Fence plan is full of holes

• Published: 6/03/2012 at 02:17 AM

Bangkokpost Editorial - The sweet words of Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung about his personal programmes to fight drug trafficking, actually provide little hope. Mr Chalerm tried to assure the country that his rather simple tactic against drug smuggling is going to effectively end drug abuse and smuggling within a year.

His plan is to build a fence of barbed wire along parts of the northern border with Myanmar. In Mr Chalerm's opinion, drug smugglers will be so penned in behind the fence that it will be simple for the army and police border guards to pick them up and end the problem by next winter.

The plan is simple to be sure, but the claim that it will be effective is, at best, simplistic. One must wonder, just for example, if Mr Chalerm has even visited the remote border areas of the North. The hills, streams, rivers and villages of the far North are major problems for any would-be fence builder. Even if such a fence could be erected, his plan calls for a solid barrier with occasional and official border-crossing gaps to be staffed by police and customs.

This might look good on paper but, like assembling fence materials and builders in the jungles, it will be a little more difficult in real life. For example, Mr Chalerm thinks barbed wire would deter smuggling. But for a few hundred baht, a would-be smuggler or any other citizen can buy wire cutters that will make the fence disappear. A wire fence, even if built, would have to be monitored and patrolled 24 hours a day _ and even then drug traffickers could slip through about as easily as they do today with no fence.

Mr Chalerm has always been on the right side of the drugs problems. But too often, including here, he has spoken and urged action without thinking the problem through. For reasons only he knows, the deputy premier has ignored many facts about this complicated problem.

Last month, he recommended quick execution of drug convicts, as if the ultimate penalty would somehow halt the problem of drug trafficking. Now he has taken a hugely misleading stand on a single facet of the fight against drugs, and promised a total solution.

The inconvenient truth is that drug smugglers have adapted to border controls for decades. They will continue to do so even if Mr Chalerm prevails in what may be a money- and time-wasting scheme. It is a fact that over the past several years, traffickers have sent more and more drugs to Laos and Cambodia for smuggling into Thailand.

With his problem to end most drug smuggling in a year, Mr Chalerm may be trying to win votes or simply to place a "no-problem" label on this huge and multi-headed problem. Either way, it is an unwise statement at best.

There is no single solution to battling drug trafficking. The deputy prime minister needs to take the problem more seriously. The public knows very well how serious the situation is, and how many facets there are to the problem.

No border fence and no other single and simple idea will end drug trafficking. This is a costly, sometimes murderous, threat to society and to national security, and it deserves a realistic approach instead of unconvincing political talk.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/283032/fence-plan-is-full-of-holes