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Asiaweek
FEBRUARY
11, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 5
Defending the Shootout The government has public opinion onside By ROGER MITTON Bangkok So the bumbling general was right. Back in December, Thailand's opposition leader Gen. Chavalit Yongchaiyudh warned in Parliament that Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai's government looked like "a fool in the eyes of the world" because of its lax handling of a siege at the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. Not only had the heavily armed terrorists gained easy access to the diplomatic compound in downtown Bangkok, but they were allowed to go scot-free in return for releasing their hostages. Chavalit claimed the incident showed how bad Thai security services were and predicted another terrorist attack by Burmese dissidents - and perhaps by other violent groups. He said that already a fugitive Cambodian called Sok Yoeun, wanted for an alleged assassination attempt on PM Hun Sen, had entered Thailand and he claimed that other terrorists - even those associated with the notorious Osama bin Laden - might be in the country. Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan exploded and said it was all utter nonsense. Chavalit was ridiculed pitilessly in the domestic media. Cut to today. Every one of Chavalit's warnings has proved true. Within days, he was vindicated over the Sok Yoeun issue and Surin was forced to make an abject apology admitting that the runaway Cambodian was indeed in Thailand. Sok Yoeun is now in jail in Bangkok and Hun Sen is clamoring for his extradition. As for Chavalit's admonition that another Myanmar terrorist attack was on the cards, this was proved spot on when Karen rebels took over a hospital in Ratchaburi on Jan. 24 and held hundreds hostage. Again, inept border security appeared to justify Chavalit's tocsin. Even his much lampooned claim that bin Laden associates may be in Thailand has now been verified publicly by no less a figure than the National Intelligence Agency head. Chavalit, still vainly hoping for another shot at the premiership, may well reap some benefit from all this in the general election due later this year. But Chuan, too, will gain kudos - and rightly so. At an Army Day reception after commandos had stormed the hospital, exterminated the rebels and freed the hostages, the premier looked ecstatic. He is often accused of being indecisive; but after boldly sending in the assault team on this fearfully risky mission, no one will make that idiotic charge again. And public opinion massively supported him - a near-unique occurrence in politically fractious Thailand. Of course, there is controversy over reports that some rebels were shot in cold blood. Pictures showed their stripped corpses with bullet holes in their heads and their arms tied behind their backs. Government spokesman Akapol Sorasuchart denies any extrajudicial executions: "They all died in action." Few believe that; but even fewer seem to care. The consensus is that they were foreign terrorists, armed to the teeth, who took over Thai property - a hospital, for God's sake - so what did they expect? Still, some activists intend to make an issue of it. Says Somchai Homlaor of the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development: "If the hostage-takers laid down their arms and surrendered, they should have been arrested. If the officers did not do that and killed them, that is murder." Somchai's group wants to track down relatives of the dead so they can lodge complaints and get the courts to look into the matter. "Public opinion may be happy," he says, "but we must comply with the law." Don't hold your breath. Few Thais are listening to him any more than they once did to Chavalit. FEBRUARY
11, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 5
The Enemy on the Border More than anyone else, it's Myanmar's United Wa State Army that threatens Thailand's security By ANTHONY DAVIS Mae Ai Last week's bloody hostage crisis riveted attention on Thailand's turbulent western region where insurgents of Myanmar's Karen minority are caught between Yangon's military and the border. But as Thai military chiefs understand all too well, the desperate youngsters of God's Army are not the real enemy. The foremost threat to national security moves here through quiet, jungled hills along the kingdom's northern marches - a tidal wave of highly addictive methamphetamine tablets produced by ethnic insurgents of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), now one of the world's biggest narcotics traffickers. The pandemic of ya ba, or "mad drug" as the Thais call it, is an insidious but lethal scourge that in the last three years has infiltrated homes, schools, offices and factories across the country. In its wake lies a widening swathe of official corruption, street crime and ruined lives. "If we don't come to grips with this problem," says a grim Maj.