Burmese drugs fuel regional strife

Burma wants to show the world how hard it's fighting to win the drug war. So last month, it ferried a group of Rangoon-based diplomats by helicopter into Panghsang, a remote town in the Wa Hills along the Chinese frontier, according to a detailed government statement.

Burmese military officials led the diplomats on a tour of crop-substitution programs run by the Burmese government and a briefing by Pauk Yu Chan, whom the Burmese refer to as the "Wa National Race Leader."

Mr. Pauk told the diplomats about his organization's commitment to ending the cultivation of the opium poppy in one of its traditional strongholds, and detailed the financial aid the Burmese government is providing to fight drugs.

But to outsiders, his comments were more than just a little surreal. Pauk is no average politician. He's a senior military leader of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a 20,000-member fighting force that the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) calls "the dominant heroin trafficking group in Southeast Asia, and perhaps the world."

As the world's eyes skip past Burma and fix on Kashmir, close ties between Burma's leaders and its alleged drug lords continue to cast a shadow of instability over Southeast Asia. Diplomats, analysts, and political opponents of Burma's military junta – which prefers that the country be called Myanmar – say the drug trade is helping to prop up the regime and fuel simmering insurgencies.

There have been recent reminders of the dangers of the situation. This month, the junta, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), stepped up attacks on ethnic Shan rebels, who have been fighting for autonomy from central government control since 1949.

The fighting has, at times, spilled across the sensitive border with Thailand, which is angered by the flood of drugs that enter from Burma. Mortars fired by Burmese government troops battling rebels have landed near Thai villages and official border crossings have been closed. The Thai Army has shelled land near Burmese towns in retaliation.

The cross-border tension is due to two factors – Thai anger at the drugs it claims the UWSA pumps into Thailand, and Burmese claims of Thai support for two ethnic rebel groups – particularly the Shan State Army.

On Friday, a Burmese government statement accused Thailand of "breeding, training, and supporting these terrorist groups."

In the midst of the fighting has been the UWSA, which the DEA says controls most of the key smuggling routes into Thailand. The UWSA was once a rebel group, but it signed a cease-fire with the government in 1989 that allowed it to stay armed if it promised to help the SPDC fight the Shan.

Diplomats say a tacit part of that agreement has been permission to tax the opium trade and run the smuggling routes, a charge the SPDC denies.

"The lure of the drug trade has been used by the SPDC to corrupt some rebel groups," says Aung Naing Oo, an exiled Burmese politician.

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