I would suggest you to re-read Connors paper on the drug war – the only work i am aware of that touches to some degree on the realities of it, and then rethink your rather naive conclusion that police reform would be the answer, ignoring the fact that the answer is wide ranging structural changes in the Thai state, of which police reform is just one of the many parts.
“Unlike what you saw in “Pulp Fiction” the movie, ‘first time’ used addiction to heroine is 95%, and 2nd time is 100%.”
Sorry to play devil’s advocate here. But, where are these figures from?
The ‘capture rate’ of heroin is roughly the same as alcohol (EtOH), at around 50%. Source: Sue Pryce, the ex-chairman of UK charity Drugscope, the largest such charity and focus group in the uK
His Majesty has brought great prosperity, and on many occasions, great peace to Thailand, when there was severe turbulence. His Majesty has given accounts, truthful stories no doubt, concerning the murder of his older brother. I would like to see one more truthful account from Bumiphol, about what REALLY happened to his brother.
The drug war killings did **have everything to do with** democracy in Thailand.
Red shirt leader Dr. Weng in an interview on the Ratchprasong stage said how the red shirt rank and file swore these killings were an effective way to save their children from the scourge of drugs.
Taxi drivers would tell their passengers anecdotally how effective Thaksin’s extrajudicial killings were. They saw with their own eyes how fewer drug dealers there were on the street, blah, blah, blah, and a lot of smart people bought into this sort of folk wisdom and passed it on.
It is not like Thailand is the only country where extrajudicial killings and democracy are intertwined.
Philippine president potential candidate Duterte is a self-confessed leader of a Mindanao death squad and is hugely popular, mainly because of his macho no nonsense approach to justice.
But death squads and extra-judicial killings have neither transparency nor accountability.
And that is why police reform is really the only answer, something impossible under billionaire ex-cop political regimes or dynasties 🙂
Nick, according to your “arguments” rule-of-law and legal accountability in general have “nothing to do with democracy”.
That is because, as I have pointed out before, you have adopted “Thai-style democracy” as the coded meaning behind all your arguments in favor of the Shin commitment to democratic development.
And really, Nick, you cannot both argue that the YL administration was not really “in power” (which I agree was the case) and then use that powerlessness and lack of control over any but the non-military budgetary aspects of governance as proof that they were somehow “liberalizing”.
To be an effective authoritarian, you have to be able to project authority beyond the “internal discourse” of you and a few friends.
Not having that power does not equal liberalism. It just means you don’t have the power to do anything much, really.
The only Shin governments that have ever come anywhere near having that sort of power had liberals screaming about authoritarian abuses.
And the dozens of journalists who lost their jobs at the time are now the people “liberals” criticize for not accepting that Thaksin is actually a force for liberalization and democratization.
The drug war killings had nothing to do with democracy, and i doubt anyone in his right mind would claim that. It was an elite consensus, quite in Thai tradition, to fight a perceived or real enemy of the state/society with harsh brutality after having ignored an ever growing problem for years. However, just putting this on the Shin clan doesn’t do justice to what happened, ignores historical facts by whitewashing other sectors’ involvement in the killings and is politicizing a far deeper rooted problem of the Thai state. I have once said to Kraisak into his face that he is in a way killing the victims of the drug war a second time by using them for his political agenda instead of being open and honest with his claimed investigation into the matter. You are on the verge of doing similar here.
As to warts and all, i disagree that this gradual shift towards more liberalism has not taken place in the Yingluck government. While still lots of warts, i did perceive that particular administration as substantially less authoritarian as Thaksin’s administration, and that indeed some gradual shift was in the process of taking place. However, that administration also had the constraints that is never was actually in what in more developed deomocracies could be termed as “in power”, but was under attack from day one by the other side of Thailand’s double polity, leading in the end to the coup.
The problem again is less the electoral dominance by the Shin clan, but that any development towards a more liberal democracy is not allowed to take place in Thailand. Electoral dominance of the Shin clan should be solved by an opposition presenting better alternatives to the electorate, and not by that incompetent opposition supporting power grabs of unelected elites.
