Narco-terrorism
The stark face of narco-terrorism was seen in Thailand last week. The heroin warlord Khun Sa and a reputed "Mr. Big" of Prachin Buri province tried to trade guns for drugs.
Police broke the case and seized three Soviet anti-aircraft missiles bound across Thailand to the northern Chiang Mai frontier. The million-baht barter deal involved arms from Cambodia, drugs from Burma (Myanmar), a broker and his messengers in Thailand.
Two Thai men carrying the missiles northwest from Cambodia were intercepted by police.
Authorities arrested the two gun-runners involved in actually transporting the SA-7 Strella missiles. These were the small fish.
Unknown Cambodians -- government or Khmer Rouge -- and Khun Sa were not apprehended.
Police chief Gen. Pote Boonyachinda provided few details of the investigation of the Prachin Buri businessman allegedly involved in the transaction.
We hope that in coming days we will learn more of this mystery man, and in time learn that he, too, will face Thai courts.
Narco-terrorism -- a melding of illicit trades of narcotics, guns and money-laundering -- has long been a feature of the cocaine trade in Latin America.
There, democratic regimes have been directly threatened by gangsters involved in this dirty business. Only determined and relentless action can wipe it out.
At about the same time Thai police were breaking up the guns- for-heroin deal, an elite force in Colombia arrested that nation's leading drug dealer.
Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, who with his brother headed the infamous Cali cartel, was found hiding in a closet in his home.
Although there was no immediate link to Saturday night's murderous bomb blast in Medellin, analysts noted the bomb, intended to kill "as many people as possible", was planted only one day after the arrest of Rodriguez.
The missiles seizure shows the international scope of narco- terrorism in our own midst. Drugs and weapons combine into a deadly and serious corruption problem.
The men involved seek to control politics and nations. They corrupt individuals, pervert societies and debase the nations where they live.
Khun Sa and "Mr. Big" of Prachin Buri are two of a kind.
-- The Bangkok Post