cannabisnews.com: US Troops in Military Exercise Near China's Border





US Troops in Military Exercise Near China's Border
Posted by FoM on May 20, 2001 at 15:12:57 PT
By Uli Schmetzer, Tribune Staff Reporter
Source: Chicago Tribune 
Some 5,000 American troops are in northern Thailand not far from the Chinese border this weekend as part of long-scheduled Cobra Gold 2001 military exercises being staged at a time when Thailand and Myanmar are trading angry diplomatic missives and live artillery shells. Among the troops are about 20 instructors from the U.S. 1st Special Forces Group who will stay behind after the maneuvers to train Thai commandos in anti-guerrilla warfare.Thailand and Myanmar, formerly Burma, have been at loggerheads for weeks over the disputed Doi Lang border area, a longtime stronghold of drug warlords whose heroin refineries and amphetamine laboratories have flourished for years with the knowledge of key military officers and officials on both sides of the border.
Periodic hostilities over control of drug trafficking are no novelty. But this time the United States and China are playing key roles on opposite sides, just weeks after the U.S. spy plane incident strained their bilateral relations.Navy Adm. Dennis Blair, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, confirmed last week at a news briefing that Washington has sent Special Forces guerrilla warfare specialists to act as "instructors" for a Thai commando unit known as Task Force 399. Thai military officials gave the initial number of U.S. instructors as 20 but said more could be expected.The same Thai sources said Task Force 399 and the U.S. instructors would be stationed at Mae Rim Village just north of Chiang Mai, a garrison town on the edge of the infamous Golden Triangle, the poppy-growing zone on the Myanmar, Laos and Thailand borders.The highly mobile unit of about 100 men will use two U.S.-donated Black Hawk assault helicopters to chase and neutralize drug smugglers along the Golden Triangle, operating less than 100 miles from Chinese border troops.Their main enemy on the other side of the border will be the United Wa State Army, an ethnic narcotics-guerrilla force loyal to the Myanmar military junta. Western intelligence sources say China is the principal supplier of arms and expertise for the Wa and the Myanmar armed forces.More than a year ago the Chinese persuaded the ethnic Wa, the most powerful and most militant of the hillside tribes, to move their people, their army and their drug laboratories from the Myanmar-China border in the north to Myanmar's border with Thailand at Doi Lang in the south."It was a cunning move. By sending the Wa away from their own border the Chinese dramatically reduced drug trafficking into China, which had become a major problem for their own population. Sending the Wa to the Thai border meant dumping the problem on the Thais and their Western allies," said a narcotics expert who requested anonymity.Asian intelligence sources said Beijing supplied the Wa with sophisticated weapons and money in exchange for Wa help in constructing a network of roads through Myanmar from China. The road system would give Beijing access to seaports and naval bases on the Myanmar coast, an access the Chinese have coveted for years.In a blunt warning, Myanmar's ruling military junta announced it was ready "to fight side by side" with the Wa, whom the U.S. State Department has identified in reports as major drug producers in the region."If intrusions at the border become direct threats to either Wa territory or Burmese soil, we are ready to counter them," said Brigadier General Kyan Win, deputy director of Myanmar's military intelligence.At the same time, Win praised China for "offering material and technology to develop the border area."Thai intelligence sources say the Wa already have been given sophisticated Chinese-made HN-5N surface to air missiles capable of knocking out low-flying airplanes and helicopters. On the other side, the U.S. has supplied Thai forces with the latest night-vision, radar and digital mapping equipment.Warriors, the Wa are renown for their do-or-die fighting spirit. With an estimated 15,000 members under arms, the Wa members are no pushover for any conventional army in the rough terrain of their native habitat.As U.S. forces prepared last week week for the annual two-week Cobra Gold Thai-US exercises, the largest in Asia this year, the Pentagon left no doubt which side it supports in the looming Thailand-Myanmar drug war."As a military man, I support Thailand," Adm. Blair said. Blair was in Thailand to oversee the maneuvers, which also include Singaporean officers this year. Both China and Vietnam declined to attend as observers this year.Myanmar has already warned the Thais that calling in American "specialists" over the escalating border dispute is perilous to regional peace. In a blunt diplomatic note last week, the junta demanded the Thai military withdraw from 35 border outposts that Yangon claims are within its own territory. Bangkok has ignored the demand.Admiral Blair said the U.S. Special Forces instructors and two US Black Hawk helicopters had joined Thai Special Forces in the troubled North to "teach skills needed to patrol the border." The Americans are working closely with Thailand's 3rd Army, a force largely untainted by military involvement in the narcotics trade.Although the maneuvers are publicized as an anti-narcotics campaign, some Western diplomats say the extensive military mobilization and American participation also are aimed at containing growing Chinese influence in the region. Narcotics experts blame Beijing for precipitating the current tension by urging the Wa to go south. These observers fear the escalating border incidents, with casualties on both sides, have the potential to explode into a conflict drawing China and the U.S. into a confrontation.The military government in Yangon, formerly the Burmese capital of Rangoon, made a deal with the Wa in 1989. Diplomats say that in return for allowing their poppy-growing and heroin refineries, the Wa would have autonomy in their region and police tracts of border areas against armed incursions by the Shan people, an ethnic group allied with Thailand. The Shan have been fighting Myanmar troops for years.The Shan also control parts of the border on behalf of their Thai neighbors. Myanmar claims the Thais, who long have shown a preference for making