U.S. jets press attacks on Taliban positions near front lines; Taliban claim hospital was hit

DON PATHAN Associated Press Writer

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. jets pounded Taliban positions Monday near front lines outside the Afghan capital and a key northern city, the Taliban said. The attacks appeared aimed at helping Afghan opposition forces advance.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef claimed U.S. and British jets attacked a hospital in the western Afghan city of Herat, killing more than 100 people. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Britain denied its planes took part in any raid against Herat, and the United States cast doubt on the Taliban claim.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not have any specific information about a hospital, "but I put as much credibility in this Taliban report as others that have been proven wrong."

Zaeef also claimed the Taliban had shot down two U.S. helicopters over the weekend - one of which landed crippled in neighboring Pakistan, while the other crashed in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has denied any of its helicopters were shot down, though it said a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in an accident Saturday in Pakistan, killing two U.S. servicemen on board.

Meanwhile, a refugee crisis was building at Pakistan's sealed border with Afghanistan. An Afghan man died of wounds suffered when border guards opened fire to force back up to 15,000 trapped Afghan civilians pushing and pleading for entry.

As the bombing campaign went into its third week, the strikes near the front lines suggested the start of a more aggressive American campaign on behalf of northern-based opposition forces facing the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

But it was unclear whether the poorly armed and poorly trained opposition forces would be able to make significant gains against either the capital Kabul or the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif - something they have been unable to accomplish since the air campaign began Oct 7.

A Northern Alliance intelligence officer, Motavar, complained that the attacks were not over a wide enough area. "We are satisfied, but we would like a broader bombardment over a larger area," said Motavar, who like many Afghans uses only one name.

Haji Gul Rahman, a deputy brigade commander at Bagram, north of Kabul, said there were casualties among the Taliban, but he couldn't say how many.

In the capital, the Taliban's official Bakhtar news agency reported heavy bombing Monday at positions 30 miles to the north.

Bombing in the same area Sunday marked the most substantial U.S. strikes to date against Taliban positions defending Kabul from the Northern Alliance forces, stalled for years 12 to 25 miles north of the city.

Bedraggled opposition fighters watched, excited, as smoke and dust billowed up. However, there was no report Monday of any opposition advances.

As sunset approached, two U.S. jets dropped six bombs, five of them on Taliban front-line positions north of Kabul, while another fell on the Northern Alliance side. There was no word on casualties.

U.S. jets also mounted fierce attacks throughout the night around the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where opposition and Taliban forces have been stuck in a seesaw battle for days. The strikes devastated two heavily fortified bases that had been guarding the southern approach, damaged tanks and artillery sites, and destroyed an ammunition depot, Khan said.

Still, as in the front near Kabul, there were no claims Monday of significant opposition advances around Mazar-e-Sharif.

Taking control of Mazar-e-Sharif would let the opposition control key supply lines for arms from neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. But the United States and Britain have been reluctant to help the alliance seize Kabul until a broad-based government is in place to replace the Taliban.

Skies over Kabul were quiet through the night and into the day Monday. A day earlier, a U.S. raid shattered two homes in the city's northern Khair Khana district - killing at 13 civilians, including three women and four boys ages 8 to 13.

Zaeef, the Taliban envoy to Pakistan, also said U.S strikes Monday hit two health clinics in south-central Urzgan province - though he did not know how many casualties resulted - in addition to the 100-bed hospital in Herat.

"More than 100 were martyred. Patients and doctors were killed," he said. "It is clear that American planes are targeting the Afghan people to punish the Afghan nation for having chosen an Islamic government."

The Taliban's Bakhtar news agency reported that at mid-afternoon U.S. planes hit the Nawabad section of Herat, destroying five houses and killing eight to 10 people. It did not mention a hit on a hospital.

The Pentagon has said it is targeting only sites linked to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, accused in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. U.S. officials have expressed regret for any unintended casualties.

Afghanistan's neighbors have closed its borders to Afghan civilians fleeing the U.S.-led attacks.