Hey! RN! There are those who might think that someone who quickly glosses over death squads and hundreds of extrajudicial murders in order to castigate someone for hypocrisy is one sick puppy.
The whole Nick Nostitz school of “I am bored by talk of Thaksin” should sit down with the “He got the nod from on high so he isn’t responsible” school and work up a theory of democratic governance that resonates with ol’ Tricky Dick and the “If the President does it, it isn’t illegal” school and invite Thaksin to come in and do a greatest hits of electoral fascism schtick entitled “The UN is not my father so if you want to talk about human rights talk to my supporters!”
Rose, do you really think that the King thinks, acts and plans things, given his challenged mental and physical state? He and his barami authority are used by the military and Sino-Thai capitalists to rule and dominate in his name.
The killings were the worst thing Thaksin can be held accountable for. But Vichai N’s bleeding-heart hypocrisy makes me sick. I have no doubt at all that Vichai N would have stood behind his King’s endorsement of the killings at the time. But now Thaksin is out of royal favour, the hypocritical toady uses them to bash the man over the head.
If the electorate can’t get more creative than: 1. Shinawatra political dynasty to screw the establishment, 2. eat-for-free income redistribution, completely untransparent in rice scheme case and throwing entire auto sector out of whack in first car buyer scheme case, 3. threatening central bank governor with his job, if he won’t throw central bank independence to the win and do anything they want, etc, etc, then ELECTORATE OVERRIDE (aka coup), quite logical outcome 🙂
Zachary mentions nothing about Roman Catholics, Cao Dai and Muslim Cham dissidents. Yes, the political and media class are very relevant, but there are many imprisoned devout Catholics, Cao Dai and some Cham Muslims. They are also part of the target groups for the VCP.
Ah, yes. Those were the days. The extra-judicial murder of “thousands” was just a “wart” in the always-imperfect democracy of Thailand.
This sort of casual disregard for the human rights of Thai citizens can only find justification by twisting what is meant by the term “democracy” so that the absolutely normal inclusion of the notions of rule-of-law and equality before the law are dispensed with.
I was as guilty of anyone of this tendency to privilege the rights of the majority over the rights of individuals, mainly because I believed that eventually the pressures of electoral democracy would result in a gradual shift toward the liberal constraints we westerners usually associate with the term democracy.
None of the subsequent Thaksinite administrations have demonstrated that that shift was about to take place.
Maybe as Andrew Walker suggested in 2006, Thai political culture is one in which extrajudicial murder is not only acceptable but indeed attractive.
If so, then I would recommend that someone apply this aspect of Thai political culture to the problem of the persistence of Shinawatra domination of elections and see how many of New Mandala’s “liberals” are prepared to embrace and justify that particular “wart”.
For the American contingent of “democracy” supporters, we could ask the media to call the assassinations “targeted killings” and start rumors that the Shin clan were secret Muslims.
Or is the murder of poor young men associated with drugs (whether true or not) simply different from the murder of wealthy people whose pictures we have seen in the media?
Webster, not all of us are “self-seeking” academics. Some of us would not have the academic capacity to collate term papers let alone provide a well-informed analysis of the situation. However, it is not just academics that have contributed to this debate – look at Nick Noslitz – who has provided excellent front-line accounts at great personal risk. At the very least those academics, who I assume make up the majority of NM contributors and readers are engaged in highly interesting and probably very useful work in relation to Thailand’s endemic crises. You surely cannot expect rural commentators or opponents in towns and cities in Thailand – and yes there is still much discussion, albeit muted, when the lao-lao starts to flow – to contribute to NM. Their actions, past, present and in the future have and will in part define what will happen in Thailand.
As an aside, Chris Beale, you are mischievous suggesting that there are two Khun Vichai. In his own mind he personifies everything that is good or should be good about Thai society and politics. You need to win him over, but how? Do you have any suggestions?
