A BLUNDER ON BURMA

The State Department has a fairly abominable record when it comes to
Southeast Asia, and last week brought a reminder of why that is. According
to The Washington Post, department officials are close to recommending that
the president remove Burma's designation as a major drug-producing country.

Ordinarily we'd chalk up this report to the usual agitation by Foggy
Bottom's pro-Burma sect. But informed people in and out of the
administration say the ongoing discussions are more serious than in recent
years, and spokesmen for the department have declined to dismiss the theory
immediately. More disturbingly, in a speech a week ago, Assistant Secretary
of State James Kelly said that "Burmese cooperation with the international
community on narcotics issues has continued to improve in real terms."

If things have gotten better in Burma, that's because the country has no
place to go but up. It's true, for instance, that Afghanistan is expected
to replace Burma this year as the top opium-producing country. But that has
more to do with a rise in production in the post-Taliban steppe than any
significant decrease in the Burmese hills. It's true, too, that heroin
production has decreased significantly in Burma over the last decade. But
that's offset by another trend: The alarming and steady rise in amphetamine
production, in which Burma now leads the world. None of these factors makes
the case for Burma's removal from the drug-peddlers' list.

But the State Department's certification is premised upon good-faith
actions by the government to get tough on drugs - the enforcement of
money-laundering laws, for example, and efforts to seize drug lords - and
not necessarily on overall reduction. Still, even by this yardstick, Burma
doesn't measure up.

Burma does have a counter-narcotics program that frontline Western
officials say appears to operate fairly independently. But they hasten to
add that its operations are deliberately small-scale. Token seizures and
raids are conducted, but serious traffickers go unimpeded.

That's because the drug racket in Burma is so firmly entrenched that any
serious effort to clamp down would purge the junta from top to bottom. In
exchange for cease-fire agreements in its unwinnable war against the Wa and
Shan tribes in the mid- and late 1990s, the cash-strapped regime agreed to
turn a blind eye to their drug-running - so long as it received kickbacks.
These took the form of taxes and also the establishment of urban
laundromats masquerading as legitimate businesses. "The whole thing really
works through their banks," a knowledgeable Western official on the
Thai-Burmese border told us in August. "Each bank has one large boss behind
it, and they make remittances to officials from ill-gotten proceeds."

The problem in Burma isn't drugs; it's the junta itself. But Foggy Bottom
can't seem to find its way to this obvious point. In congressional
testimony in June, for example, Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew Daly
said it's possible to "pursue better communication and cooperation with
Burma [on drugs] without diminishing our support for political reform and
national reconciliation."

That shows a serious lack of judgment. The junta's complicity in the drug
trade is part and parcel of its repression. The regime uses its drug money
to dig its heels in deeper, upping surveillance on democratic activists in
the cities and buying Chinese weapons to stamp out resistance by the
republican Chin, Karen and Karenni hill tribes. But the State Department
knows this all too well. The last time the U.S. legally gave
counter-narcotics money and aid to Burma was in 1988, and the junta used
the weaponry to brutally suppress democratic uprisings in Rangoon. Removing
the military regime from the drug list could open it up to massive U.S.
funding and assistance, and there's no reason to believe the autocrats
would act any differently today.

If the junta is serious about getting tough on drugs, it could start by
turning over U Khun Sa, a "former" opium lord currently serving time in his
mansion in Rangoon. The United States has long sought to extradite Khun Sa,
but the regime claims this would violate the terms of his surrender. And
the junta, of course, never goes back on its word - just ask Aung San Suu
Kyi and her National League for Democracy. After the Burmese people handed
her and her party a landslide victory in 1990 elections, the junta refused
to cede control and tightened its grip.

According to The Post's survey of "experts," taking Burma off the
most-wanted list would be "an important psychological boost for the
repressive government." Somehow, we doubt that President Bush is game for
pampering the psyches of thugs, and the pro-Burma lobby at State should try
being useful for a change. The first step is to affirm unequivocally
Burma's position as a world pariah. The second is to dangle goodies to
other nations, particularly China and fellow members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), so that they halt their policy of
engagement. China's regional ambitions make that a tricky and difficult
strategy to pursue, but the cause is good. Murderous thugs have no business
strutting the world stage. The State Department should hasten the happy day
of their fall.