Published on Nov 29, 2004

With only six days to go, officials are still not sure how to collect or transport the 60 million specially-made 'birds of peace'

Cynics and critics talk about tons of garbage and a possibly misguided peace initiative. But the government's plan to drop millions of origami paper birds from the sky on the troubled deep South is facing a more immediate problem - how to effectively gather them and get them up in the air in the first place.

Those tasked with this ambitious scheme - primarily postal and provincial officials and the Air Force - are having a logistical nightmare ahead of D-day on Saturday. With nobody certain how many paper birds are coming their way, preparations and coordination have been based largely on guesses.

"Honestly, we still don't know how many staff and planes will be needed, let alone how to plan the flights," said an Air Force source.

Origami birds made by the public are being collected at postal and district offices as well as other centres in rural areas. They will then be sent to the provincial halls (or, in the case of Bangkok, the postal headquarters at Lak Si and the city clerk's office) before being forwarded to 10 Air Force bases.

From there they will be transported by truck or plane, depending on the amount and distance, to an Air Force airstrip in Bangkok before being flown to airbases in Songkhla and Surat Thani.

Tomorrow, paper birds kept at the Lak Si postal headquarters will be sent to the Bangkok 6th Fleet airstrip. But how many trucks are needed for the transport remained unclear and there have been reports of total confusion between postal and Air Force officials over storage and transport timeframes.

"The Air Force had expected to receive the paper birds earlier, but the postal officials were led to believe that the Air Force had no facility to keep them," said one source.

Still waiting, the Air Force has set aside 12,000 1x1.5-metre plastic bags, each of which can hold about 5,000 paper birds. The bags will be stored in a 60x40-metre hangar in Bangkok until December 1.

With each transport plane able to carry about 100-130 bags, it will take quite a number of sorties to complete the Bangkok-Songkhla-Surat Thani operation. And that is not even the birds' final voyage.

The real test will come on December 5. How long will it take for the paper birds to be "sprayed" from a plane per sortie? How many sorties will be needed? How many men will it take, especially since almost no one has ever been involved in this sort of operation before? Will the wind be a factor? What if there are storms?

A few days ago, the government announced that 20 million paper birds had been made, although it was unclear who did the counting. As of yesterday, a lot more remained to be picked up from bowling alleys, gas stations and department stores.

One postal official can't wait to pass the torch over to the Air Force.

"I thought the World Cup prediction frenzy was bad, but this one is surely worse," he said.

Sucheera Pinijparakarn

THE NATION