“But even if we accept that there will be some modest increase in usage, does this cost outweigh the benefit of the corresponding reduction in criminality surrounding currently illegal drugs?”
Mr Sinclair
Unlike what you saw in “Pulp Fiction” the movie, ‘first time’ used addiction to heroine is 95%, and 2nd time is 100%.
All heroine users are addicts and are not comparable to any other drug addiction such as EtOH, THC or even crack.
Surely one alternative not discussed in this article (but mentioned in the comments) is regulation of the sector and de-criminalization of the finished goods, as as happened in some US states and European countries with marijuana? There are additional “costs” to society of such measures, namely the reported additional demand than de-criminalization, although the Dutch experience with marijuana challenges this. But even if we accept that there will be some modest increase in usage, does this cost outweigh the benefit of the corresponding reduction in criminality surrounding currently illegal drugs? This is surely a valid question to at least address, and ultimately an empirical question. Prohibition of alcohol in the US is perhaps a good example of the relative benefits of legalisation versus criminalization.
Vichai N, my alter ego, wrote with more pasion in Y2006-7. We were very angry and more eloquent at that time because Thaksin had just then murdered Thailand’s democracy …
Speaking of words, has anyone noticed how Vichai N’s English has vastly improved, of late ? Does Thailand’s Royalist Establishment now have 2 !!! Vichai N ??
I agree with the infrastructural problems of growing alternative crops. In a lot of these areas they couldn’t get any alternative crops to market. Opium cartels/militias provide transport (and some degree of protection), let alone fertilizers, which I guess falls under protection or agricultural security too.
There are crops which can compete economically with illicit high value commodities like opium and coca. For example, pineapples (of equal value and reliability to coca), which are being trialled in the Andes as a replacement for coca. However, pineapples, like you say, falls into the category of crops difficult to transport. Unless cartels and militias start offering to shift pineapples out of the hills for the farmers instead of opium, I’m sceptical that alternative development schemes are likely to make much of a dent.
Then of course there’s the demand-side, and ultimately, the ‘balloon effect’ to deal with. Since they’ve switched many Andean slopes, as an example, into coffee (which takes years for the first harvest to appear), pineapples, and cocoa plantations, cocaine’s got purer and cheaper (but there are other reasons supposedly for this too, such as the threat posed by designer drugs -> demand is unlikely to keep on expanding, rather it will just saturate at a certain level).
Additionally, should opium be replaced, it is most likely still going to be the production of a different illegal drug that serves as an efficient replacement for the militias, namely amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). ATS also leave large numbers of drug addicts in their wake, and even more problematically, the wealth trickles down less to the poor. Poverty, of course, leads to even greater numbers of ‘problematic’ drug users, not to mention the stigmatisation potentially caused by putting the words ‘drugs’ and ‘crime’ together. In turn this would most likely cause more casualties through avoidable, social, structural violence.
Indeed, as militias start switching in greater numbers to ATS, even should opium be finally eradicated in the region. The burnt-out users stuck in the middle will start demanding opium again: so it turns full circle.
Successful alternative development ideas (that do more than just move poppy cultivation on into different areas) are quite unlikely in my opinion to really get off the ground.
Was it fruitful at the UNODC in Myanmar?
You could of course stop eradicating the crops. You could also regulate opium cultivation, and it would quite quickly lose its value (along with a raft of benefits given to those whose lives ruined by heroin). Maybe the militia will be forced into the pineapple trade to keep on funding themselves, and alternative development could work that way.
I’ll be interested to see what the next two articles on this.
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Governing by the gun
I would suggest you to re-read Connors paper on the drug war – the only work i am aware of that touches to some degree on the realities of it, and then rethink your rather naive conclusion that police reform would be the answer, ignoring the fact that the answer is wide ranging structural changes in the Thai state, of which police reform is just one of the many parts.
Reassessing Myanmar’s poppy problem
“Unlike what you saw in “Pulp Fiction” the movie, ‘first time’ used addiction to heroine is 95%, and 2nd time is 100%.”
