A senior official in Thailand’s National Security Council (NSC) has warned that more than 200,000 refugees from Burma could flood into northern Thailand if fighting breaks out again in northern Burma. Refugees would not be forcibly repatriated, said the official, Bhornchart Bunnag, director of the NSC’s Bureau of Border Security Affairs.

Bunnag’s statements could be seen as a signal that the Thai government would not object to—and might even welcome—a Burmese army attack on the United Wa State Army (UWSA), one of the world’s biggest drug trafficking groups, notorious not only for opium and heroin production but for the manufacture of methamphetamines.

Much of the drugs produced in the Wa region ends up in Thailand, which understandably regards the UWSA as a gravest threat to its society and national security.

Thai authorities—and their ally, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration—believe the fate of the UWSA is crucial to the future of the world’s illicit drug supply.

Thailand wants to see the annihilation of the opium-heroin trade and the methamphetamine laboratories, which produce the easy-to-smuggle pills. The laboratories are found in the areas along much of the 850-kilometer frontier with Thailand operated by drug baron Wei Hsueh Kang, who is wanted both in Thailand and the US.
 
As the October deadline ends for ethnic cease-fire groups to capitulate to the Burmese regime’s demands to join its border guard force, it appears unavoidable that, sooner or later, major fighting will break out between government forces and the Wa army.

Unavoidably, the Wa and other groups, which have a long history of illicit drug production, are rushing to convert their stocks of heroin and methamphetamine into cash to buy weapons, the New York Times newspaper reported recently, quoting antinarcotics officials

The regime seems to have scored a first success by taking over the Kokang area on the Sino-Burmese border and by claiming support within and the outside the country for a war on drugs.

On the ground, Burmese forces have cut off communication and transport routes between UWSA units located on the Thai-Burmese border and their headquarters in Panghsang in northern Shan State, bordering China.

The Burmese army is also busy reinforcing its troops to consolidate control over the Wa and their allies along the borders with China and Thailand. If they used their full firepower and air force, the government forces could comfortably defeat the Wa’s standing army of 25,000 men.

The question remains: Would an attack against the Wa put an end to drug production and trafficking in the region?  Nobody can say with certainty.

At the very least, however, Burma’s military leaders would receive applause from the international and regional community, especially Thailand, for their efforts to stamp out illicit drug production.

The biggest prize in defeating the UWSA or accepting its surrender, though, would be the extinction of the biggest threat to Burma’s national security, sovereignty and the 2008 Constitution. And it could also result in the disintegration of smaller ethnic armies opposed to Naypyidaw’s military rule.