End of the road for drug lord dubbed the Prince of Death October 31, 2007 - scotsman.com
HE WAS Lord of the Golden Triangle or the Prince of Death; protector of his people against a ruthless dictatorship or the world's biggest heroin trafficker. Khun Sa was many things to many people and his secrets have now been taken to the grave.
Khuensai Jaiyen, a former secretary of Khun Sa with connections to Shan ethnic minority guerrilla groups, yesterday confirmed that his former boss died aged 74 in Rangoon on October 26.
Khun Sa had lived there in seclusion since 1996, when he surrendered to Burma's ruling military junta, who allowed him to run a string of businesses behind a veil of secrecy.
At the height of his notoriety, Khun Sa presided over a narcotics kingdom carved out of jungle valleys and complete with satellite television, schools and surface-to-air missiles in the Golden Triangle region where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet.
For nearly four decades the charismatic warlord claimed to be fighting for autonomy for the Shan, one of many ethnic minorities who have battled Burma's central government for decades.
But narcotics agents around the world used terms like the "Prince of Death" to describe him, and the United States offered a reward of $2 million for his arrest. At one point, it was estimated that up to 60 per cent of the world's heroin supply was refined from opium in his area.
"Khun Sa was doubling his capacity, his ability to produce heroin, every ten years," said Donald Ferrarone, who headed the US Drug Enforcement Administration office in Bangkok between 1993-5.
In a 1996 interview with the US television network PBS, Mr Ferrarone described Khun Sa's network as "an organisation that has enriched itself beyond anything we'd ever seen. An organisation that relied on violence and murders and assassinations and bribery to keep its whole infrastructure in place".
At the height of his power, Khun Sa had an estimated 25,000 men under his command in his Shan United Army. "They say I have horns and fangs. Actually, I am a king without a crown," Khun Sa said.
Born of a Chinese father and Shan mother on 17 February, 1933, by his late twenties Khun Sa had become a major player in the Golden Triangle, then the world's major source of opium and its derivative, heroin.
For a time he served in a Burma government militia, but was jailed in 1969 after allying himself with the Shan cause. He was freed five years later in exchange for two kidnapped Russian doctors.
Seeking a less hostile environment in Thailand, he set up a hilltop base protected by his troops. But when the Thais became embarrassed at having a drugs kingpin on their soil, he was driven into Burma in 1982.
Khun Sa claimed that he only used the drug trade to finance his Shan struggle and argued that only economic development in the impoverished Shan state, still a major source of heroin, could stop opium growing and its smuggling to the "drug-crazed West".
"My people grow opium. And they are not doing it for fun. They do it because they need to buy rice to eat and clothes to wear," he once said.
In 1996 the Burmese junta, which had once threatened to hang him, offered him amnesty. He led many of his troops into surrendering and moved to Rangoon.
'TODAY'S ENEMY COULD BE TOMORROW'S FRIEND'
I LIVED in Khun Sa's camp while making the television documentary Lord of the Golden Triangle. I heard the commotion in his camp long before I arrived in the middle of the night by mule. Khun Sa had organised a dance for his troops and the jungle was alive to Manfred Mann's Do Wah Diddy Diddy.
He had frequent visits from Thai military and border police all wanting a slice of the cake, while making statements across the border that he was "the world's most wanted man" and they were hunting him down.
He told me: "Today's friend could be tomorrow's enemy. Today's enemy could be tomorrow's friend. When the DEA gives the Thais money, they come and attack me. When I give them money, they go away again."
On one of his trips around town, he stopped at a house where the family had a daughter aged 17. He asked me to wait outside with his armed guards after entering a room alone with the girl, emerging after an hour.
He had an army of thousands. He claimed he only taxed the heroin that was transported out of his area and had no hand in its production.
Every year, Khun Sa would make an offer to the United States: "If you buy the heroin, I can stop the trade and make farmers cultivate something else." Every year, his offer was turned down. Glennon Cooper, the DEA chief in Bangkok, said: "Khun Sa is a ruthless criminal who is probably the largest heroin trafficker in the world. He plays all sides against the middle."
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