Sorry to play devil’s advocate here. But, where are these figures from?
The ‘capture rate’ of heroin is roughly the same as alcohol (EtOH), at around 50%. Source: Sue Pryce, the ex-chairman of UK charity Drugscope, the largest such charity and focus group in the uK
Royal power in Thai politics
His Majesty has brought great prosperity, and on many occasions, great peace to Thailand, when there was severe turbulence. His Majesty has given accounts, truthful stories no doubt, concerning the murder of his older brother. I would like to see one more truthful account from Bumiphol, about what REALLY happened to his brother.
Governing by the gun
The drug war killings did **have everything to do with** democracy in Thailand.
Red shirt leader Dr. Weng in an interview on the Ratchprasong stage said how the red shirt rank and file swore these killings were an effective way to save their children from the scourge of drugs.
Taxi drivers would tell their passengers anecdotally how effective Thaksin’s extrajudicial killings were. They saw with their own eyes how fewer drug dealers there were on the street, blah, blah, blah, and a lot of smart people bought into this sort of folk wisdom and passed it on.
It is not like Thailand is the only country where extrajudicial killings and democracy are intertwined.
Philippine president potential candidate Duterte is a self-confessed leader of a Mindanao death squad and is hugely popular, mainly because of his macho no nonsense approach to justice.
But death squads and extra-judicial killings have neither transparency nor accountability.
And that is why police reform is really the only answer, something impossible under billionaire ex-cop political regimes or dynasties 🙂
Governing by the gun
Nick, according to your “arguments” rule-of-law and legal accountability in general have “nothing to do with democracy”.
That is because, as I have pointed out before, you have adopted “Thai-style democracy” as the coded meaning behind all your arguments in favor of the Shin commitment to democratic development.
And really, Nick, you cannot both argue that the YL administration was not really “in power” (which I agree was the case) and then use that powerlessness and lack of control over any but the non-military budgetary aspects of governance as proof that they were somehow “liberalizing”.
To be an effective authoritarian, you have to be able to project authority beyond the “internal discourse” of you and a few friends.
Not having that power does not equal liberalism. It just means you don’t have the power to do anything much, really.
The only Shin governments that have ever come anywhere near having that sort of power had liberals screaming about authoritarian abuses.
And the dozens of journalists who lost their jobs at the time are now the people “liberals” criticize for not accepting that Thaksin is actually a force for liberalization and democratization.
Governing by the gun
The drug war killings had nothing to do with democracy, and i doubt anyone in his right mind would claim that. It was an elite consensus, quite in Thai tradition, to fight a perceived or real enemy of the state/society with harsh brutality after having ignored an ever growing problem for years. However, just putting this on the Shin clan doesn’t do justice to what happened, ignores historical facts by whitewashing other sectors’ involvement in the killings and is politicizing a far deeper rooted problem of the Thai state. I have once said to Kraisak into his face that he is in a way killing the victims of the drug war a second time by using them for his political agenda instead of being open and honest with his claimed investigation into the matter. You are on the verge of doing similar here.
As to warts and all, i disagree that this gradual shift towards more liberalism has not taken place in the Yingluck government. While still lots of warts, i did perceive that particular administration as substantially less authoritarian as Thaksin’s administration, and that indeed some gradual shift was in the process of taking place. However, that administration also had the constraints that is never was actually in what in more developed deomocracies could be termed as “in power”, but was under attack from day one by the other side of Thailand’s double polity, leading in the end to the coup.
The problem again is less the electoral dominance by the Shin clan, but that any development towards a more liberal democracy is not allowed to take place in Thailand. Electoral dominance of the Shin clan should be solved by an opposition presenting better alternatives to the electorate, and not by that incompetent opposition supporting power grabs of unelected elites.
Governing by the gun
Hey! RN! There are those who might think that someone who quickly glosses over death squads and hundreds of extrajudicial murders in order to castigate someone for hypocrisy is one sick puppy.
