Khun Sa

Biography

Khun Sa was born to a Chinese father and a Shan mother. He adopted the pseudonym Khun Sa, meaning "Prince Prosperous". In his youth he trained with the Kuomintang, which fled into the border regions of Burma from Yunnan upon its defeat in the Chinese Civil War, and eventually went to form his own army of a few hundred men. In 1963 he re-formed it into a Ka Kwe Ye local militia loyal to Gen Ne Win's Burmese government. The Ka Kwe Ye received money, uniforms and weapons in return for fighting the Shan State Army.

He was married to Nan Kyayon (died 1993) whom he had eight children with (listed in order of birth):

When Khun Sa had expanded his army to 800 men, he stopped cooperating with the Burmese government, took control of large area in Shan and Wa states and expanded into opium production. In 1967 he clashed with the Kuomintang remnants in Shan State, which resulted in his defeat, demoralizing him and his forces. In 1969, the Rangoon government captured him. He was freed in 1973 when his second-in-command abducted two Russian doctors and demanded his release. By 1976 he had returned to opium smuggling, and set up a base inside northern Thailand in the village of Ban Hin Taek. He renamed his group the Shan United Army and began ostensibly fighting for Shan autonomy against the Burmese government.

In October 1981 a 39-man unit of Thai Rangers and Burmese guerrillas attempted to assassinate Khun Sa at the insistence of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The attempt failed, however in January 1982 a Thai Ranger squad from Pak Thong Chai, together with units from the Border Patrol Police and the Royal Thai Army, was used to force Khun Sa to move his headquarters from Ban Hin Taek across the border into Myanmar.

In 1985, Khun Sa joined forces with the Shan United Army (SUA) and the "Tai Revolutionary Council" of Moh Heng—a faction of the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA), forming the Mong Tai Army (MTA). Through that alliance he both gained control of the whole Thai-Burma border area from his base at Ho Mong, a village near Mae Hong Son, to Mae Sai, becoming one of the principal figures in opium smuggling in the Golden Triangle.

Over the two decades of his unrivalled dominance of the Shan state, from 1974 to 1994, the share of New York street heroin coming from the Golden Triangle—the northern parts of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos—rose from 5% to 80%. It was 90% pure, "the best in the business", according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And Khun Sa, the DEA thought, had most of that trade.

A Panthay Chinese Muslim from Burma, Ma Zhengwen, assisted Khun Sa in selling his heroin in north Thailand.

In 1988, Khun Sa was interviewed by Australian journalist Stephen Rice, who had crossed the border from Thailand into Burma illegally. Khun Sa offered to sell his entire heroin crop to the Australian Government for A$50m a year for the next eight years, a move that would have virtually stopped the heroin trade into both Australia and the United States overnight. The Australian Government rejected the offer, with Senator Gareth Evans declaring: "The Australian Government is simply not in the business of paying criminals to refrain from criminal activity."

In 1989, Khun Sa was charged by a New York court for trying to import 1,000 tons of heroin. By then he had proposed United States to buy his entire opium production or he would sell it on the international narcotics market.

Following his indictment, he was interviewed at his camp in Ner Mone, Shan State, by Canadian journalist Patricia Elliott, accompanied by photojournalist Subin Kheunkaew, for the Bangkok Post. At the time he was acting as head of a coalition of Shan rebel forces, under the umbrella of the Muang Tai Army (MTA), a force he claimed consisted of 18,000 troops, a reserve of 5,000 and a local militia numbering 8,000. 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—an offer rejected as blackmail by US authorities.

It is claimed that Khun Sa surrendered to Burmese officials in January 1996, reportedly because he did not want to face drug smuggling charges in the USA. The US DEA had promised $2 million reward for his arrest. Khun Sa left the Shan States for Rangoon, but he was never arrested by the government. Burmese officials refused to extradite him, and he lived the rest of his life in the Rangoon area with significant investments in Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi.

In media

Khun Sa was portrayed by actor Ric Young in the 2007 film, American Gangster.

Death

Khun Sa died on 26 October 2007 in Yangon at the age of 73. The cause of death was not known, though he had suffered from diabetes, partial paralysis and high blood pressure. He is buried at Yayway Cemetery, North Okkalapa, Yangon Division, Burma.