WORLD'S BIGGEST DRUG LORD, FRIEND OF AMERICA IS DEAD
Venceremos
By: Bertil Lintner on: 01.11.2007 [09:36 ] (14 reads)
By then he was officially the most wanted man in the world, indicted
by the United States and referred to by then-US ambassador to Thailand
William Brown as "the worst enemy the world has". But, even so, the
stream of high-powered visitors to his not-so-secret headquarters
never ceased to amaze observers.
Among them was Lady Brockett, an American model turned British
socialite, and her husband, Lord Brockett, who used to party with
Britain's Prince Charles. Khun Sa even presented the lady with a pair
of ruby-studded shoes, which he had designed himself.
Despite all the anti-drug bravado from the US, Khun Sa also had
influential American friends, including James "Bo" Gritz, a highly
decorated Vietnam War hero who used to spend much of his time
searching for American prisoners of war and those missing in action in
Indochina. Gritz's trips to Homong were allegedly financed by Texas
oil tycoon Ross Perot, once a US presidential candidate.
(12989 bytes) [c] Print
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
Sai area, and sent the Lao air force to bomb the battle site.
Officially, he cheated both Khun Sa and the Kuomintang, and made off
with the opium. Other sources told this correspondent that the opium
had already been sold, and Khun Sa subsequently made his first
significant investment in Thailand.
On attempting to contact the Shan rebels, perhaps to switch sides, in
1969 he was arrested and imprisoned in Mandalay. He
was charged with high treason for attempting to contact the rebels,
not for drug trafficking, for which at the time he had informal
government permission to engage in.
In April 1973, his men who had gone underground in the jungle
kidnapped two Soviet doctors who were working at the hospital in the
Shan state capital of Taunggyi. An entire division of Myanmar
government troops was mobilized to rescue the doctors. The operation
was unsuccessful and it was not until August 1974 that the foreign
hostages were supposedly unconditionally released through Thailand. By
strange coincidence, Khun Sa was released from prison shortly
afterwards. It was later revealed that Thai northern army commander
General Kriangsak Chomanan had helped to negotiate an exchange of
prisoners.
Friends in high places
Khun Sa later slipped away to northern Thailand, where he established
a new headquarters at Ban Hin Taek in Chiang Rai province.
His so-called "Shan United Army", SUA, was supposed to be fighting for
Shan independence from Myanmar, but was, in reality, little more than
a narco-army escorting opium convoys and protecting heroin refineries.
In 1982, the Thai army decided to turn against him, and Khun Sa and
the SUA were driven out of Ban Hin Taek. But they soon established a
new base, this time inside Myanmar, at Homong, where new refineries
were set up to process raw opium into heroin.
By then he was officially the most wanted man in the world, indicted
by the United States and referred to by then-US ambassador to Thailand
William Brown as "the worst enemy the world has". But, even so, the
stream of high-powered visitors to his not-so-secret headquarters
never ceased to amaze observers.
Among them was Lady Brockett, an American model turned British
socialite, and her husband, Lord Brockett, who used to party with
Britain's Prince Charles. Khun Sa even presented the lady with a pair
of ruby-studded shoes, which he had designed himself.
Despite all the anti-drug bravado from the US, Khun Sa also had
influential American friends, including James "Bo" Gritz, a highly
decorated Vietnam War hero who used to spend much of his time
searching for American prisoners of war and those missing in action in
Indochina. Gritz's trips to Homong were allegedly financed by Texas
oil tycoon Ross Perot, once a US presidential candidate.
Another American acquaintance was Shirley D Sac, a New York gem dealer
and socialite who at one stage said she was going to sponsor a Shan
human rights foundation. In Thailand, Khun Sa's representatives
enjoyed a close and cordial relationship with that country's
intelligence services, and, on the Myanmar side, his organization
maintained an official trade office in Taunggyi.
