THAI ADDICTS SENT TO BOOT CAMP AS ARMY TRIES NEW TACTIC

Bangkok -- Faced with a drugs epidemic that has some 2.65 million Thais in
its grips, the nation's army is drafting thousands of addicts into boot
camps and training centres across the country.

After a decades-long battle against the drugs scourge centred on the
infamous Golden Triangle region, the Thai army is adopting new tactics to
combat a new crisis from a flood of methamphetamine pills.

Some 800 million tablets of the cheap but dangerously addictive pills,
known here as "ya baa" or crazy medicine, are expected to be ferried across
the border from Burma this year.

More than four per cent of Thais from all walks of life are already
addicted to the drug that has largely replaced heroin addiction in the country.

Army spokesman Colonel Somkhuan Saengpattaranetr said the drugs war was
potentially a greater threat to Thailand's security than any other
conventional conflict it has faced.

"Drugs are a major security problem. If our people, particularly children,
are addicted to drugs, the nation will become very weak," he said, adding
that the fallout on the economy was also enormous.

Last year, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced his government would
fight a "war on drugs", introducing measures including fast-tracked
execution for drug traffickers.

Thailand's army is now joining the get-tough approach, but it has opted to
lay down its weapons to face one of the toughest fights in its history.

The military's new rehabilitation project, named "Wiwat Pollameung" or
Citizen Development School, will embrace some 5,000 drug criminals by the
end of February.

Daung, a former drug addict, was among a group of 200 teenagers who took
part in the pilot project, spending one month's training in two army camps.
He said the experience changed his life.

"The project give me knowledge and the strength to quit," he told AFP. "Now
I've given up drugs, I'm never going to go back."

A total of 2,584 drug prisoners from across the country took part in the
training at 25 army camps in provinces including Chiang Rai, Tak, Phayao
and Udon Thani in the north near the Myanmar border, as well as
Kanchanaburi in central Thailand and Ranong, Surat Thani and Songkhla in
the south.

Prisoners who have served more than a year of their sentence, and have
between six and 10 months to go, are eligible for the scheme run jointly by
the army and the corrections department.

For the next three months, the prisoners are treated just like fresh army
conscripts.

They are roused at dawn, put through their paces in a series of strenuous
exercises and undergo basic military training before entering a vocational
training program.

One of the most popular options is motor mechanic training, which allows
the young prisoners to return to society with a trade that they can earn
their living from.

"The prisoners who have attended this program are encouraged to live
healthy lives and not to return to drug abuse," an army trainer said,
adding that they were tutored in the benefits of maintaining a sound mind
and body.

On graduation, they are awarded brooches to show that they successfully
passed through the Wiwat Pollameung school.

"It is very successful program. Prisoners who have completed it have kept
in contact with army trainers to tell them how it changed their lives," the
trainer said.

The second group of prisoners will enter the school by mid February, in
what could become a regular series of intakes.

Meanwhile, the conventional war on drugs continues to be rolled out along
the Burma border, where dozens of illegal laboratories churn out
methamphetamine pills.

Lieutenant-General Noraset Issarangkul na Ayudhya said this month that the
drugs trade was likely to increase in 2002 despite improving relations
between Thailand and Myanmar which should have facilitated anti-narcotics
operations.

Noraset, head of the Joint Operation Command Centre, said the Red Wa - an
ethnic militia accused of controlling the trade - were merely producing
more drugs to counter the increased suppression activities.

To foil the increased surveillance on the border, drug gangs were replacing
bulk shipments with "ant armies" - large numbers of drug mules who carry
small amounts into Thailand in backpacks, he said.