Stranded, up to 15,000 Afghans are camped out in a no man's land between the Afghan and Pakistan borders at the Chaman crossing.

Pakistan officials said both Pakistani and Taliban border guards opened fire Sunday to quell a stone-throwing protest by hundreds of refugees demanding entry. Doctors at Chaman said Monday a 23-year-old Afghan died of a bullet wound. Another bullet injured a 13-year-old Afghan boy.

Pakistan border guards insist they were firing into the air only.

MEKONG NAVIGATION PACT: Currents of suspicion still run

Don Pathan
THE NATION

CHIANG SAEN, Chiang Rai, Thailand

Every day a group of 75 to 100 men gather by the loading dock at Chiang Rai's Chiang Saen district waiting to offload hundreds of boxes of goods sent down from southern China via the Mekong River.

It's a back-breaking job, and the pay is low - about Bt100 per day on average- but the men are not complaining. A job is a job, they say.

Ten to 15 cargo ships, ranging from 75 to 100 tons, dock at the Chiang Saen pier daily, but the workload will get even heavier in coming days as more and more cargo ships arrive. 

In May, Thailand, Laos, Burma and China's Yunnan province took a major step towards strengthening regional economic cooperation by entering into an agreement - after five years of negotiation - to allow cargo vessels to navigate freely on the Mekong.

Local Thai officials said the Chinese merchants and sailors, with their vast experience from navigating the Mekong and other great rivers were looking to make the most out of the recently signed agreement aimed at facilitating commercial navigation along the Mekong.

Unlike in the past when the absence of a standard operating procedure gave rise to unscrupulous practices by customs and port officials, the agreement that came into effect in May put in place the necessary rules for safe and free navigation along an 886-kilometre stretch of the river. This extends from Simao port in Yunnan to Luang Prabang, a world heritage site and popular tourist destination in northern Laos.

Considering the political turmoil of the past decades, the agreement is indeed a major step towards regional cooperation. In the post-World War II period, the Mekong was divided along geopolitical lines, with Communist China in the upper reaches being sidelined from development schemes funded by Western powers. The move was aimed at preventing communism from reaching the river banks of the non-communist states south of China.

Decades later, following the fall of the Vientiane royalist government in 1975, the upper-lower line became blurred. As a result, the portion of the Mekong that separated pro-US Thailand from Communist Laos became a bitter dividing line between the two countries. For the hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees fleeing Communist rule, the river became the last hurdle before reaching the so-called free world.

Today, the gathering of porters at Chiang Saen's port is indeed a testimony of how political and economic realities have evolved over the years. Though the changes are welcomed, not all parties are completely sold on the idea that this is a "win-win" situation. For some, the heart of the problem is the issue of sovereignty. For others, the problems lie elsewhere - namely security and environmental degradation. 

Laos and Burma, which stand to gain only a fraction of what Thailand and China are reaping economically, have consistently pointed out that the great Mekong is not an "international waterway" and that the agreement does not constitute forgoing one's sovereignty for the sake of the whole.

Vientiane is also concerned that the dredging of the river to facilitate the movement of larger ships, as proposed by China, may exact too high a price.

In a recent interview with The Nation, Phongsavath Boupha, Lao deputy foreign minister, said dredging the Mekong was likely to have a wide range of effects, from environmental degradation to the shifting of the current border demarcation and riverbanks.

"Experts who carry out the study on the impact will have to be well versed in a wide range of areas as the dredging will affect a wide range of things," Phongsavath said.

The Chinese government is reportedly looking to invest US$5.6 million (Bt250 million) dredging the 331-kilometre section from the No 243 demarcation point between China and Burma to Houyxay in Laos. 

If all goes to plan, the project will start in December. Once completed, this stretch is expected to allow passage of 100-ton ships all year round, Liu Daqing, a leading technician in charge of the project, was quoted by China's state-run People's Daily as saying. 

