On December 1, 2003, then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared "victory" in his "War on Drugs". Never mind the absurdity of that claim; the man who came to power vowing to make the eradication of the illegal drug trade his top priority thought he could fool the Thai public and the international community. In three months, Thaksin's campaign had resulted in the deaths of about 2,500 people. Authorities said at the time that with the exception of only a dozen or so people, all the deaths were the result of killings in which one party wanted to silence the other - bad guys killing bad guys.

The problem was that nobody bought this explanation, even after Thaksin had the then chief of police, Sant Sarutanond, reopen the investigation into the deaths that occurred during the campaign.

The police came up with pretty much the same explanation as they did the first time round and the world community and human-rights groups once again dismissed the findings as a farce.

It didn't seem to matter to those who were behind this controversial and bloody war that the country's reputation was at stake. Such a campaign is unthinkable in most countries around the world.

Thaksin knew that he could get away with his actions. He was riding on the sentiments of frustrated parents who were tired of seeing more and more kids getting hooked on methamphetamines and other drugs that had flooded the streets of Thai cities.

Thaksin didn't want to address the social aspect of drugs. To him, it was an issue of law and order. The body count would become the benchmark of his success and 2,500 corpses was a good number, regardless of the questionable circumstances in which these people were killed.

The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions said Thaksin's campaign marked "a new low in Thai drug policy". There were also unconfirmed reports that the campaign was heading to a dead end with some lawmakers in the US Congress who had the power to stop American funding to any agency responsible for extrajudicial killings.

But the fact that Thaksin had overwhelming support suggests that Thai society as a whole still has a lot of growing up to do. Like it or not, our tendency to embrace strong men with questionable tactics does say something about us as a people.

Besides ignoring the social aspects of the drug problem, Thaksin also ignored the supply side of the equation, although he talked about the source - namely the drug armies operating independently in the Burmese portion of the Golden Triangle.

He talked tough with the Thais but left the Wa, Kokang, Chinese, Shan and Burmese opium warlords pretty much alone. In fact, he was duped by the government in Rangoon into whitewashing the workings of the United Wa State Army, dubbed the world's largest armed drug trafficking army by the US State Department, by providing seed money for a major crop substitution/development project.

Needless to say the project was totally ignored by the international community who trusted neither Thaksin, nor the Wa leadership, to keep their word.

Today, more than four years after Thaksin concluded his disastrous campaign, the current government is pushing for another round of investigations into these extra-judicial killings. The Justice Ministry has been instructed to take the lead and former attorney-general Khanit na Nakhon will lead a 10-man panel to follow up on the findings of the investigation that the Thaksin government had conducted into the killings.

The panel will issue a report making recommendations for compensation for victims and their relatives. But that is not enough. Members of law-enforcement agencies who murdered these so-called drug dealers so that Thaksin could win some political capital need to be brought to justice as well.

The new panel cannot go to the families of the victims with the attitude "take the money and shut up". Thailand is a signatory to all kinds of conventions that basically commit us to abiding by international norms. What happened during the drug war was basically unthinkable.