The head of the eastern command of the Myanmar army at that time was
General Maung Aye, now the second-highest ranking officer in the
ruling junta. Not a single shot was fired between Khun Sa's army and
Myanmar government forces while Maung Aye was in command. Perhaps
those high-level contacts inside the Myanmar army influenced his
decision to give it all up in January 1996, when he surrendered and
disbanded his private army. He moved to Yangon with four young Shan
women, who served as his mistresses in his retirement.
In return, his three daughters and five sons were allowed to enter
into business in Myanmar. His favorite son now runs a hotel with a
casino near the border town of Tachilek, while one of his daughters is
well established in business in Mandalay. Many ethnic Shan
nationalists, who had joined his organization believing that he was a
devout Shan patriot, were devastated by his decision to lay down arms.
Remnants of his 20,000-strong army refused to honor the agreement with
the government and went underground as the newly formed Shan State
Army (South). They are still fighting for their ideals in the hills
around Homong, now a government-controlled town and still a bustling
center for the local drug trade.
Khun Sa's surrender and new deal with the Myanmar government was
interpreted differently by one unexpected quarter. Barry Broman, the
Yangon CIA station chief in the 1990s, said in an interview with the
Asia Times newspaper edition on June 3, 1997, that "on their own, the
Burmese Myanmar effected the capture of Khun Sa. They made a major
dent in the drug trade and we gave them no credit."
In reality, Khun Sa was never "captured"; he gave himself up in
exchange for a lucrative deal for himself and his family. And there
was never any "dent" made in the narcotics trade he promoted. If Khun
Sa's surrender proved anything, it was that the networks that
controlled the trade were able to survive even without their so-called
"kingpins".
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lo Hsing-han was the designated "king"
of the Golden Triangle. Following his capture and arrest in 1973 -
also for treason, not drug trafficking, which he likewise as a
government-approved KKY commander was permitted to engage in, Khun Sa
filled the gap and rose to drug dealing prominence.
Nowadays, it's the United Wa State Army's Wei Xuegang who controls the
bulk of the illicit trade. The bottom line is that the drug trade
could never flourish without those networks and official complicity in
Myanmar, Thailand and elsewhere. Khun Sa may be gone, but that makes
little difference. It is business as usual in the Golden Triangle,
only with a new cast of characters.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.
Reargunner
ser...@bellsouth.net says...
> By then he was officially the most wanted man in the world, indicted
> by the United States and referred to by then-US ambassador to Thailand
> William Brown as "the worst enemy the world has". But, even so, the
> stream of high-powered visitors to his not-so-secret headquarters
> never ceased to amaze observers.
>
> Among them was Lady Brockett, an American model turned British
> socialite, and her husband, Lord Brockett, who used to party with
> Britain's Prince Charles. Khun Sa even presented the lady with a pair
> of ruby-studded shoes, which he had designed himself.
>
Lady Brockett to you Alex is a high-powered visitors!
Venceremos
> In article <1193923643.365991.29...@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com>,
> ser...@bellsouth.net says...
>
> > By then he was officially the most wanted man in the world, indicted
> > by the United States and referred to by then-US ambassador to Thailand
> > William Brown as "the worst enemy the world has". But, even so, the
> > stream of high-powered visitors to his not-so-secret headquarters
> > never ceased to amaze observers.
>
> > Among them was Lady Brockett, an American model turned British
> > socialite, and her husband, Lord Brockett, who used to party with
> > Britain's Prince Charles. Khun Sa even presented the lady with a pair
> > of ruby-studded shoes, which he had designed himself.
>
this creep thousand times over. They did not because CIA makes
zillions by smuggling drugs out of Laotian fields for drug lords like
him. Any other questions?
Colonel Sanders
CIA's favourite income supplement.:)
You can't teach an old dog....
Frank Arthur
"Colonel Sanders" <thema...@unwired.com.au> wrote in message
news:1193943759.3...@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
If your quote "You can't teach an old dog" has any meaning then
you are as stupid as your words. Evidence is not the same as a barking
dog like yourself!