And by 2007, 300-ton ships are expected to be able to navigate this stretch even in the dry season, the daily said. Currently the annual navigation capacity of the Mekong is four million ton and is expected to reach 10 million tons by 2007.

As for the generals in Rangoon, high on their agenda is the issue of security. Not only is the area on the Burmese side of the Mekong River rugged and not firmly within the grip of authority, the area is slowly being taken over by units of the United Wa State Army (UWSA). 

And although Rangoon and the 20,000-strong UWSA entered a cease-fire agreement over a decade ago, the arrangement is still a far cry from a meaningful and lasting peace settlement. Any development that enhances the standing of the Wa, said Thai army officers, is definitely a point of concern for both Thailand and Burma. 

The UWSA, dubbed the world's largest armed drug-trafficking group, has been declared "public enemy number one" by the Thai government. Checkpoints leading to the UWSA settlement and units have been ordered shut, while troop presence along the border has been beefed up to stop the flow of drugs into the Kingdom.

One good thing that has come out of the Wa's presence in the area, said a Thai border official, is the decline in banditry and river piracy.

But with or without the Wa, the face of the so-called economic quadrangular development zone - its social and economic landscape - is certainly changing. 

"A handful of people may be involved in the drug trade and other illicit activities," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "but the real force that is shaping the area is the cross-border trade among the four countries."

Besides enhancing trade between northern Thailand and southern China, strengthening economic cooperation in the region will essentially enhance Laos' international standing, the official said.

The landlocked country that in the past served as a buffer between Thailand and suspicious Vietnam and China is today trying desperately to become a land-link nation. Along the way, it is also looking to become the "battery" for Southeast Asia through the sale of hydroelectric power.

"A strong Laos would be good for Thailand," said the official. "We wouldn't want a mass migration from up north [China] pouring down to this area."

As pointed out by Nawin Thepawong, the chief of Chiang Rai's commerce office, cross-border trade between Thailand and Laos continued at the height of the regionwide economic crises. He said Thai exports to Laos, especially electrical appliances, were climbing steadily throughout the turmoil.

Said the Thai official: "Don't underestimate the Laotians. They are good salesmen. Much of what they have purchased from Thailand is resold to China and Vietnam."

Forced Withdrawal

Drug users in Mae Sot are finding themselves shunned by the community. It's a tough stand but one that seems to be working. Story The Nation's Don Pathan

A man like Samart Loifah comes around once in a blue moon. People say he is an endangered species - a civil servant who does not sit around and wait to be told what to do by his superiors.

"The top-down approach doesn't work," admitted the enthusiastic Mae Sot district chief, whose crusade against drug abuse has made him one of the most noted Interior Ministry officers in the country.

About two years ago, Samart was transferred from Lampang province to Tak's Mae Sot, where he is now the district chief. With the area becoming an emerging route for more and more illicit drugs coming out of Burma, just across the Moei River, Samart said he was shocked when he realised what lay ahead of him.

When he arrived, Mae Sot district was home to 750 known drug dealers, mostly in methamphetamines, and, it was estimated, more than 1,700 regular users. Samart, whose name means "capable of flying", soon lived up to his name. Under his guidance, the district was able to cut down the number of addicts to 388 and dealers to 147 in just over a year.

Samart said it has long been his goal to empower the local community to take care of its own. The method Samart employed in his war against drugs is commonly referred to as "social sanction".

All the adults in each of the 78 villages in the district are asked to take part in electing a committee to draft a set of rules for all to abide by. Once this is completed, Samart explained, the villagers hold a hearing and vote on anti-drug resolutions to serve as guidelines.

"We make no exception as to who the person is. All must abide by the rules, which the villagers themselves develop," said Khanthiya Srikirisawan, a 30-year-old ethnic Karen woman who is chief of 484-strong Yang Huay Ya-u village in Mae Sot district.

"If [you don't follow the rules], then you become an outcast and are eventually forced to leave the community."

Some of the measures include prohibiting drug dealers or users from using village funds and property, such as tents and utensils, and cutting off water and electricity.

