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the nation: Chavalit and the Salwee
- Subject: the nation: Chavalit and the Salwee
- From: suriya@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 17:55:00
Editorial & Opinion
Chavalit and the Salween
saga
Logging of the forests lining the frontier
river has ebbed and surged in tandem with
the political fortunes of the former army
chief. Chang Noi writes.
The Salween logging affair is much more
than just another chain-saw massacre. Its
roots lie in Thai-Burmese relations, and the
rhythms of Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh's
political career.
In 1988 Gen Chavalit, army
commander-in-chief, travelled to Rangoon
at the head of a large, top-level military
delegation. This visit resulted in a major
change in Thai-Burmese relations. Thailand
would quietly disassociate itself from the
international antagonism to the Burmese
military dictatorship, and stop supporting
the rebel groups along the border. The
price for this support was timber and fishing
rights.
Why this change, and why was this part of
foreign policy being handled by the army?
On the Burmese side, the junta was gearing
up to move against its opponents -- the
democracy movement and the rebel
minorities -- and it first needed support
from Thailand and China. On the Thai side,
the army was under intense pressure. Its
bloated role in all aspects of government
was being whittled back by increasingly
confident elected politicians and pressure
groups. The businesses (arms buying and
construction), which had traditionally
financed the generals' taste for Mercedes
and other trinkets, were being closed down
by public exposure. Burma offered a new
frontier -- both for business opportunities
and political assertion.
From these negotiations, 20 concessions
were given to Thai companies for logging
inside Burma. Virtually all the companies
were owned by military officers and
associates. Some of the executives figured
among the supporters of the New
Aspiration Party which Gen Chavalit
founded a year later. Within months, the
Thai government had banned all logging
inside Thailand and these Burmese
concessions had become hugely valuable.
The Thai Army began clearing up the
border by shovelling some of the refugee
students back into Burma. It stopped when
the international press reported that many
of these returnees had gone missing,
presumably executed. A Burmese army unit
was allowed to cross into Thailand and
attack a Karen rebel refugee camp. A Thai
border town was wasted in the attack.
General Chavalit stamped his foot in
outrage at this invasion and promised to
extract reparations. But nothing happened.
As recent reports attest, these were the
golden years in Tak and Mae Hong Son.
Fortunes were made fast and almost
legally. The logging inside Burma faced
almost no restriction, and the Thai
companies chopped fast and furiously.
Burma watcher Martin Smith saw one forest
reserve where 100,000 trees had been cut
in one year. The border also bred other
lucrative trades -- bringing out girls and
heroin, and trading in arms for the rebel
groups.
But the diplomatic basis of this golden era
was shaky. Between 1992 and 1994, it fell
apart. International environmental groups
and some Burmese voices protested
against the scorched-earth clear-cutting by
the Thai loggers. On the Thai side, the
military's prestige and political weight took
another lurch downwards after the May
1992 incident. The Democrat-led
government recaptured control over
Thai-Burmese relations and took a slightly
more conditional attitude towards support
for the junta. The Burmese were no longer
sure they had a deal. In 1992-93, the
Burmese government revoked the logging
concessions and proposed to close the
border posts. Although the army might be in
retreat, Gen Chavalit was still in the frame
as a minister in the Democrat-led coalition.
In 1993, he managed to negotiate with
Rangoon to keep the border posts open so
timber could still flow out. But in December
1994 Chavalit quit the coalition. The golden
age passed in history.
But the wheel of history spins around. In
1995, Chavalit returned as defence
minister in Banharn's coalition.
Thai-Burmese relations again shot ahead.
Construction began on the Yadana pipeline
and a road link through Kanchanaburi. The
army brokered deals for the Ital-Thai
Development Co to enter Burma. A
delegation of executives from major Thai
companies visited Rangoon to prospect for
business opportunities. Burma began to
sidle up to Asean.
With the assurance of Thai support, the
Burmese army upped the pressure on the
rebel groups along the border with a
mixture of armed attacks and conciliatory
treaties. A year ago, in a repeat of 1989,
the Thai Army stood aside while a Burmese
unit attacked three rebel refugee camps
inside Thailand. Again, the Thai Army
began pushing people back across the
border until human rights groups protested.