-Gen. Viraj Jutimitta of the Police Narcotics Suppression Bureau, "it will break this country." Last month Gen. Mongkol and army chief Gen. Surayud Chulanont both choppered north to inspect troops and peer into the green hills across the border. At some points no binoculars were necessary. Adding insult to injury, the Wa are setting up heavily-armed shop within full view of Thai posts. "The Thais have got a 600-pound gorilla on the border and it's getting bigger and stronger as the months go by," notes a Western diplomat. "This has very threatening implications for both Thai society and border security." The gorilla is on the move. Some of the toughest warriors in Myanmar (with a not-so-ancient tribal tradition of head-hunting), the Wa hail from the hills along the border with China's Yunnan province. Serving as the sword-arm of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), in the 1970s and 1980s, the Wa battled Yangon's military to a standstill. With the 1989 collapse of the CPB, they set up their own United Wa State Army - the ex-communists linking with a smaller non-communist faction camped near the Thai border. Then, under the cover of a ceasefire agreement with Yangon, they set about expanding heroin production and moving into the logistically easier but no less lucrative methamphetamine trade. Narco profits have been ploughed back into growing military muscle: the UWSA fields some 20,000 troops with additional militia. In the mid 1990s, the UWSA's northern forces headed toward the Thai border to reinforce the southern faction and - with the support of Myanmar's military rulers, take on the mainly Shan forces of drug baron Khun Sa. Following Khun Sa's 1996 surrender to Yangon, Wa insurgents took over many of his border strongholds. Indications today are that the Wa are settling in for a long stay. "They have real capabilities and a growing infrastructure," says the diplomat. "This has the appearance of an emerging state." That's no exaggeration. In the Mong Yawn valley opposite Thailand's Mae Ai district, the Wa are engaged in a massive construction program, building roads, dams, an electricity-generating plant, underground fuel-storage facilities, military command posts, barracks, schools and a hospital. Ironically, most of the work in building up the Wa base has been done by up to 6,000 Thai laborers employed by Thai companies contracted by the Wa. In the last two years, a newer settlement about 6 km from the border opposite Chiang Rai province has been built by southern Wa boss Wei Xuegang. Wei's credentials as a Wa freedom-fighter are not impressive. An ethnic Chinese drug dealer formerly working with Khun Sa, Wei was indicted in 1993 by a U.S. court and carries a $2-million price on his head. Despite his business interests in Keng Tung and Tachilek, the Yangon junta has for years claimed no knowledge of his whereabouts. That changed last month when for the first time Yangon conceded to visiting pressmen it knows a thing or two about Wei after all. "He's now being brought forward as some kind of developer," says a Western analyst. It's the sort of development calculated to worry the Thais. An estimated 3,500 Wa troops are now camped along the border. Some are loyal to Wei, others to Wa commander Ta Tang, who arrived in the area from UWSAHQ in Panghsang in 1994. In recent months, UWSAtroops are understood to have acquired shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, probably from Cambodian sources. The civilian population is also growing fast as truckloads of ethnic Wa and Chinese move south from both the Wa hills and the border districts of Yunnan. Plans are afoot to boost the population of Mong Yawn - around 10,000 early last year - to up to 120,000. The spin from Yangon and from the UWSA is that the population shift is part of a grand plan to rid the northern Wa hills of opium cultivation by 2005, apparently by forced depopulation rather than crop substitution. And, indeed, new settlers on the Thai border are planting hundreds of thousands of fruit trees. But claims that the Wa-controlled areas will be drug-free by 2005 have been greeted by widespread skepticism, not least because of stepped-up methamphetamine production and the opening-up of new smuggling routes into Thailand from Laos. "There's no way a valley like Mong Yawn can sustain another 50,000 people with just agriculture and livestock breeding," notes one Western narcotics expert. Albeit belatedly, alarm bells in Bangkok are ringing loudly. "The perspective on the drugs problem has increased significantly in the last two years," says one Western military attaché in Bangkok. "For the Thai military, drugs are now numero uno." Last August, army chief Surayud closed down the border crossing-point opposite Mong Yawn through which workers and construction material once passed. Despite complaints from Thai businessmen eager to cash in on the Mong Yawn boom, the checkpoint remains closed. And in October the First Cavalry Division moved into forward positions along the stretch between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, coordinating all security forces: Border Patrol Police, Ranger irregulars and the police. But stemming the flood of narcotics along a rugged border is an uphill task. According to informed sources, more muscular options, including cross-border strikes on Wa installations inside Myanmar territory, have also been considered at senior level - and, for now at least, put back on the shelf. As one diplomat puts it: "The situation is tense and certain