Khun Sa

In his early life Khun Sa received military equipment and training from both the Kuomintang and Burmese Army before claiming to fight for the independence of Shan State and going on to establish his own independent territory. He was dubbed the "Opium King" in Myanmar due to his massive opium smuggling operations in the Golden Triangle, where he was the dominant opium warlord from approximately 1976 to 1996. Although the American ambassador to Thailand called him "the worst enemy the world has", he successfully co-opted the support of both the Thai and Burmese governments at various times. After the American Drug Enforcement Administration uncovered and broke the link between Khun Sa and his foreign brokers, he "surrendered" to the Burmese government in 1996, disbanding his army and moving to Yangon with his wealth and mistresses. After his retirement some of his forces refused to surrender and continued fighting the government, but he engaged in "legitimate" business projects, especially mining and construction. He died in 2007 at the age of 73. Today, his children are prominent businesspeople in Myanmar.

Biography

Early life

Khun Sa was born to a

In 1963 he re-formed his army into a local "Ka Kwe Ye" ("Home guard") unit, under the control of the northeast command of the Burmese army, which was based in nearby Lashio. In return for fighting local Shan rebels, the government allowed him to use their land and roads to grow and trade opium and heroin.^[3] By allowing them to be financed by opium production, the Burmese government hoped that these local militia units could be self-supporting. Many government-supported warlords, including Khun Sa, used their profits from the opium trade to buy large supplies of military equipment from the black markets in Laos and Thailand, and were soon better equipped than the Burmese army.^[2]

By the late 1960s Khun Sa was one of the most important and powerful militia leaders in Shan state. He held an important pass in Loi Maw, restricting the movements of local communist rebels. During the period, while he was nominally supporting the Burmese government, he maintained contact with Kuomintang intelligence agents.^[6]

Through the 1960s Khun Sa became one of Burma's most notorious drug traffickers.^[7] He challenged the local dominance of the Kuomintang remnants in Shan State, but in 1967 he was decisively defeated in a battle involving both the Kuomintang and the Laotian army on the Thai–Burma–Laos border. In that battle he led a convoy of 500 men and 300 mules into Laos, but the convoy was ambushed by Kuomintang forces en route. As the battle was going on, the Laotian army (which was also involved in the opium/heroin trade) bombed the battleground and stole the opium.^[8] This defeat demoralized him and his forces.^[9] The Laotian army continued to ambush his mule trains for the next few years,^[7] and his military strength declined.^[9]

Capture

In 1969, delegates from a local ethnic rebel group, the

During the next two decades, from 1974 to 1994, Khun Sa became the dominant opium warlord in the Golden Triangle. The share of heroin sold in New York originating from the Golden Triangle rose from 5% to 80% during this period, and Khun Sa was responsible for 45% of that trade. The DEA assessed that Khun Sa's heroin was 90% pure, "the best in the business".^[7] During the height of his power, in the 1980s, Khun Sa controlled 70% of the opium production in Burma, and built a large-scale infrastructure of heroin refining factories to dominate the market for that drug.^[5] He may have once supplied a quarter of the world's heroin supply.^[15] He commanded 20,000 men, and his personal army was better armed than the Burmese military. His notoriety led the American government to put a $2 million bounty on him.^[7] The American diplomat to Thailand referred to him as "the worst enemy the world has".^[11]

After his release Khun Sa went underground, and in 1976 rejoined and reformed his forces in Ban Hin Taek, in northern Thailand, close to the border with Burma. Soon after he began to reform his forces he adopted the Shan name "Khun Sa"^[16] (literally "Prince Prosperous")^[7] for the first time. He renamed his group the Shan United Army, began to claim that he was fighting for Shan autonomy against the Burmese government,^[16] and told international reporters that his people only grew drugs to pay for clothes and food. In 1977 he offered to take his territory's entire opium crop off the black market by selling it to the American government, but his offer was rejected.^[7]

Although Khun Sa was not the mastermind of the local drug trade, he controlled areas where drugs were grown and refined. The owners of the local heroin refineries were from Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and paid Khun Sa in exchange for the protection of his army. American government workers, who visited Khun Sa's compound in 1977 to negotiate with him, believed that the Thai government tolerated his presence on Thailand's northwestern border in order for his army to serve as a buffer between them and more radical revolutionary groups active in Laos and Burma at the time.^[17]

Return to Burma

After combined forces of the Thai military and remaining

Within a year of losing his base in Thailand, Khun Sa rebuilt his army, defeated a local Burmese rebel group along the Burmese border between Shan State and Northwest Thailand, and took control of the region. He relocated his base of operations to the border town of Homein, established a local heroin-refining industry, and resumed a working relationship with the Burmese military and intelligence services, who again tolerated his presence in return for fighting other ethnic and communist rebels.^[22] He maintained a cordial relationship with the highest-ranking Burmese general in the region, Maung Aye, and established relationships with many foreign socialites and business people, including Lady and Lord Brockett, and James "Bo" Gritz. In 1984 his forces bombed the fortified residence of his rival, Li Wenhuan, in Chiang Mai.^[23] His organization maintained a trade organization in the government-held city of Taunggyi and re-established cordial relations with the Thai intelligence service after relocating to Burma.^[11]

Head of Mong Tai Army

In 1985, Khun Sa merged his Shan United Army with another rebel group, the "