deals rather than fighting, are allowing the Shan to run their own narcotics trade along the border.The focus of the current trouble is a 20 square-mile border region known as Doi Lang near Thailand's northern city, Chiang Mai. Doi Lang virtually straddles the border. This makes it a perfect smuggling post for drug trafficking. Narcotics laboratories on the Myanmar side import chemicals and export heroin and amphetamine through Thailand.In yet another attempt to crack down on drug peddling, especially in schools where as many as 35 percent of students have tested positive to amphetamine, the Thais on April 18 executed four narcotics dealers by firing squad in Bangkok and had their last hour televised nation-wide. The Thais say the Wa settlement of Mong Yawn, which has schools, hospitals, stores and bars has only one industry -- laboratories that refine opium into heroin or fabricate the designer drug amphetamine with imported chemicals. The settlement is just 15 miles inside Mayanmar border, opposite the booming Thai border town of Chiang Mai and less than an hour by road from the headquarters of Task Force 399.The man who founded Mong Yawn was Wei Xue-Gang, a Chinese born drug lord. He was indicted by a New York court in 1993 for drug-trafficking and is on a State Department blacklist of the most wanted drug lords. Soon after Wei changed from producing drugs to laundering drug money, the Wa negotiated a contract with the United Nations. In exchange for giving up growing poppies, the Wa would receive UN financing for alternative crops.Drug experts say the irresistible lure of vast profits from drugs makes any such deal shaky and difficult to police. Aware the UN would monitor by air if the poppy crop really had been replaced, the Wa thought of a lucrative alternative: The mass production of amphetamines, known as Yaa Baa in Thailand and "Ice" in its crystalline form in the West.The amphetamine industry, based at clandestine Wa laboratories that produce the designer drug with imported chemicals, flooded Asia with an estimated 800 million pills last year. Revenue from this new narcotic windfall provides an estimated $250 million annual profit, far more than what the UN could offer. Bangkok, Thailand Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)Author: Uli Schmetzer, Tribune Staff ReporterPublished: May 20, 2001Copyright: 2001 Chicago Tribune CompanyContact: ctc-TribLetter Tribune.comWebsite: http://www.chicagotribune.com/Related Articles:Thai Politics on Colombian Path? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8903.shtmlUS Army To Help Train Thai Troopshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8161.shtml
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on May 21, 2001 at 04:31:51 PT:
The Golden Triangle, once again.
For an understanding of what's going on over there...again!...I recommend to the curious the following link:http://www.drugwar.com/burma.htmAnd keep something in mind; the entire area is riddled with the exact same kind of trafficking that our US Army Special Forces had been involved in back in the early 1960's. Old habits die hard, no? History repeating itself?
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Comment #5 posted by dddd on May 21, 2001 at 04:17:56 PT
bloodlines
As a matter of fact,I could easily carry the blood of a northern crusader.My father is French Canadian........I was born and raised just north of Seattle,and became quite familiar with theother side of the border...I was also impressed to see the Queen on their currency...and there is some kind of strange false magic when you first encounter the exchangerate.I think you are right in suggesting that our northern friends are enslaved by theUS corporate monster.......................Cheers.............ddddYour not sposed to mention the words "Queen" and "Beaver" in the same sentence.
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Comment #4 posted by Lehder on May 21, 2001 at 03:58:54 PT
land - o - lakes
mornin', dddd.i seem to be esconced here still in the beleaguered united states after a visit to canada. canadians are much friendlier and wiser than we - just plain nicer and they certainly drink better water - but are still enslaved by a government which is itself enslaved by corporate america. they have pretty money tho, embellished by their duck, their queen and their beaver, and they will give you three of theirs for two of ours even tho they spend about the same. you'll find a little bit of magic there too.perhaps you carry the blood of a famous fighter of revolutionary times and from these northern border parts - Mad Anthony Wayne - known to the indians as "the general who never sleeps"! o&o for now -PAZ'Carlos'
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Comment #3 posted by dddd on May 21, 2001 at 03:23:46 PT
Astounding!
Outstanding Lehder.......good to hear you.....ddddMama told me not to come
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Comment #2 posted by Lehder on May 21, 2001 at 03:10:35 PT
Joy to the world! All the boys and girls!
Totalitarian movements are global in scope.U.S. corporations and government believe they can succeed where Julius G. Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler failed. The war on drugs will end when the United States is invaded, occupied and economically and politically defeated. Alaric is at our gate while thieves man our watch towers. Ragtag, weak armies from the south will arrive without plan and without limit, supported and manipulated by the Asians and complemented by the destitute of our own cities. Those who oppose this grand plan by the criminal politicians, corporations and their drug war dupes will be rounded up in the interest of national security. To save the children from the scourge of marijuana and other date-rape narcotics that rip at the fabric of our nation, that enslave the mind and destroy the soul, that have such a devastating effect on our communities.Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, Joy to you and me!
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Comment #1 posted by dddd on May 21, 2001 at 00:46:40 PT
Colombia East
The war on drugs continues to serve as the perfect excuse forUS military presence around the world."We'll give you a bunch if cash,as long as you allow our military to set up camp within your borders."This is only the beginning.dddd
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