After helping nine opium addicts kick the habit, Khanthiya's village proudly declared itself drug-free in May of this year.

The approach has been tremendously successful in other areas as well, officials and villagers said.

"I couldn't bear the fact that my family and I would become outcasts if I didn't stop doing drugs," said former addict Charoon Thiemphanya, a 27-year-old resident of Mae Khuluang village, also in the Mae Sot district.

If all else fails, said Mae Khunluang Kamnan Lert Kerkham, 58, the person is either forced out of the village or handed over to the police to face legal actions. 

To make sure that the suspected drug users are living a clean life, a urinalysis is carried on a regular basis. One urinalysis kit, which costs about Bt1,000, can be used to test up to 50 people. But money and equipment are hard to come by and the district accepts donations, Samart told a group of foreign journalists during a recent visit organised by the Thai Army's Civil Affairs Department.

Samart dismissed what he called "publicity stunts" staged by the government, such as getting students to drink holy water and pledge that they would not take drugs, or walkathons designed to promote anti-drug efforts.

"These measures don't really do anything because only clean kids show up for these events," Samart said. "What is important is that we stop demonising the people who are addicted to the substances and let them know that people are capable of making mistakes and that there is always room for forgiveness.

"And, of course, the villagers have to carry out urinalyses on a regular basis," he added.

The social-sanction approach employed by the villages in Mae Sot district, said Samart, starts off by emphasising compassion and understanding, not condemnation.

Ko Koh, a 60-year-old ethnic Karen who kicked his opium addiction two years ago after using for over two decades, said he never felt better.

"It was so painful," Ko Koh said, recalling his withdrawal symptoms. "My whole body was aching for five to six days. I couldn't sleep. I was shitting blood."

For Ko Koh, it was the threat of an outright sanction that got him to think about quitting. Being a male and an elder in a traditional Karen setting like Yang Huay Ya-u, Ko Koh said the threat of being an outcast had forced to think hard about his place in his community and the loss of dignity if he was forced to leave. Today, he is a proud owner of a new plow his children purchased as a gift for kicking the habit.

Samart and the villagers themselves insisted that social sanction is much more effective then the law itself. "The thought of being persecuted by their fellow villagers is more powerful than the threat of legal action," Samart said. "They have to look at each other's faces day after day."

"The vast majority of the people in the villages would like to help but the question is how to gain their trust and get them to join hands," Samart said. "The villagers know better than us which of their neighbours are dealing drugs. So when we approach them, we let them know what we know, and most of the time the villager will respond positively."

"A lot of times it is the parents of kids addicted to drugs who need to know where to turn to."

The chief maintained that his data about dealers and users are accurate. "We have our own statistics and the villagers have theirs. And almost one hundred per cent of the time, theirs and our numbers of dealers and users matches," he said.

"Of course, one way of ensuring that the figure is accurate is through urinalysis."

If you are interested in making donations to help the Mae Sot district's anti-drug campaign, please call the district office at 055-531-297, or write: Mae Sot District Office, Tak Province, Thailand. 

American-trained, ready to kill US troops

Don Pathan
THE NATION

In 1986, then Central Intelligence Agency chief William Casey persuaded the US Congress to provide freedom fighters in Afghanistan with anti-aircraft missiles to strengthen their defences against Soviet warplanes.

He also asked lawmakers to approve the deployment of US advisors to work with the Pakistani Army in directing the Muslim radicals who had arrived from all over the world to play a part in repelling the Soviet invasion.

Casey was confident that his plan would be a success. He had secured the backing of the Pakistani government, and the blessing of Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, not much thought was given to the consequences of so many diverse groups of armed Muslim extremists being brought together in one place.

Forcing the Soviets out of Afghanistan was the name of the game, at any cost, it would appear. And in the process, everybody would benefit.

For the Saudis, it was an opportunity to rid their Kingdom of radicals opposed to the country's monarchy. It was also an opportunity to spread their puritanical brand of Islam, formally known as Wahabbism.