The whole Nick Nostitz school of “I am bored by talk of Thaksin” should sit down with the “He got the nod from on high so he isn’t responsible” school and work up a theory of democratic governance that resonates with ol’ Tricky Dick and the “If the President does it, it isn’t illegal” school and invite Thaksin to come in and do a greatest hits of electoral fascism schtick entitled “The UN is not my father so if you want to talk about human rights talk to my supporters!”
I mean really, people. Are you really so craven?
Royal power in Thai politics
Rose, do you really think that the King thinks, acts and plans things, given his challenged mental and physical state? He and his barami authority are used by the military and Sino-Thai capitalists to rule and dominate in his name.
Governing by the gun
The killings were the worst thing Thaksin can be held accountable for. But Vichai N’s bleeding-heart hypocrisy makes me sick. I have no doubt at all that Vichai N would have stood behind his King’s endorsement of the killings at the time. But now Thaksin is out of royal favour, the hypocritical toady uses them to bash the man over the head.
Reassessing Myanmar’s poppy problem
One well-known Burmese Blogger has just posted an interesting article about his early experiences of opium and heroin back in Burma on his blog.
http://hlaoo1980.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/the-scourge-of-burma-part-1_20.html
Governing by the gun
If the electorate can’t get more creative than: 1. Shinawatra political dynasty to screw the establishment, 2. eat-for-free income redistribution, completely untransparent in rice scheme case and throwing entire auto sector out of whack in first car buyer scheme case, 3. threatening central bank governor with his job, if he won’t throw central bank independence to the win and do anything they want, etc, etc, then ELECTORATE OVERRIDE (aka coup), quite logical outcome 🙂
Vietnam’s rising repression
Zachary mentions nothing about Roman Catholics, Cao Dai and Muslim Cham dissidents. Yes, the political and media class are very relevant, but there are many imprisoned devout Catholics, Cao Dai and some Cham Muslims. They are also part of the target groups for the VCP.
Governing by the gun
Ah, yes. Those were the days. The extra-judicial murder of “thousands” was just a “wart” in the always-imperfect democracy of Thailand.
This sort of casual disregard for the human rights of Thai citizens can only find justification by twisting what is meant by the term “democracy” so that the absolutely normal inclusion of the notions of rule-of-law and equality before the law are dispensed with.
I was as guilty of anyone of this tendency to privilege the rights of the majority over the rights of individuals, mainly because I believed that eventually the pressures of electoral democracy would result in a gradual shift toward the liberal constraints we westerners usually associate with the term democracy.
None of the subsequent Thaksinite administrations have demonstrated that that shift was about to take place.
Maybe as Andrew Walker suggested in 2006, Thai political culture is one in which extrajudicial murder is not only acceptable but indeed attractive.
If so, then I would recommend that someone apply this aspect of Thai political culture to the problem of the persistence of Shinawatra domination of elections and see how many of New Mandala’s “liberals” are prepared to embrace and justify that particular “wart”.
For the American contingent of “democracy” supporters, we could ask the media to call the assassinations “targeted killings” and start rumors that the Shin clan were secret Muslims.
Or is the murder of poor young men associated with drugs (whether true or not) simply different from the murder of wealthy people whose pictures we have seen in the media?
9 years ago today
Webster, not all of us are “self-seeking” academics. Some of us would not have the academic capacity to collate term papers let alone provide a well-informed analysis of the situation. However, it is not just academics that have contributed to this debate – look at Nick Noslitz – who has provided excellent front-line accounts at great personal risk. At the very least those academics, who I assume make up the majority of NM contributors and readers are engaged in highly interesting and probably very useful work in relation to Thailand’s endemic crises. You surely cannot expect rural commentators or opponents in towns and cities in Thailand – and yes there is still much discussion, albeit muted, when the lao-lao starts to flow – to contribute to NM. Their actions, past, present and in the future have and will in part define what will happen in Thailand.
