King of the Golden Triangle is dead

Khun Sa in Hua Muang base camp .

Some Shan nationalists were upset with Khun Sa devoting too much attention to the "economic division" of the movement - namely the Yunnanese drug syndicates behind his network of heroin distributions. Capitalising on the MTA's internal split, Rangoon brought Khun Sa's arch enemy and business rival, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), into the picture.

Unable to keep the MTA factions together, combined with a vicious assault by Wa troops, Khun Sa finally surrendered to the Burmese authorities in January 1996 in return for amnesty.

But the end of Khun Sa and the fall of his MTA failed to put a dent in the supplies of illicit drugs out of the Golden Triangle. In fact, the situation got worse with the UWSA in firm control of drug production along the Thai-Burma border.

Wei Hsueh-kang, a UWSA commander, became a new household name for the Thai public, replacing the likes of Khun Sa and Lo Hsing-han before him.

At first, the Wa who fought the Shan alongside their Burmese counterparts were told to return to their stronghold in Panghsang on the Sino-Burma border. Rangoon issued two ultimatums, ordering the UWSA to retreat, but the Wa stood their ground. Knowing that an all-out war with the Wa would have grave consequences, Rangoon decided to make the best out of the situation.

For Rangoon, the UWSA became a bargaining chip, a proxy, perhaps, that they could use to counterbalance the Thai military. As an ally of Rangoon, Wa troops have been called on to take up arms against the Thais on a number of occasions in cross-border clashes between Thai and Burmese troops.

But at the same time, the Wa wanted to be friends with Thailand in order to lessen their dependency on Burma and China. The Thaksin administration toyed with the idea and agreed to carry out a crop-substitution project in the Wa-controlled area, trying to model it after Doi Tung, a capital-intensive showpiece project that turned what was once an opium-filled hilltop into a Swiss-like mountain camp. It was billed as a joint Thai-Burmese project aimed at improving the lives of peasants in the Wa-controlled area. But it eventually died a natural death because no one in the international community wanted to go near any project with Burma, much less the Wa.

But while it tried hard to be accepted as a legitimate power in the Golden Triangle, the UWSA could not kick the habit.

When they first began to settle down along the border, Thai troops were not really sure as to how to conduct themselves with their new neighbours. Thai and Wa troops killed time by playing volleyball over nets that were set right on the common borderline.

The Wa had hoped that the new settlements along the Thai border would become a new economic lifeline for the 20,000-strong outfit that used to be crunched up against the Chinese border. To fill these settlements that were built by Thai construction workers, nearly 100,000 villagers living in the UWSA-controlled Special Region 2 were forcibly relocated.

But nothing comes easy in the rugged hills where warlords play for keeps. The turning point came one morning in February 1999 when authorities found nine Thai villagers from Chiang Mai's Fang District beaten to death with their hands tied behind their backs. Their bodies were scattered along the border. Some said it was a drug deal gone bad. Nevertheless, all fingers pointed to newly built Mong Yawn, a southern stronghold of the UWSA, about 20 kilometres from the Son Thon Doo checkpoint, inside Shan State. The then prime minister Chuan Leekpai ordered the checkpoint closed and all Thai construction workers were told to return. Overnight, just like that, the Wa became Thailand's public enemy number one, demonised by both the authorities and the public.

If Khun Sa was an embarrassment for Thailand because he was operating from Thai soil, the UWSA was no different for the Burmese. But unlike Rangoon, Bangkok had the strong desire to be accepted by the international community as a do-gooder. This explained the 1982 offensive against Khun Sa's Ban Hin Taek base camp on the edge of Chiang Rai province. Many of his deputies were arrested in the joint Thai-US "Operation Tiger Trap".

But that was not the end of the warlord. Khun Sa and his men retreated to Hua Muang, a valley adjacent to Mae Hong Son province, and remained there until his fall from grace in 1996. Thailand also turned on the Wa after it became clear that the 20,000-strong outfit still wouldn't kick the habit. Khun Sa's former lieutenant, Maha Ja, became a mayor of Hua Muang, which is now surrounded by two Burmese battalions, while his other deputy, Colonel Yawd Serk, refused to put down his arms. Yawd Serk repositioned his men on a couple of hilltops - Doi Tailaeng and Doi Dam - opposite Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai, respectively.

Like Khun Sa's Hua Muang, the two Dois are visited by journalists on a regular basis, in spite of a contingent of Thai troops sitting there to prevent people from crossing back and forth. A decade after his surrender, local residents continue to talk about the half-Shan, half-Chinese peasant who became a freedom fighter to some and an opium warlord to others. But he was, during his time, undoubtedly the king of all he surveyed in the Golden Triangle.

Published on November 2, 2007

Don Pathan

The Nation