Promotion of drug kingpin looms large over Wa army's outside relations

Don Pathan
The Nation

Published on July 22, 2008

Something has got into drug kingpin Wei Hsueh-kang, the notorious opium warlord who controls a sizeable army near Thailand's northern border.

According to Chinese and Thai military sources and others monitoring the notorious Golden Triangle, Commander Wei is hoping he will be selected to the topmost position in the United Wa State Army (UWSA), one of Burma's ceasefire groups responsible for flooding Thailand with methamphetamines and the world with pure-white grade four heroin.

If that happens, Wei would replace ailing UWSA chairman Bao Yu-xiang, who runs the 20,000-strong army out of Panghsang, a small town on the Sino-Burmese border.

The Bao and the Wei families, while part of the UWSA structure, have historically been rivals. But they need each other in order to maintain their bargaining leverage with the Burmese government with whom they entered a cease-fire agreement in 1989.

Wei and his brothers have a firm grip on the Wa troops along the Thai border, an area commonly referred to as the South Wa region, while the Bao siblings control the area along the Chinese border, officially known as Special Region Two.

Since early 2000, Bao has shown signs of being willing to leave the trade, but in exchange for some sort of recognition from the international community, particularly from Thailand.

Bao even ceased opium cultivation in 2005 as a gesture of goodwill. But nobody took him seriously as millions of methamphetamine tablets coming from Wa-controlled areas continued to flood Thailand on a weekly basis. The opium harvest can be monitored by satellite images and quantified accordingly, but that is not the case with the clandestine labs pumping out so-called yaa-baa.

Over the past couple of years, chairman Bao has been in and out of hospital because of various illnesses. His brother Yu-yee, who used to command a Wa battalion near the Thai border when Wei had a run-in with Burmese Army commander Maung Aye in early 2001, has the potential to replace Bao.

But the extent of his influence in the so-called South Wa region near the Thai border is nothing compared to that of Wei Hsueh-kang and his brothers.

Besides the rivalries between the two families, the UWSA itself is a problem - a global one at that.

Wei has long been on the list of America's most-wanted criminals ever since an indictment was filed against him in 1993 in the New YorkFederal Court accusing him of conspiring to distribute heroin to the United States. The US has placed a US$2 million(Bt66.8million) reward on his head. A Thai court sentenced him to death in 1997 on similar charges.

In January of 2005, the year that the UWSA announced it would put an end to its opium cultivation, the US Department of Justice charged seven more Wa leaders - including the three Bao brothers and two of Wei's siblings - with drug trafficking.

Thai and Chinese narcotic officials were irked by the move, saying the charges against the Bao brothers really tied their hands.

Prior to the US charges being laid in January 2005, the Thais and the Chinese had been toying with various options in their dealings with the UWSA. While the Chinese saw Bao as someone they could deal with, whether clandestinely or otherwise, the Thai side wanted to pit the two families against one another.

Officials from Thailand's Office of the Narcotics Control Board said they were willing to let bygones be bygones and turn a new leaf in their relations with the UWSA if the organization quit the drug trade. This would have been a leap of faith indeed, considering how Wa militias and Thai soldiers have a history of engaging in bloody clashes along the border. However, Thailand can't compromise on Wei because of legal implications, the officer added.

In early 2003, the Thai Army even tried to split the UWSA by negotiating directly with Wei Sai-tang, a Wa commander who, like Hsueh-kang, controls a battalion in the South Wa region near the Thai border.

"Sai-tang was a nationalist and didn't think highly of the 'White Wa'- the Wei brothers. They were called white because they were ethnic Chinese," said a Thai intelligence source who had direct dealings with Sai-tang.

In exchange for parting with the UWSA, the Thai Army would provide Sai-tang's outfit with an economic and military lifeline from Thailand.

In this connection, Sai-tang would cleanse himself of the UWSA's past and effectively become a Thai proxy in the rugged hills of the Golden Triangle, a deadly region where everybody plays for keeps.

But when the news got out, Hsueh-kang and Yu-xiang acted quickly. They whisked Sai-tang away from the Thai border and locked him up in Panghsang. He was charged with, among other things, producing illicit drugs and fake banknotes.

Bao went ahead anyway and tried hard to befriend the international community. He allowed international NGOs to work inside Wa territory and public health and crop substitution projects, and reached out to UN agencies and foreign journalists.

While the Chinese and the Thais were willing to give Bao - not Wei - the benefit of the doubt, Washington didn't care to make the distinction between an opium warlord who wants to kick the habit and a kingpin who didn't have much to lose.

But with an ailing Bao Yu-xiang's days numbered, the issue of succession has become a hot topic.

Thai officials said they could forget about any future talk with the UWSA if Wei takes over.

Chinese officials echoed the same sentiment. They said future dealings with the UWSA would be extremely difficult, given the US indictments.

For the time being, all eyes are on Xiao Ming-lien, the deputy chairman of the UWSA.

"What's important is that Ming-lien is not on the US Department of Justice's wanted list," said the Thai military officer. "There would still be some breathing room," he added.

Both sides see Ming-lien as clean. But that, too, could be a problem. Without drugs, Ming-lien has no money. Without money, he has no army.