As an aside, Chris Beale, you are mischievous suggesting that there are two Khun Vichai. In his own mind he personifies everything that is good or should be good about Thai society and politics. You need to win him over, but how? Do you have any suggestions?
Reassessing Myanmar’s poppy problem
“But even if we accept that there will be some modest increase in usage, does this cost outweigh the benefit of the corresponding reduction in criminality surrounding currently illegal drugs?”
Mr Sinclair
Unlike what you saw in “Pulp Fiction” the movie, ‘first time’ used addiction to heroine is 95%, and 2nd time is 100%.
All heroine users are addicts and are not comparable to any other drug addiction such as EtOH, THC or even crack.
Reassessing Myanmar’s poppy problem
Surely one alternative not discussed in this article (but mentioned in the comments) is regulation of the sector and de-criminalization of the finished goods, as as happened in some US states and European countries with marijuana? There are additional “costs” to society of such measures, namely the reported additional demand than de-criminalization, although the Dutch experience with marijuana challenges this. But even if we accept that there will be some modest increase in usage, does this cost outweigh the benefit of the corresponding reduction in criminality surrounding currently illegal drugs? This is surely a valid question to at least address, and ultimately an empirical question. Prohibition of alcohol in the US is perhaps a good example of the relative benefits of legalisation versus criminalization.
Governing by the gun
Vichai N, my alter ego, wrote with more pasion in Y2006-7. We were very angry and more eloquent at that time because Thaksin had just then murdered Thailand’s democracy …
9 years ago today
Speaking of words, has anyone noticed how Vichai N’s English has vastly improved, of late ? Does Thailand’s Royalist Establishment now have 2 !!! Vichai N ??
9 years ago today
Thank you for mentioning me, Nich, much appreciated 🙂
Reassessing Myanmar’s poppy problem
I agree with the infrastructural problems of growing alternative crops. In a lot of these areas they couldn’t get any alternative crops to market. Opium cartels/militias provide transport (and some degree of protection), let alone fertilizers, which I guess falls under protection or agricultural security too.
There are crops which can compete economically with illicit high value commodities like opium and coca. For example, pineapples (of equal value and reliability to coca), which are being trialled in the Andes as a replacement for coca. However, pineapples, like you say, falls into the category of crops difficult to transport. Unless cartels and militias start offering to shift pineapples out of the hills for the farmers instead of opium, I’m sceptical that alternative development schemes are likely to make much of a dent.
Then of course there’s the demand-side, and ultimately, the ‘balloon effect’ to deal with. Since they’ve switched many Andean slopes, as an example, into coffee (which takes years for the first harvest to appear), pineapples, and cocoa plantations, cocaine’s got purer and cheaper (but there are other reasons supposedly for this too, such as the threat posed by designer drugs -> demand is unlikely to keep on expanding, rather it will just saturate at a certain level).
Additionally, should opium be replaced, it is most likely still going to be the production of a different illegal drug that serves as an efficient replacement for the militias, namely amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). ATS also leave large numbers of drug addicts in their wake, and even more problematically, the wealth trickles down less to the poor. Poverty, of course, leads to even greater numbers of ‘problematic’ drug users, not to mention the stigmatisation potentially caused by putting the words ‘drugs’ and ‘crime’ together. In turn this would most likely cause more casualties through avoidable, social, structural violence.
Indeed, as militias start switching in greater numbers to ATS, even should opium be finally eradicated in the region. The burnt-out users stuck in the middle will start demanding opium again: so it turns full circle.
Successful alternative development ideas (that do more than just move poppy cultivation on into different areas) are quite unlikely in my opinion to really get off the ground.
Was it fruitful at the UNODC in Myanmar?
You could of course stop eradicating the crops. You could also regulate opium cultivation, and it would quite quickly lose its value (along with a raft of benefits given to those whose lives ruined by heroin). Maybe the militia will be forced into the pineapple trade to keep on funding themselves, and alternative development could work that way.
I’ll be interested to see what the next two articles on this.
Tim