Widely regarded as a shadow government, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency considered an international Islamic brigade in a neighbouring country as a future ally.

Today, many Afghan war veterans are involved in fighting in the Kashmir region. Others provide the ISI with more leverage in dealings with countries in Central Asia. However, the ISI's plans are dependent on it being able to keep the rebels on a tight leash.

For the US, this loose union of Muslim extremists was an opportunity to convince the international community that the Islamic world stood against the Soviet Union.

This band of soldiers would later be called "Afghan-Arabs", even though none were Afghans, and most weren't Arabs.

"The group was made up of Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Uighurs from Xingjiang in China," wrote Pakistan-based author Ahmed Rashid in his book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia."

The group's major sponsors failed to take into consideration that these freedom fighters also had their own agenda, and they eventually turned against their own regime and their American sponsors, Rashid added.

About four years after the US Congress threw its support behind Casey, an Afghan delegation was paraded in front of the press during an informal visit to Texas. 

Photographs of them trying on American sneakers were splashed on the front pages of local newspapers, and they were an instant hit.

But not long after this visit, citizens of America, and the rest of the word, began to look at these individuals in a different light. In 1993, associates of these enigmatic freedom fighters from Afghanistan killed six and injured about a thousand when they set off a bomb at New York's World Trade Centre.

They were subsequently blamed for back-to-back bombings in 1998 at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which left hundreds dead, and last year's suicide boat attack against the USS Cole in Yemen, in which 17 US sailors lost their lives.

All fingers pointed to Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi exile who had gone to Afghanistan to join the US-backed Mujahideen, and eventually led the radicals in their fight against the Soviets.

A number of the group's endeavours undertaken under the leadership of bin Laden, including the opening of an arms storage depot, were financed by the CIA, Rashid said.

The fall of the Soviet empire was met with great joy from all sides. 

For the Mujahideen, it was a victory for Islam, despite the fact that limitations within the Communist system were mostly to blame.

Aside from leaving in its wake an army of radicals intent on promoting Islam as the basis for violence against all non-Muslim forces, the Afghan war also created thousands of well-trained veterans who craved another victory.

An opportunity arose when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait, but Saudi Arabia's King Fahd instead turned to Washington for help and invited US troops into the kingdom, where some remain today.

"This came as an enormous shock to bin Laden," according to Rashid.

As the US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden lashed out at the Saudi royal family, urging the country's clerics to support his condemnation.

Eventually, he was expelled and his Saudi citizenship revoked.

In 1996, bin Laden openly declared a jihad (Holy War) on the United States, accusing it of occupying Saudi Arabia, home to some of Islam's holiest sites.

Since then, US policy toward Afghanistan has been based solely on its quest to "get bin Laden at all costs", without much thought given to alternative approaches, or the fact that many of the country's current problems were inherited from the former regime.

Today, the outlook for Afghanistan is very bleak.

Following last week's devastating suicide hijackings in New York and Washington, great uncertainties prevail for the Taleban as the US administration continues to press for the hand-over of bin Laden.

Evidence thus far would suggest that the Taleban will not budge in their refusal to arrest and extradite the Saudi dissident. 

Their stubbornness, experts say, is proof that they cannot be seen to be giving in to demands from the West. 

One Bangkok-based diplomat also pointed out that the Taleban simply do not have the manpower to oust bin Laden, who has a private army of some 13,000 bodyguards.

Moreover, bin Laden's "Afghan Arabs" also make up a significant portion of the overall Taleban troop strength against the opposition Northern Alliance.

Many believe that locating bin Laden would be extremely difficult. The worldwide network that he helps to finance is just too elusive to pin down long enough to be destroyed. 

Analysts believe it will take years to dismantle this band of militants, who have already proved, all too graphically, that they are more than willing to die for their cause.