When the Americans donated several million dollars to the Burmese government for "drug suppression" in 1987, the Burmese military fabricated reports, leaked to the Thai press, that they had attacked and defeated Khun Sa in battles involving thousands of Burmese and Thai soldiers and several F-5E jets. However, these reports were completely false, and no action was taken against him. In reality, the Burmese and Thai governments were cooperating with him to build a highway into the region that he controlled.^[25] The Burmese army did conduct anti-narcotics operations at the time in many other areas of Burma, but the area controlled by Khun Sa was one of the few areas not targeted.^[26]

In 1988, Khun Sa was interviewed by Australian journalist

Following his indictment, he was interviewed by Canadian journalist Patricia Elliott at his base, accompanied by photojournalist Subin Kheunkaew, for the Bangkok Post.^[28] At the time he was acting as head of a coalition of Shan rebel forces, the Mong Tai Army (MTA), a force he then claimed consisted of 18,000 troops, a reserve of 5,000, and a local militia numbering 8,000.^[29] At this time he named his price for opium eradication as US$210 million in UN assistance, US$265 million in foreign investment and US$89.5 million in private aid for a program of crop substitution, education, and health care. The offer was rejected as blackmail by US authorities;^[30] and, rather than accepting his offer, the American government placed a $2 million bounty on him.^[7] He imposed a 40% tax on all opium growing, refining, and trafficking in return for protection from other warlords and the Myanmar government, but refused to discuss his total opium income with international reporters. To protect against air raids, he amassed a supply of locally made rockets and Surface-to-air-missiles purchased in Laos.^[12]

Surrender and retirement

In the 1990s Khun Sa's influence and power in the region declined. Part of this was due to the opening of new trade routes for heroin that ran from Yunnan to ports in southeastern China, which reduced his importance as a middleman for the drug along the Thai border. Other drug trafficking routes opened up to India, Laos, and Cambodia, which Khun Sa did not control.^[31] In the early 1990s his organization began to be challenged militarily by another nominally independent ethnic rebel organization in northern Myanmar, the United Wa State Army. This conflict put pressure on his leadership.^[15]

Khun Sa's surrender to the Burmese government coincided with, and may have been motivated by, a loss of support from other Shan leaders.^[32] After his front man within the Mong Tai Army, his longtime subordinate, Chairman Moh Heng, died of cancer in 1991, his control over the organization began to weaken.^[31] After Moh Heng's death he called a Shan "parliament", attracting hundreds of representatives from across the region. At this meeting he declared the creation of an independent Shan State, with himself as president. Many of his rivals from within the Mong Tai Army refused to accept his leadership, claiming that he was using the independence movement primarily as a front for his drug running operations, and formed a rival Shan organization, the "Shan State National Army".^[15]

Khun Sa exported his heroin through a network of underworld contacts and brokers based in Thailand, Yunnan, Macao, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Once he sold his products to these dealers, he had no control of where they were transported. Some of his business associates believed that he was only a front man for underworld Chinese drug interests, and many were terrified of him. By 1995 the DEA managed to discover and break the link between Khun Sa and his foreign brokers. Khun Sa's income then began to decline, and he began to consider retirement.^[7]

In public the Burmese military claimed that they wanted to hang Khun Sa. They conducted small raids against him, and they carried out public bonfires of "heroin" (largely stones and grass). Despite the Burmese leadership's public attitude towards Khun Sa, they understood that he had long controlled Burma's most lucrative export crop^[7] (estimated at $600 million US per year in 1997),^[33] and by the 1990s he had co-opted many of the most high-ranking military leaders in the country. By 1996 they made a secret agreement for Khun Sa to surrender to the Burmese government, under the understanding that he would receive government protection and that he would not be extradited.^[7]

Khun Sa surrendered to the Burmese government on January 5, 1996, gave up control of his army, and moved to Rangoon with a large fortune^[16] and four young Shan mistresses.^[7] Following Khun Sa's surrender, opium production in the Golden Triangle declined^[5] (this shift coincided with a dramatic rise in opium production in Afghanistan).^[7] During his retirement he became a prominent local businessman, with investments in Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi.^[16] After his retirement he described himself as "a commercial real estate agent with a foot in the construction industry". He ran a large ruby mine,^[7] and invested in a new highway running from Yangon to Mandalay.^[34] While living in Yangoon, Khun Sa maintained a low profile. His movements and communications with the outside world were restricted by the Burmese government, and his activities were monitored by Burmese intelligence.^[2]

Following Khun Sa's retirement and the voluntary disbandment of his private army, many of his followers joined local militias controlled by the Burmese army.

Soon after he died, in November 2007, a memorial was held for Khun Sa in his former stronghold in Thailand, Thoed Thai, close to the Myanmar border. Asked why they honoured Khun Sa, the local people said that he helped the town to develop: he built the first paved roads in the area, the first school, and a well-equipped, 60-bed hospital^[36] staffed by Chinese doctors.^[2] He was building a hydro power plant, but after his departure construction on that project was halted. He also built an 18-hole golf course for foreign visitors^[34] and a functional water and electrical infrastructure. The local Thai authorities ensured that the ceremony remained relatively simple.^[36]

Family

Khun Sa was married to Nan Kyayon (died 1993) with whom he had eight children: five sons and three daughters.^[11] His children, listed in order of their birth, are Nang Long, Zarm Merng, Zarm Herng, Nang Kang, Zarm Zeun, Zarm Myat, Nang Lek, and Zarm Mya.

All of Khun Sa's children were educated abroad.