DRUGS AND THUGS ALONG THE BORDER

Thailand is to get a national plan to combat drugs this week. Details
leaked so far indicate the Office of the Narcotics Control Board will
propose increased suppression efforts in the North. This has become a
matter of urgent national security.

Burma has almost concluded one of the biggest forced migrations since the
Vietnam war. Shan people have been forced from much of upper Burma, to be
replaced by Wa. The government must address the problem directly with the
Burmese government it so desperately is trying to court.

The relocation of Shan and Wa people inside Burma was announced more than
two years ago by the Rangoon dictators.

A few human rights groups took umbrage but the issue lost public impetus.

Drug agents in Thailand, both Thai and foreign, were even more appalled and
worried.

The Shan along the northern Thai border include a few small
drug-trafficking gangs, and probably just as many anti-drug groups.

Those Shan have now been moved to central Burma, amid huge suffering,
indignities and charges that Rangoon troops have used violence including
organised rape and murder of those who resisted the move. Thousands have
fled to Thailand, increasing the refugee load. The rest, according to
Burmese propaganda, have moved south where they were given adequate land to
begin a new life as farmers.

That claim needs investigation from independent groups, hopefully including
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

This is extremely troubling, but worse events followed the removal of the
Shan. People of Wa nationality took over the former Shan lands.

The security agencies have been largely silent in recent months.

But studies by Thai academics document the movement of 125,000 people from
the far north of Burma to the Thai frontier.

Pornpimol Trichote, the internationally respected expert from Chulalongkorn
University, reckons this creates massive problems of permanent refugees in
Thailand and forced assimilation of small ethnic groups by the Wa newcomers.

The Wa, she reported last week, are effectively building an autonomous
state beside the Thai border.

This poses huge and urgent problems for Thailand. The biggest of them all
is the question of national security.

Wa leaders are known to run the world's largest drug cartels.

They have taken over the former heroin networks of Khun Sa, and built
strong trafficking ties with the Chinese triads. The Wa also make and then
smuggle hundreds of millions of methamphetamine tablets to Thailand.

They have built this huge drug trafficking network behind the armed
protection of the Burmese dictators, and with their personal approval.
Indeed, the Rangoon generals created their latest tantrum at Thailand,
closing the border and ending all trade, after rumours the Thai army might
attack the United Wa State Army. The UWSA is behind most of the drug
trafficking into and through China, Laos and Thailand. Members of the junta
and the UWSA are publicly as thick as thieves.

The government should be worried about this huge relocation and land
reallocation on the northern border.

The right of Burma to handle its internal affairs ends exactly at the border.

Friends and cronies of the junta are behind the biggest security threat
that Thailand faces.

Yet the generals have refused to take action against the UWSA. Now they
have backed the Wa in taking over land right up to the Thai border,
creating a potentially more dangerous situation than ever.

The new drug plan this week must take this unfriendly act into account.
Thai diplomacy must demand a full explanation from Burma. The government
must explain its plans to protect Thailand from an even better organised
influx of drugs from the larger Wa presence.