 WAR ON DRUGS: Chiang Rai ya ba seizures 'doubling'

Don Pathan
THE NATION

CHIANG RAI, Thailand

The amount of methamphetamines confiscated by authorities in Chiang Rai province over the past seven months is close to the total amount ceased by provincial officials last year, a senior police officer said yesterday.

According to Pol Col Thanakit Teurnkaew, a deputy commander at the provincial counter-narcotic unit, Chiang Rai authorities seized a total of 4,661,324 tablets of methamphetamines between January 1 and July 31 this year, compared to a total of 5,583,477 for all of last year.

"At the rate we are going, we will double the entire amount we had confiscated for the year 2000," Thanakit said. 

Chiang Rai has for decades been a major drug route for illicit opium and heroin - and in the recent years, methamphetamines - coming out of the infamous Golden Triangle, an area where Thailand, Laos and Burma share a common border.

"It's not that we are easing our counter-narcotic efforts. We have explored every possible channel, including public relations, educating the masses and setting up more checkpoints," Thanakit said.

"The problem is that producers still see the illicit business as something that is worth the risk," he said.

Thanakit said traffickers had become more sophisticated, pointing to the regular clashes with Thai soldiers along the border near Tak province as well as a major drug bust earlier this year in the Andaman Sea. "It's like a balloon affect. When the authorities squeeze one area, the illicit activities pop up in another," he said.

According to Office of the Narcotic Control Board estimates, about 90 per cent of illicit drugs produced in the area ends up in the streets of various cities in the country.

The Thai army has blamed a pro-Rangoon ethnic army, the United Wa State Army, for much of the methamphetamines flooding into the country, saying the group has over the years expanded its troops and illicit operations along the common border to areas near Tak province, as well as areas just north of the Golden Triangle bordering Laos.

It said a number of the clandestine drug labs have "popped up" in areas along the Mekong River on the Lao side near Burma since the Thai army stepped up security along the Thai-Burma border following a cross-border clash earlier this year.

The Burmese government has said it is being unfairly singled out and that Thailand and other neighbouring countries need to do more to curb the flow of precursor chemicals needed to make the drugs.

Following the border clashes, top army brass from both sides engaged in a lengthy war of words, accusing their counterparts of taking kickbacks from the drug traffickers.

Experts call for urgent removal of "sanction" (Burma)

Don Pathan
The Nation

All nine heads of the United Nations relief agencies in Burma have made a collective plea to their respective organisations and the international community to urgently lift sanctions against the junta on humanitarian grounds.

With more than 500,000 people HIV-positive and a high maternal mortality ratio ranging between 230-580 per 100,000 live births, Burma is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, they said in a letter sent to all chiefs of UN agencies operating in the country.

The groups include the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Unicef and the World Health Organisation.

The letter said half of the maternal deaths in Burma were due to unsafe abortions, while about 25 percent of new-born babies were underweight. One in three of all Burmese children would be malnourished by the time they reached the age of five.

"This is compounded by the fact that about 3.6 million children and 1.1 million pregnant women live in areas considered to be at high or moderate risk for malaria transmission," according to the letter.

The nine UN representatives said humanitarian assistance to Burma was a moral and ethical necessity and to deny the country the aid would cause unnecessary suffering.

They called for a dramatic overhaul of budget allocation to Burma, as well as a cohesive approach between the activities of the UN organisations operating in Burma and the political initiatives launched from within the UN system.

Moreover, said the representatives, delayed assistance may also have an escalating effect on the illicit drug business, resulting in a negative impact on the region as a whole in a wide range of other areas - including human trafficking, illegal migration and population displacements.

"The current peripheral or piecemeal assistance provided to Myanmar [Burma] is not 

adequate to reverse or even slow down certain negative trends," the letter said. Burma receives about US$1 (Bt45) per capita annually, compared with $35 for Cambodia and $68 for Laos. 

The representatives pointed out HIV/Aids, illicit drugs and food security as the top three areas that needed utmost attention.