people are pressing for a more aggressive policy. They're looking at all kinds of options - none of them good ones." Thai concerns have not been eased by the arrival in the Wa bases of engineers, teachers and other "advisers" from China. Some analysts argue that the Chinese presence may simply be an extension of China's own free market. But as one Chiang Mai-based Thai military source puts it: "It looks as if these are NGOs, but in reality this has to be approved by the [Chinese] authorities." Says another senior Thai security official: "I'm worried and I think we should all be worried." And shouldn't Yangon be worried too? For the Myanmar military, the Wa border build-up offers obvious benefits. Yangon can use the Wa to balance off the long-smoldering ethnic Shan insurgency while also using them as a proxy force against the historical Thai enemy. But in the longer term the gamble is risky. The Wa, who fought the Burmese lowlanders for centuries and hate them vehemently, are still nobody's lap-dog. "The Burmese are playing with fire," says a Western analyst. "By diversifying their forces and territory, the Wa are gaining strength and influence." A Thai security official is blunter: "You mark my words - the Wa will turn on the junta." FEBRUARY
11, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 5 Call It Opium Cleansing Myanmar is trying to improve its image By ROGER MITTON Keng Tung Yangon has become image-conscious, especially about the narcotics trade. In the isolationist past, the military junta would not care what the outside world thought; today, as an ASEAN member seeking to attract investment, Myanmar is more media savvy. The generals want the world to know about the progress they are making on drug eradication. So recently the regime flew a group of Bangkok-based foreign correspondents to a part of northern Shan state that is nominally controlled by the fierce, opium-growing Wa minority. "[The generals] are their own worst enemies in the sense that they don't know how to present themselves," says Richard Dickins, head of the United Nations Drug Control Program in Myanmar. But they are learning fast. The trip was a PR junket. Journalists were shown poppy fields being destroyed, and crop substitution and animal farming being introduced. Naturally, skepticism abounded about the whole thing being a snow job. Since the fields were next to long-established army posts and helipads, it was hard to believe they had not been deliberately set up for the PR stunt. Col. Kyaw Thein, a key member of Yangon's anti-narcotics program, admits that the authorities knew the locations well in advance. "But if we just go in and destroy the fields as soon as we find them, the villagers will have no livelihood," he says. "So we do it gradually and give them six months' food and supplies to plant other crops." Dickins agrees that drug fighters should cut the villagers some slack: "We don't like opium cultivation, but though there are other things they can grow, you need three to five years, and how are they going to live then?" Under a ceasefire that Yangon negotiated with the Wa and the adjacent opium-growing Kokang, both groups can retain their weapons. But in return for economic development, they must reduce and eventually eliminate poppy growing - the Kokang by the end of this year and the Wa by 2005. Says Wa liaison officer Khin Maung Myint: "We are doing pig and poultry farming as well as crop substitution. We don't know if it will succeed, but it's a start." Truth to tell, the area along the Thai-Myanmar border west of Tachilek is not a major opium area. The heavily poppied hills lie further north by the Wa headquarters at Panghsang, along the border with China's Yunnan province. The region from there up to the Kokang is too rugged for crop substitution and the infrastructure too poor to get produce to markets. So the new plan is to relocate 50,000 villagers from there to the southern region along the Thai border - which, naturally, the Thais are not overly enthusiastic about. Already 10,000 have been moved into camps that are, frankly, appalling, though it was to the regime's credit that it allowed the press to view them. In this new location, the villagers will attempt to restart their lives with crops like the longan fruit, rice, soya beans, garlic and even grapes. "If all this fails, we will have to fall back on poppy cultivation," says Khin Maung Myint. "We have no alternatives." Actually, the Wa do have options. Opium is not the real problem, but the production of synthetic drugs flooding into Bangkok. Khin Maung Myint says his people are not involved in this but other Wa may be: "We share a long border with Thailand," he notes. "Some areas we don't control and cannot even enter." The bottom line, as always, is supply and demand. As long as dealers in Bangkok and the West will pay for drugs, they will be produced. That's the core of the problem (there is plenty of money in the region as the mobile phones, Rolexes and 4W-drives attest). That, and the lack of funds to the drug busters themselves. Says Dickins: "I just noted the other day that the Americans gave Colombia $6.5 billion. Yet last year, the discretionary funds I had here were [just] $50,000." Talk about double standards. |