Don Pathan
The Nation
For some weeks now Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung has been talking about his connection with Ai Joe, a mysterious figure who supposedly handles Wei Hsueh-kang's drug money.
Wei is a top commander in the 20,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA), dubbed the world's largest armed drug- trafficking army by the US government. His battalion controls a sizeable chunk of land adjacent to the northern Thai border with Burma, where he churns out millions of methamphetamine pills on a weekly basis, not to mention some of the world's finest grade-four heroin.
No one outside the Wa territory knows who Ai Joe really is or what he looks like. The only thing we know about Ai Joe, if Chalerm is to be trusted, is that he is an acquaintance of Duang, the Interior chief's son. Chalerm said Duang and Ai Joe had, over the past five years, established enough rapport to serve as the basis for possible negotiations.
Chalerm's idea is to send his son to seek a possible way out for Wei, with the hope that this could pave the way for the beginning of the end of illicit drugs coming into Thailand from the Burmese side of the border.
The idea is to get Wei to kick the habit in exchange for some sort of economic assistance from Thailand. For Chalerm, the idea has a noble ring to it: by helping them, we help ourselves.
Burma watchers, especially those keeping a close watch on the opium trade and the rebel insurgency in the Burmese sector of the Golden Triangle, are scratching their heads as to what to make of Chalerm's proposal. It's not so much a question of Chalerm's credibility. The doubt tends to centre on the merit of the proposal itself.
First of all, Chalerm doesn't seem to mind the fact that Wei is one of America's most wanted persons, with a reward tag of US$2 million(Bt67,500,000). He jumped bail in Thailand in 1987 on heroin trafficking charges and was later sentenced to death in absentia by a Thai court.
A UWSA senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "Commander Wei's movements and whereabouts are highly secret out of concern that he could be nabbed at any given moment."
And in spite of being under the UWSA banner, Wei's business empire, which stretches to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bangkok, not to mention Rangoon, leads up to, and is controlled by him and him alone.
A Chinese officer monitoring the UWSA's activities described the organisation as experiencing a dumbbell effect, with Wei and his brothers controlling the Wa area along the Thai border, while UWSA chairman Bao Yu-xiang and his brothers control areas along the Sino-Burma border.
Chairman Bao has shown willingness to enter into negotiations with the West, including the US and Thailand. He even tried giving up opium cultivation for two seasons to win favours. But no one welcomed his gesture. In fact, the US responded unfavourably. The US Department of Justice in January 2005 indicted seven Wa leaders on drug trafficking charges.
Wei, being one of the world's most notorious criminals, can't afford to play at diplomacy.
"Wei's men do push-ups every day. They are always on high alert for whatever threat may come their way," the Chinese official said.
The proposal from Chalerm is nothing new. Thailand, during the Thaksin Shinawatra administration, went down this well-trodden road before, and the end result was a great deal of embarrassment.
Thaksin was duped by the then security tsar of Burma, General Khin Nyunt, into whitewashing the UWSA by initiating a joint crop-substitution/development project in UWSA-controlled areas near the Thai border.
Seed money of Bt20 million from the Thai government helped build a school. But no students attended classes until Chinese-speaking teachers were hired.
The opening ceremony saw the then Thai Third Army Region commander Lt-Gen Picharnmate Muangmanee singing and dancing with Chairman Bao. Strange bedfellows, indeed, considering the fact that just a year ago Wa and Thai soldiers were slugging it out along the common border.
Perhaps Chalerm has something up his sleeve. But if the turbulent history of Burma tells us anything at all, it is that drugs and insurgency are two sides of the same coin.
Chalerm can't possibility solve the drug problem without taking the political dimension into consideration. And until an adequate political settlement can be reached between the Burmese junta and all the armed ethnic armies, one can forget about seeing these drug armies kicking the habit.
No one will ever climb a mountain to buy cabbages. They will, however, do so to buy opium and methamphetamines.
Note: For more information from the US Department of Justice's indictment on the eight UWSA leaders, click http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel
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