Although the representatives agreed that a common humanitarian approach towards Burma must be viewed in the context of the country's political environment, they said: "the nature and magnitude of the humanitarian situation does not permit delaying until the political situation evolves". 

The statement from the nine UN agency heads came amid ongoing secret talks between the ruling junta and the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner whose National League for Democracy won a landslide general election in 1990 but was denied the fruit of victory by the army.

A rocky path that turned smooth: Thailand-Vietnam relations

Don Pathan
The Nation

Coming to terms with the past has not been easy for Thailand and Vietnam, the two Southeast Asian nations who have fought each other bitterly in various circles for the most part of their 25 years of diplomatic relations.

But with guidance from the country’s Royal Family, as well as the strong political will of Thailand’s successive leaders, the bitterness has subsided.

“Never before has the relationship between Thailand and Vietnam been in such good shape as it is now,” said the Vietnamese ambassador to Thailand, Do Ngoc Son, in an interview with The Nation.

There have been a lot of changes in the past 25 years, said the envoy, pointing to a number of political breakthroughs, most of which took place in recent years.

Son said regular visits by members of the Royal Family had helped pave the way for the leaders of the two sides to come to the negotiating table to pin down some of the stickiest issues that have been shelved for the best part of the relationship.

In the past decade, many of these issues were centred on the region’s security, with Vietnam being on one side and the core Asean members – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore – on the other. The battlefield was, naturally, the rice paddies of Indochina, as well as the United Nations.

A major breakthrough came in 1989 under the Paris Peace Agreement, which paved the way for Vietnamese troops to pull out of Cambodia. It was followed by a UN-sponsored general election in the wartorn country.

In 1992, Hanoi was granted Asean “observer” status, and three years later became a full member of the regional grouping.

“This has allowed all of us to create a deeper understanding of one another,” Son said. “It wasn’t just with Thailand, but relations with all Asean countries improved.”

But coming under the Asean umbrella wasn’t a cause for jubilation as Hanoi wanted it to be. Many of the core members were still suspicious of Hanoi’s “hidden agenda” in Vientiane and Phnom Penh. In the process, sensitive issues between Vietnam and Thailand, such as refugee repatriation, overlapping claims and the Khmer Rouge, would have to wait for political developments to be worked out.

But despite these difficult times, Son said, there was always a need in Hanoi to forge stronger bonds.

“We have always attached great importance to Thailand for various reasons – strategic, economic, historical, geographical, and the similarity in the cultures,” Son said.

A major breakthrough came in 1997 when Thailand and Vietnam became the first two countries in Southeast Asia to ink a maritime boundary, said Son.

According to Son, the agreement showed that there existed mutual political will between the two sides, and therefore paved the way for other sticky issues to be brought up.

Today, the mutual trust has expanded to other areas, including the granting of citizenship to second and third generation ethnic Vietnamese who are descended from the so-called Dien Bien Phu refugees.

Most of the Dien Bien Phu refugees left Vietnam for Thailand in the late 1940s to avoid fighting between Vietnamese nationalists and French forces. Many migrated to Thailand in the previous decade along with the leading members in the nationalist circle who came here to map out their strategy against the French.

The second major wave that fled the country following the fall of the American-backed Saigon regime in 1975 came regularly until a comprehensive plan of action backed by the UN High Commissioner of Refugees was put in place. The last group of these refugees went back in early 1999 following the closure of the Sikhiu camp.

Today, about 60 percent of the so-called descendants of Dien Bien Phu have been granted Thai citizenship, while all of the first generation have been granted residency status, thus allowing them to return to visit their homeland.

“We highly appreciate this humanitarian and reasonable policy,” Son said. “They [the Dien Bien Phu refugees] have contributed greatly to the betterment of Thailand and can also serve as a bridge to promote friendship between the two countries.”

On the economic front, Son said the two countries are looking to strengthen their global strategy in the world’s rice market before other rice-producing countries, like India and Pakistan, would be considered to take part in the scheme.

“Rice is the most important commodity for the two agricultural-based societies. We are looking at this as a way to relieve the plight of the poor farmers.”

