ON JAN 6, when Philippine drug enforcement agents raided a sprawling compound inside the exclusive Ayala Alabang residential village in a south Manila suburb, what they found underlined a point many observers had been making for some time.

As in many similar raids in recent months, the five suspects detained on the rented property were Chinese nationals. Not surprisingly, local politicians are beginning to react.

The following day, House of Representatives member Ben Evardone urged the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to bar the five suspects from leaving Manila immediately.

“I am making this call because the BI in the past (Arroyo) administration reportedly allowed the deportation of Chinese nationals who were arrested in a shabu laboratory in Aurora province and in Subic,” he said in a text message to the media.

He argued that while Filipinos arrested in China were being executed, the Philippines allowed Chinese nationals caught in illegal drug activities to go scot-free. “This is totally unfair,” he said.

As it happened, the Chinese nationals arrested in the Ayala Alabang raid were charged soon afterwards and will now have to face justice. Police said the banned stimulant methamphetamine hydrochloride, popularly known as Ice or shabu, was being manufactured on the property in a medium-scale lab capable of producing 10kg of the drug every two or three days.

The drug trade has become an important talking point in the Philippines. As the Ayala Alabang raid illustrated, Chinese syndicates have been shifting their manufacturing operations to the Philippines in response to intensified enforcement efforts by the Chinese government.

Many Philippine observers contrast the activities of these Chinese gangs with the fact that Beijing regularly executes poor and relatively unsophisticated Filipino drug mules. Four such Filipinos were executed in China last year despite last-minute appeals by Philippine President Benigno Aquino. Relations between Manila and Beijing have also been strained in recent months over rival territorial claims in the South China Sea.

But while the debate over the illegal drug trade has been heating up, the domestic drug situation has actually been getting better.

According to a 2010 United Nations report on the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, a total of 1.7 million Filipinos use illegal drugs. This may sound alarming, but it is far better than in 2004, when the total number of drug users in the country was estimated at 6.7 million. A US State Department report last year echoed the UN findings, lauding Manila for its success.

Shabu remains the most common illegal drug, with snorting being the primary mode of administration. Cannabis, or marijuana, is the second-most common.

Apart from the stepped-up activities of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the US report cited drug education programmes and rehabilitation initiatives as the most likely reasons for the improvement. Large rewards handed out to informants and random drug tests targeting local police and government employees could also be added to the list.

In most countries, increased public awareness of the debilitating effects of drug addiction would be regarded as an indisputably good thing. In the Philippines, however, the problem is often popularly viewed in a way that it clouds the main issues and threatens to complicate foreign policy formulation.

In December 2010, when Manila announced that a scheduling conflict prevented it from sending a representative to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Norway, critics accused Mr Aquino of pandering to Chinese demands in order to ensure a stay of execution for Filipinos on death row. Beijing had mounted an unprecedented campaign to persuade other countries to boycott the ceremony, at which Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo would receive the prize.

The US State Department report noted that Filipino drug mules have proliferated in recent years as foreign drug syndicates increased their presence in the Philippines. The problem is not limited to Chinese syndicates. According to the PDEA, there are currently 630 Filipinos in prison in different parts of the world for acting as drug couriers for high-profile international syndicates.

Ideally, foreign policy should not become hostage to concerns about the well-being of citizens held in foreign jails. But with Filipinos increasingly being used as drug couriers and anti-China sentiment running high, Mr Aquino may face some controversial choices in the coming months that distract policymakers from other aspects of the anti-drug war.

The US report highlighted several areas requiring the attention of policymakers. They included a lack of resources, the slow pace of judicial and investigative reform, and the lack of inter-agency cooperation.

Manila has made good progress in recent years. But rather than blame China for its perceived heartlessness in dealing with drug couriers, the country would be better off finding more ways to strengthen its own anti-drug efforts

(C) Singapore Press Holdings Limited