Page 1 of
2 Death of a drug
lord By Bertil Lintner
CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Khun Sa, 73, once
known as the "Lord of the Golden Triangle", is
dead. Throughout his career as one the world's
most prominent drug traffickers, he simultaneously
had some very solid contacts - and protectors - in
his native Myanmar and beyond.
The fact
that he spent the last years of his life
incommunicado inside a compound protected by
Myanmar's secret intelligence
service gives some indication
as to how important the country's ruling junta
considered it after his surrender in January 1996
to keep him isolated and quiet. And, despite his
surrender, drugs are still flowing across
Myanmar's borders in all directions, which shows
that the networks he once created and of which he
was a part are still very much intact.
Khun Sa was probably one of the most
colorful and controversial figures on the Myanmar
drug scene. Despite being indicted on drug
trafficking charges by a federal grand jury in
Brooklyn, New York, in January 1990, he continued
to live comfortably at his then headquarters at
Homong near the Thai border opposite Mae Hong Son,
where this writer met him on two occasions in the
early 1990s. In fact, there was precious little
evidence of the then supposed hunt for what the
mainstream press often referred to as "the
notorious warlord".
By no stretch of the
imagination could Homong have been described as a
"jungle hideout" - a common phrase used by the
press in the 1980s and early 1990s. On the
contrary, it was - and still is - a bustling town
boasting well-stocked shops, spacious market
places, a well laid-out grid of roads with street
lights. More than 10,000 inhabitants lived in
wooden and concrete houses amid fruit trees,
manicured hedges and gardens adorned with
bougainvillea and marigolds. Huge signs indicated
where you could have your travel permits to
Thailand across the border issued.
There
were schools, a Buddhist monastery, a
well-equipped hospital with an operating theater
and X-ray machines - all maintained by qualified
doctors from mainland China - video halls, karaoke
bars, two hotels, a disco and even a small park
complete with pathways, benches and a
Chinese-style pavilion. Overseas calls could be
placed from two commercially run telephone booths.
Local artifacts, historical paintings and
photographs were on display in a "cultural
museum", and a hydroelectric power station was
being constructed, but never fully finished, to
replace the diesel-powered generators then
providing Homong with electricity. Other unusual
construction projects included an 18-hole golf
course intended for the many Thai, Taiwanese,
Singaporean, Hong Kong, Malaysian, South Korean
and Japanese businessmen who were then flocking to
buy precious stones at Khun Sa's gem center, also
located in Homong. As a young man, Khun Sa was an
avid golfer, and over the years he was known to
have made several influential friends on golf
greens.
At that time, he was supposed to
be the most wanted man in the world, but, in
reality, he was pursued by no one. He lived in a
one-storey concrete building surrounded by a
well-tended garden featuring orchids, Norfolk
pines and strawberry fields. But his house was
also ringed by bunkers housing 50-caliber,
anti-aircraft machine-guns and swarms of heavily
armed soldiers. "You never know," he once told me
during an interview. "I have an army, so I'm free.
Look at poor [Myanmar opposition leader] Aung San
Suu Kyi. She's got no army so she's under house
arrest."
Humble beginnings Khun
Sa was born in 1934 in a small village in northern
Shan state of an ethnic Shan mother and a Chinese
father. But he grew up as an orphan as his father
died when he was only three. His mother remarried
the local tax collector of the small town of Mong
Tawm, but two years later she died as well.
While his three stepbrothers went to
missionary schools and were given the Christian
names Oscar, Billy and Morgan, the young Khun Sa
was raised by his Chinese grandfather amid the
poppy fields of Loi Maw mountain in northern Shan
state. His only formal education consisted of a
few years as a temple boy in a Buddhist monastery.
During one of our interviews, I noticed that all
his correspondence had to be read to him and that
his replies were dictated.
Khun Sa gained
his first military experience in skirmishes with
the Kuomintang, or nationalist Chinese forces who
had set up bases in Loi Maw in the early 1950s.
Following Mao Zedong's victory in China in 1949,
thousands of Kuomintang soldiers came streaming
south, and, supported by the surviving Republic of
China government in Taiwan - and the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) - they tried in vain to
"liberate" the mainland from their new sanctuaries
in Myanmar, then known as Burma.
The
Kuomintang invasion resulted in a reign of terror
for the ordinary people who lived in the areas, as
the nationalist Chinese collected taxes, forcibly
enlisted recruits and encouraged poppy cultivation
in the area to finance their "secret" army. At the
age of 16, Khun Sa formed his own armed band to
fight the intruders. In the early 1960s, his small
private army was even recognized officially as the
"Loi Maw Ka Kwe Ye", a home guard unit under the
Myanmar army.
"Ka Kwe Ye" (KKY), which
literally means "defense" in the Myanmar language,
was Yangon's idea of a local militia to fight the
Kuomintang as well as local, separatist Shan
rebels. The plan was to rally as many local
warlords as possible, mostly non-political
brigands and private army commanders, behind the
Myanmar army in exchange for the right to use all
government-controlled roads and towns in Shan
state for opium trafficking. By trading in opium,
the Myanmar government hoped that the KKY militias
would be self-supporting.
The warlords,
who were supposed to fight the insurgents,
strengthened their private armies and purchased
with opium money military equipment available on
the black market in Thailand and Laos. Some of
them, Khun Sa included, were soon better equipped
than the Myanmar milirtary itself.
Khun
Sa, then 33, decided to challenge the supremacy of
much more senior Kuomintang opium warlords. In May
1967, he set out from the hills of northern Shan
state with a large contingent of soldiers and a
massive 16-ton opium convoy, destined for Ban
Khwan, a small Laotian lumber village across the
Mekong River from Chiang Saen in Thailand. More
traders joined his convoy, and by the time it
reached the city of Kengtung in eastern Shan
state, its single-file column of 500 men and 300
mules stretched along the ridge for more than a
mile.
The convoy crossed the Mekong and
the Kuomintang rushed to intercept it. Fierce
fighting raged for several days, but the outcome
of the battle is still somewhat obscure. At that
time, General Ouane Rattikone, the
commander-in-chief of the Royal Lao Army, ran
several heroin refineries in the nearby Ban
Houey
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