Aiontay – this is a really important point that you make. I share your feelings. I guess I just never expected that a foreign journalist will go to the far corners of the country and try to work out what is going on. Such a project would, as you know, test the limits of even the most experienced field researchers. Journalists – making such a rare program for mainstream television – are always going to be somewhat constrained in what they can and can’t do.

A documentary that took in issues in “Kachin State, the Shan State, Arakan, the Tenasserim Division, or the rural areas of Upper Burma” would be more than a little bit interesting.

It is worth more than fleeting consideration.

We can’t assume that they’ll do a complete about-face of Thaksin’s Burma friendly policy. Even though that’s probably what the anti-Thaksin activist and former Ambassador Asda Jayanama clearly wants.

The Thai Army has historically been very pro-Burma. I remember during 1997 when they jailed over a dozen Burmese activists in Sangkhlaburi. And even more recently when they played a key role in “promoting” the Thai-Burma gas pipeline. Even Surayud started a “foreign exchange” program so that Thai officers could serve for SLORC and vice versa. That being said, he *was* pretty friendly to the Burmese students who seized the embassy in Bangkok. But it might be that there are just too many factions in Burma and too many factions among the Thai Army to make any sense or predictions of the situation.

But more importantly, the power behind the junta has, for over a decade, been pro-SLORC (as well as pro-Khmer Rouge, but that’s another matter…). Remember when 8 Nobel Peace prize winners (including the Dalai Lama and Demond Tutu) visited Thailand in 1993 to pressure Thailand to take a hard stand against the Burmese generals? He apparently told them that Su Kyi was a trouble-maker who should return to England with her half-blood children and let the military lead. Of course, even that fact can’t be taken for granted, because that same person has also be very strongly opposed to the drug trade, and seemed more than willing to use any means necessary to limit drug inflow from the western and northern borders.