A war on drugs seems too easy for PM and Chalerm

A big haul of seized illicit drugs was recently displayed at Government House as part of a campaign to show the public that the Pheu Thai government means business when it comes to the illegal drug trade.

Trying to come across as a voice of reason, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra stressed rehabilitation for drug-users. She said the ruling Pheu Thai Party aims to turn 400,000 of the country's 1.2 million known drug addicts into decent citizens through this process.

If she is playing the part of the "good cop", then the "bad cop" is no one other then her deputy, Chalerm Yoobamrung, who has been appointed to head this daunting mission. He has said he will get tough with drug traffickers and dealers. One wonders if he will dare to remove new police chief Priewpan Damapong if he fails to live up to the mission.

The previous police chief was removed because it was revealed that Bangkok has a number of illegal casinos hidden away in some back alleys. One wonders if there were any illegal casinos, or brothels for that matter, when Chalerm himself was serving with Thailand's finest?

But no matter how hard the Yingluck-Chalerm duo try to convince the public that they mean business, the past will continue to haunt them. When the prime minister's fugitive brother was in power back in 2003, he unleashed a deadly campaign that left about 2,500 alleged drug dealers dead. Most of these deaths were bad guys killing bad guys, the then government said.

Thai society, being largely indifferent to the notion of due legal process, welcomed these extrajudicial killings in spite of the many questions surrounding human rights issues and the complete disregard for the rule of law.

Today, a body count of alleged drug dealers can no longer be regarded as a benchmark for success. Instead we must focus on how many lives the government can turn around, as it says it will do. How the government plans to achieve the target of saving 400,000 addicts is anybody's guess.

But the government has to be reminded that it is not dealing with robots on an assembly line. These addicts are flesh and blood. The authorities cannot simply push them through some warehouse and expect them to come out bright and clean.

What has to be understood are the factors that lead people into drug use and abuse. In 2003 the alleged addicts and dealers were hunted down like dogs. Today, Yingluck says that the addicts are patients. Does she really mean that or is it just something nice and humane to say?

The new campaign will be led by Chalerm. This is not exactly reassuring to many people, given his dubious public image.

Neighbouring countries - Burma in particular - will be asked to assist Thailand in this endeavour. And if they don't, Chalerm is threatening a blame-and-shame tactic; he is going to squeal on them.

But we've heard this before - a decade ago when the then prime minister Thaksin said he would take the case to China to put further pressure on Burma to stop its drugs from pouring over the border into Thailand.

But the Chinese weren't about to let Thaksin take them for a ride just to boost his image in Thailand, and the Burmese junta wasn't about to start a war with its drug armies and opium warlords on the border just because Thai kids picked up bad habits.

That rhetoric was short-lived. And so Thaksin turned around and pushed through a crop substitution project that did more to whitewash the ethnic ceasefire groups, such as the United Wa State Army, than actually improve the situation on the ground. Remember the Thai-funded Yongkha Crop Substitution Project in the Wa-controlled border area and the Burmese-language school that nobody showed up to? Our officials forgot to ask what language the Wa people speak.

Thailand risks looking foolish again if it's anti-drug strategy is not thought through properly. The world shook its head in disbelief during the Thaksin era. Sadly, history risks repeating itself because our elected leaders are too eager to score political points by any means necessary, and our bureaucrats are too afraid to stand up to them.