SOWS FEAR, BLOODSHED

At dawn, two men with close-cropped hair stepped out of a black sedan at
Sairung Chuwong's farmhouse and demanded to be let in, claiming they had a
search warrant.

But when the 37-year-old mother of three and her husband Sompong - an
accused drug trafficker - walked out to meet them, one man aimed an M-16
assault rifle at Sompong's head and squeezed the trigger three times. The
other man fired two rounds into Sompong's skull from a pistol to ensure he
was dead.

''He wasn't involved in drugs,'' Sairung said later, weeping and cradling a
portrait of her late husband, whose name appeared on a national watch list
of alleged drug dealers. ''We're just farmers.''

No one seems to know who killed 41-year-old Sompong, but news of such
slayings has spread throughout Thailand since the Government mounted a war
against drugs on February 1.

Nearly 500 suspected drug peddlers have been slain in the crackdown
spearheaded by the Government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a
former police officer. Reports surface almost hourly of more violent
attacks, often under murky circumstances.

Police say they are responsible for just 22 of the killings, all with
officers acting in self-defence. They say the vast majority of the slayings
are the work of drug gangs trying to silence potential informants.

However, forensics experts have accused police of planting evidence on
victims, and human rights advocates maintain that officers are arranging
the shootings or executing suspects under a ''shoot-to-kill'' policy.

Few places have been more bloody than the drug-infested villages here in
Nakhon Sawan, a province 210 kilometres north of Bangkok whose name
translates to ''city of heaven.''

''In this province, the spread of drugs is mostly the work of small- and
medium-size dealers. They're everywhere in all 15 districts,'' said Major
General Thawat Boonfueng, commander of the province's police force.

He said drug trafficking is heavy because the area is ''the gateway to
Bangkok and the northeast,'' a route to the notorious Golden Triangle where
drug production thrives along the frontiers of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.

Thawat said the stimulant methamphetamine - known as ''yaa baa,'' or crazy
medicine - is the main target. Officials estimate up to a billion
methamphetamine pills will be shuttled into Thailand this year from jungle
factories, most in Myanmar. About 3 million Thais are believed addicted to
drugs, many to the cheaply made speed tablets.

In an attempt to coax pushers and addicts to ''turn around,'' Nakhon Sawan
authorities have offered an amnesty of sorts - those registering with
authorities will be spared the wrath of police.

''So far, we have registered 5,199 people who turned themselves in and
would become our informants,'' Mr Thawat said. ''We will take pictures of
them, record the fingerprints and interrogate them thoroughly.''

To round up the mostly small-time drug peddlers, police in the province
have set up more than 300 checkpoints, raided 324 houses and detained some
183 suspects.

In the village of Ban Huay Rua, at least four families of alleged drug
merchants fled in fear of police and reprisals from other dealers,
according to village headman Pakdee Anutarangkool.

''There are a lot of drug dealers in this village, but so far only one has
been killed,'' he said

Pakdee, sitting under a banner that reads, ''Drug dealers will die unless
they report themselves,'' said 30 volunteers from the village of 1,000
people had formed an anti-drug militia trained by the Thai army and armed
with weapons from provincial authorities - including six 12-gauge shotguns.

Bodies of alleged dealers riddled with bullets turn up almost daily.

Just four days before Sompong was killed, a hooded gunmen went to the house
of another suspect in a nearby village - Samphaew Poonkatenakorn, 39 - and
fired three rounds from a .9-milimetre pistol into her face.

''I don't know who killed her,'' her mother-in-law Hlong, 69, said
tearfully. ''I cannot imagine who did that.''

Residents say police searched Samphaew's house last year, prying up
floorboards and finding 100,000 baht (HK$18,200) in cash. Her husband had
been arrested on drug charges several years earlier.

Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunand of Thailand's Central Institute of Forensic
Science says drugs are placed in the pockets of some victims to make their
killings look like infighting.

''We don't believe that the people behind the killings are those who wanted
to silence their accomplices,'' she said. ''We can only say that it was the
police who arranged the murders.''

Human rights groups also doubt that drug gangsters are savaging one
another. ''Why can't police arrest anyone or bother to investigate?'' asks
Wasan Panich of the Office of the National Human Rights Commission.

London-based Amnesty International called the crackdown ''a de facto
shoot-to-kill policy'' and said police were under heavy pressure to produce
results or lose their jobs.

Nakhon Sawan police commander Thawat said the human rights groups did not
understand the circumstances. ''There are times when the situation forces
you to do what you have to do... if the suspects didn't fight first, police
would not resort to violence.''

Police spokesman Major General Pongsaphat Pongcharoen concedes there may be
rogue officers carrying out extra-judicial killings, but says
investigations will be launched.

''In fact, the war is just beginning,'' he said. ''I don't follow the death
toll. The most important thing is how to rid the community of drugs.''