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Published on October 31, 2007

The notorious former opium kingpin Khun Sa died in Rangoon last Friday at the age of 74, a close aide said yesterday.

Khun Sa, who surrendered to the Burmese government in January 1996, had suffered from heart disease, diabetes, partial paralysis and high blood pressure, former aide Khuensai Jaiyen said.

His relatives in Rangoon held a cremation ceremony for him yesterday morning before casting his ashes into the sea, he said.

Some of his relatives and associates, such as groups in Chiang Rai's Ban Therd Thai, may also make merit for him next month, Khuensai said in a phone interview.

Born in Burma's Shan State to a Chinese father and Shan mother on February 17, 1933, Khun Sa, also known by the Chinese name Chang Shi-fu, served in many insurgent groups in areas along the Thai Burmese border.

When he was young Khun Sa joined the anti-Communist Kuomintang group before setting up his own Shan groups, which eventually became the Mong Tai Army.

He entered the Burmese government as the leader of a local militia known as Ka Kway Ye, then broke away to exercise his own control over Shan state in the early 1960s.

Khun Sa was defeated and captured by government troops in 1969. He served five years in prison before his aides took two Russian doctors hostage and exchanged them for his freedom in 1973.

He later mobilised Shan forces to capture a stronghold in Thailand's Ban Therd Thai, formerly Ban Hin Taek before the Thai army forced him to leave in the early 1980s for Ho Mong in Burma, opposite Mae Hong Son.

There, the chain-smoking warlord entertained visitors with Taiwanese pop songs, grew orchids and strawberries, and directed a flow of heroin to addicts around the world. At one point, Washington estimated that up to 60 per cent of the heroin in the United States was refined from opium grown in his area.

Khun Sa claimed he led rebellious groups in an armed struggle for independence for the Shan ethnic minority but his international reputation was as a heroin trafficker.

In 1989, he was indicted for heroin trafficking by the US District Court in New York and his extradition to the United States was requested.

Khun Sa continued to war with the central government and rival ethnic guerrilla groups like the Wa until 1996 when the junta, which had once threatened to hang him, offered him an amnesty. He disbanded his Mong Tai Army of about 10,000 fighters and moved to Rangoon.

Some said he had to pay a huge sum of money - much more than the US$2 million (Bt63 million) Burma would have received if they had sent him to the US - to the junta's generals to live in relative freedom, rather than jail.

Although difficult to confirm, he was said to have lived a life of luxury in a secluded compound, having been awarded concessions to operate a transport company and a ruby mine, along with other businesses. But there was speculation he was still involved in the narcotics trade, which was largely taken over by his former enemies, the Wa.

Supalak G Khundee

 The Nation, Associated Press