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Thailand: The Return of Thaksin's Anti-Drug Campaign
Stratfor Today » April 2, 2008 | 1310 GMT
Thaksin Shinawatra
Chumsak Kanoknan/Getty Images
Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
Summary

According to recent promises made by Thai Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s controversial anti-drug campaign was due to have been revived April 2, less than a month after Thaksin’s return to the country. The initiative will be conducted by police across the country to wipe out known drug dealers and users. The launch of this initiative will serve to strengthen support for and confidence in the newly elected government and to strengthen the regime’s ability to target local-level opponents.
Analysis

According to recent promises made by Thailand’s Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung, ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s controversial anti-drug campaign was slated to be revived April 2, less than a month after Thaksin’s return to the country. Under the initiative, police across the country will wipe out known drug dealers and users.

Although Thaksin’s anti-drug campaign — which resulted in 2,800 deaths within three months in its first run in 2003 — subsequently led to charges of extrajudicial killings and excessive violence a few years later, it was and remains highly popular among the general Thai public. While the initiative raised international objections, the resultant drop in drug-trafficking activity throughout the rural countryside (barring the highly volatile south) was applauded domestically and seen by many as one of Thaksin’s greatest achievements.

Similarly, this time around, the program — in concert with other Thaksin-style initiatives being launched on other fronts — has already started to strengthen support for and confidence in the newly elected government.

Under the 2003 campaign, local police within each province compiled lists of known or suspected drug dealers (including those who were simply users) and sent the lists to the Bangkok police headquarters to be combined for central coordination. Stratfor sources say that those on the lists were summoned to their local police offices to “surrender,” and many were subsequently killed on the way there. The general understanding is that the police were responsible for the majority of these killings. Such police summons became synonymous with a death sentence — one that drug sellers and users alike all tried to preempt by turning themselves in voluntarily to be jailed.

More importantly, beyond gaining control over Thailand’s drug trafficking activity, this campaign was a tool for strengthening the Thai regime’s control of the many local power strongholds —such as heads of organized crime operations at the local and regional levels — scattered throughout the country, far from the capital. Many of the central government’s opponents (some of whom had no dealings in drugs) were also placed on the lists for subsequent elimination. Unable to take down such crime groups and/or political opponents for lack of an efficient judiciary system and effective enforcement of central government directives by local government officials, Thaksin saw violence as the most efficient and speedy solution.

Going ahead, as in 2003, the weekly death tolls resulting from this purge will soon start climbing throughout Thailand. Yoobamrung has already boasted that the death toll this time could top 4,000. As before, the numbers will be welded as quantifiable evidence of the new government’s effectiveness, and will be used to prove how Thaksin is already delivering within weeks of being back in the country — and running the government from behind the scenes.

As with the new government’s other Thaksin-style initiatives — for example, funneling funds directly to its grassroot support bases — this campaign should yield some quick quantifiable results for the incumbent People Power Party at the helm of Thailand’s new coalition government.

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