And again, Banharn and Chavalit reopened
the border passes for timber traffic. But it
seems the timber business developed very
differently from expectations. The
military-backed timber firms swung back
into operation. But they were outflanked by
a group of people who had been mere
bit-players in the earlier phase.
This new group changed the economics of
border logging. Getting timber out of Burma
had become more expensive. The
remaining stands were deeper in, and the
logistics more complex and risky. But trees
have no passports, no nationality. Cutting
down Thai trees and passing them off as
Burmese promised much larger profits.
They also changed the economics by
exploiting the human fall-out of border
politics. They hired the rebel refugee Karen
inside Thailand as cheap labour and
devil-may-care gunmen to intimidate rivals.
And they worked through pro-Rangoon
Karen to launder Thai logs into Burmese.
Som Chankrajang's career is typical of the
jao phor (local godfathers) of this last
generation. He started out with little
education, no money, and a burning desire
to be very rich. He worked in a gambling
den where he learnt (as he endearingly told
an interviewer last week) ''the only way to
win is to cheat''. He made his first pile by
hard graft in the trucking business. Then he
made his fortune in the golden age by
acting as agent for the logging
concessionaires. He negotiated with the
Karen rebel groups to get the timber out to
the border.
His key contact was Bo Mya, the grand old
man of the Karen resistance. For almost 40
years, Bo Mya had been one of the most
commercially-minded rebel leaders. He
had been dealing with Thai loggers and
miners since the 1970s. By 1990, the
profits had enabled him to create possibly
the most settled and organised of the
mini-states on the border. When Rangoon
upped the pressure on the rebels in 1994,
Bo Mya chose conciliation. He broke with
the mainline resistance, made a pact with
Slorc, and donated his troops to help the
Slorc mopping-up operations. He was now
in a position to maintain his cash flow by
giving Burmese nationality to Thai logs.
The final link in the chain was the sawmill,
especially that of Vinai Panichyanuban. The
logs arrived by several routes: routed
through Burma to get Bo Mya's chop;
seized by the Forest Industry Organisation
and then sold off; magicked through the
checkpoints with no documentation; and
possibly also chopped as Burmese without
ever leaving Thai soil.
To disguise the operation, this group
appears to have used a corruption strategy
like carpet-bombing -- dropping tonnes of
cash over a wide area to flatten any
potential source of opposition, and to leave
no cover for anyone who wants to risk a
protest. If the list taken from Som's relative
is what it appears to be, the cash was paid
in regular amounts to officials from police,
army, local administration, customs,
immigration, forestry and national parks --
ranging from some very top men to the little
people who hold open the gates.
But the monopoly attempted by Som, Bo
Mya and Vinai was bound to be vulnerable.
The old logging companies were furious at
being excluded and under-cut on price.
Other rebel groups along the border
hijacked logs in transit. After Chavalit fell
from power, the business was quickly
undermined. The Forestry Department
obstructed the flow of logs through from
forest to sawmill. Those managing the
business believed they could use money to
free up the resulting log jam. Somebody
panicked.
Now the border business is like an ant's
nest that has been poked with a stick. The
army tries to blame the Karen. Bo Mya's
men attack the rebel camps. Police,
customs and local officials point fingers at
one another. The Forestry Department,
which must be used to such scandals by
now, adopts the turtle defence strategy of
withdrawing into its shell and playing dead.
But there are clearly two very different
agendas at work. Some may want to clean
up the whole business. But some may
simply want to dislodge the Som-Bo-Vinai
pirate monopoly, and allow more powerfully
backed interests to take over again.
Most chilling of all has been Gen Chavalit.
Last week he exploded with one of those
impulsive, unguarded, revealing outbursts
which have been the hallmark of his political
career. Put up or shut up, he challenged;
charge me or stop talking about it. Charges
may be difficult. But it seems clear that the
appalling destruction of forests on both
banks of the Salween is closely linked to
the rhythms of Gen Chavalit's political
career.