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BKK Nation: Background on Khun Sa





The Nation
Tuesday May 10, 1994
 
The Rise of an Opium King
 
Here's an excerpt from the book Opium Fields by Joh Boyes and S. 
Piraban and what they wrote about Khun Sa.
 
Known in the world as the uncontested "Opium King " of the Golden 
Triangle the 60-year-old Khun Sa was born in 1933 of mixed Shan and 
Chinese parentage, Khun Sa or Chan Shi-fu adopted the title Khun Sa, 
meaning Prince Prosperous, after the marriage of his mother to a Shan 
prince.
 
He gained his first military experience with the Kuomintang (KMT), but 
soon after left and formed his own "army" of a few hundred men, 
which later, in 1963, he reformed into the Ka Kwe Ye (KKY), a local 
self-defense force supposedly loyal to the Burmese government. In 
return for a promise to help the government combat Shan rebels, Khun 
Sa's unit, as with many of the KKY units, was given money, uniforms, 
and a small quantity of arms. The Burmese government of the day 
considered the threat to the national unity of greater importance than 
the illegal trade in narcotics.
 
Having built up a ruthless army of eight hundred men, Khun Sa 
dropped all pretense of aiding the government and began his 
notorious rise to fame, smuggling opium, processing opium into 
morphine bricks and generally terrorizing a large area of Shan and Wa 
states.
 
He clashed with the KMT in 1967, whose position as the dominant 
military force in the Shan State he was threatening. In 1969 he was 
captured by the Rangoon government only to be released in 1973 
thanks to his second-in-command who managed to abduct two 
Russian doctors.
 
Since his return to the Golden Triangle in 1976, Khun Sa ostensibly 
changed the emphasis of his operation from smuggling opium and 
heroin to that of fighting for Shan autonomy from Rangoon. 
 
He nevertheless managed to increase his share of the drug trade 
processing and smuggling heroine -- to such an extent that he became 
one of the principal figures in the entire Golden Triangle region.
 
In 1985, Khun Sa and his Shan United Army joined forces with the Tai-
Land Revolutionary Council, a group under Moh Heng which is 
originally composed of the Shan United Revolutionary Army, and 
elements of the Shan State Army. Khun Sa gained control of the whole 
border area from Mae Hong Son to Mae Sai. 
 
It was this alliance that raised Khun Sa's status to that of "Opium 
King" of the Shan State, and thus, by extension, of the world.