-------------------------------------------------------------

25th ANNIVERSARY OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS: The fisherman's friend: Thai-Vietnamese ties in a sea change

Don Pathan
The Nation

Published on Aug 4, 2001 

Once bitter enemies across the Cold War divide, Thailand and Vietnam have moved in recent years toward close security and economic cooperation

A few days ago a Vietnamese oil vessel rescued 18 Thai sailors from a burning ship that caught on fire just off Vietnam's southern coast. All the Thai sailors survived, although two were badly burned.

The recent rescue was a far cry from what used to take place in Vietnam's territorial waters. It is not exactly a secret that for the most part of their 25-year history of diplomatic relations, the two sides didn't see eye to eye.

Just three years ago, the name of the game was to catch Thai trawlers fishing illegally in Vietnamese waters. It was a nasty cat-and-mouse game that often struck a raw nerve with both Bangkok and Hanoi. For the Vietnamese authorities, catching Thai trawlers was good business. One vessel could fetch up to a million baht. So lucrative was the trawler trade that even non-coastal Vietnamese provinces were getting into the act.

Today, the chase is no more. Gone are the bitter days when Thai fishermen cluttered up Vietnamese jails waiting to be bailed out by greedy boat owners who were often slapped with inflated fines. 

And with illegal fishing and territorial disputes effectively becoming non-issues, the two countries are turning to each other to map out plans for further cooperation in downstream investments.

To curb illegal fishing and piracy, the navies of both countries are carrying out joint patrols in common waters.

Besides fisheries, the two countries are working together to find ways to control the international rice market. Along the way, the world's two leading rice exporters have attracted great interest from other rice-producing countries like India and Pakistan.

In the area of security cooperation, Thailand and Vietnam have shown that they have reached a level of maturity where frank discussion and exchange of information can take place. Thai authorities have acted swiftly over a recent bomb scare incident carried out by an anti-Hanoi group labeled "terrorists" by the Vietnamese government. 

Moreover, a Thai court is currently trying a Vietnamese-American activist, Ly Thong, on charges of hijacking. Ly was reported to have bribed a Thai pilot to fly him over Vietnam to drop anti-communist leaflets over Ho Chi Minh City. 

Three years ago when another anti-Hanoi movement was taking shape in Trad province, Thai officials did not hesitate to penetrate the ring and break it up. Thailand wanted to show Hanoi that it was serious about security cooperation.

But this level of trust between the two countries did not come overnight. During the Cold War, the two countries were on opposite sides, fighting each other locally in the rice paddies of Indochina, as well as internationally in New York and Paris.

A major breakthrough came in 1989 when Vietnam pulled its troops from Cambodia, paving the way for the 1991 peace settlement. Four years later, Hanoi became a member of the Asean family, pushing bilateral ties with Thailand to a higher plane. 

The mudslinging died down, making way for the strengthening of links that led to the smooth repatriation of all Vietnamese refugees. In February 1999, the Sikhiu camp in Nakhon Ratchasima was closed, thus ending one of the most disturbing chapters in the modern history of Thailand and Vietnam. 

In that year, the two countries also found a middle ground over overlapping claims in the Gulf of Siam. Vietnam became the first country in the region to reach such an agreement with Thailand.

Meanwhile, in Thailand's Northeast, the so-called Dien Bien Phu refugees who fled their homeland in the late 1940s to escape the fighting between French troops and Vietnamese nationalists are well on their way toward receiving their Thai nationality and residency. 

Unlike the previous decades where tremendous prejudice and dubious security measures prevented them from moving up the social ladder, today the sons and daughters of the Dien Bien Phu refugees are changing the face of the underdeveloped region, turning the sleepy region into a thriving business community.

In a few days, the two former enemies will celebrate the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties. In spite of what they have overcome, a number of challenges still lie ahead. But judging from the cooperation between the two nations in recent years, it would be safe to say that it's all downhill from here.