S.H.A.N. - No.16 - 10/2007 - 31 October 2007 – Politics

Khun Sa: As told to SHAN

Khun Sa during his heydays

Other names: - Tun Hsa, Zhang Qifu, Jand Jangtrakul, U Htet Aung

Date of Birth: Saturday: 17 February 1934 (The Year of the Dog)

Place of Birth: - Hpa Hpeung village, Loimaw Ward,Tangyan township (formerly Mongyai state), Lashio district, Shan State North

Parents: - Khun Ai (Zhang Bingyao) and Nang Hseng Zoom

Marital status: - married to Nang Kayyun (died 1993)

Children: -  Nang Long (Khajit),Zarm Merng (Phajon),Zarm Herng (Phathai),Nang Kang (Khanittha),Zarm Zeun (Phairote),Zarm Myat (Phaisarn),Nang Lek (n.a.),Zarm Mya (Pitak)

N.B. He also reportedly had a daughter Ploy with Tip, one his mistresses

Former address in Bangkok: 8 Soi Pattananivet 5, Sukhumvit 71

Khun Sa in Rangoon, a few years before his death
Chronology of events

1937 - Father passes away; Mother remarried to Khun Ji, Chief of Mongtawm

1939 - Mother passes away,Khun Sa goes to live with paternal grandfather Khun Yihsai (Zhang Chunwu), Chief of Loimaw

1960 - (6 January) Approached by Col Maung Shwe, Commander, Eastern Region Commander, with an offer to set up a pro-Burma Army militia

1964 - (17 May) All 100 and 50 kyat banknotes demonetized without compensation
- (15 June) takes up armed struggle under the leadership of Bo Deving, a hero of Tangyan battle (1959); Arrives in Ban Hintaek, Chiangrai province; breaks up with Bo Deving; joins the newly-formed Shan State Army (SSA)
N.B. He later decided to return to the Burma Army fold

1967 - “Opium War” against ex-KMT remnants in the Golden Triangle, losing opium caravan to Gen Ouane Rattikone, Laotian army commander (He claims to get it back from Ouane afterwards)

1969 - (20 October) arrested and sent to Mandalay prison;
his troops, led by his Manchurian chief of staff Zhang Xuchuan
(Falang), take up the name Shanland United Army (SUA) and
return to the armed struggle

1973 - (16 April) Two Russian doctors working in Taunggyi abducted by a trusted aide Charlie Yang to be held as hostage in
exchange for Khun Sa’s release

1974 - (7 September) released but kept under “protection” of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) in Mandala

1976 - (7 February) escapes to Shan State and then to Ban Hintaek

1977 - (16 April) meets Joseph Nellis, aide to Congressman Lester Wolff, then Chairman of the US House Select Committee on Narcotics, to present “Six Year Plan” to eradicate opium production; (18 July) proposal rejected by the Carter administration

1982 - (21 January) his force in Ban Hintaek attacked by the Thai Border Patrol Police (BPP) “hired by the DEA”, according to him; he later attacks and occupies Doilang, opposite Chiangmai’s Mae Ai district

1985 - (3 March) joins generals Gawnzerng and Zarm Mai to form a new Shan State Army (SSA), which later becomes the Mong Tai Army (MTA); elected as Vice President of the newly formed Tai Revolutionary Council (later Shan State Restoration Council); establishes HQ in Homong, opposite Maehongson

Additions
1991 - Elected President of the Shan State Restoration Council (SSRC) following Gawnzerng’s death (11 July)

1993 - (12 December) declares Independence

1994 - Forces moving up to Sino-Burma border attacked and dispersed by Burma Army

1995 - (6 June) Mutiny by Col Gunyawd who breaks away to set up Shan State National Army (SSNA), plus combined attack by Wa and Burma Army and blockade by Thailand, weakens MTA

1996 - (7 January ) surrenders to Burma Army; moves to Rangoon to live under protection at MI base Ye Kyi Aing

2004 - Protégé Gen Khin Nyunt ousted; moves to home in Rangoon but still under “protection”

2007 - (28 October) passes away at 06:30 (Burma Standard Time); (30 October) remains cremated at Yeway cemetery, North Okkalapa

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Now it’s time for Khun Sa to go
S.H.A.N. - No.15 - 10/2007 - 30 October 2007 - General
 
Khun Sa aka Zhang Qifu, 73, died at his home in Rangoon Sunday, 28 October, at 06:30, according to his cousin living on the Thai-Burma border. Due to the wish of the military authorities, he was cremated this morning at 10:00 at Aung Mingala Cemetery aka Yeway Cemetery in North Okkalapa township. His funeral was attended by some 20 close relatives and friends including his surviving uncle Khun Hseng aka Zhang Bingyin.

His ashes will be scattered on the Salween, according to his deathbed wish, he added.

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Heroin tsar Khun Sa, 74, cremated in Rangoon
Drug kingpin dies
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

http://www.nationmu ltimedia. com/2007/ 10/31/headlines/ headlines_ 30054353. php

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Asian drug warlord dies in Myanmar

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- One-time drug warlord Khun Sa, variously described as among the world's most wanted men and as a great liberation fighter, has died, an associate and a Myanmar official said Tuesday. He was 74.

Described as the "Prince of Death," the U.S. offered a $2 million reward for Khun Sa's arrest.

Khuensai Jaiyen, a former secretary of Khun Sa who works with ethnic Shan minority guerrilla groups, said that his former boss died in the Myanmar capital of Yangon on Friday, according to his relatives.

The cause of death was not immediately known, but Khun Sa had long suffered from diabetes, partial paralysis and high blood pressure.

A Myanmar official in Yangon confirmed the death. Khun Sa was cremated Tuesday morning, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

Khun Sa's body had been kept since Friday at Yay Way cemetery in Yangon's outskirts, where the cremation took place, said a cemetery worker, who asked not to be named for the same reason.

For nearly four decades, the charismatic warlord claimed to be fighting for autonomy for the Shan, one of many ethnic minorities who have battled Myanmar'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 $2 million reward for his arrest.

"They say I have horns and fangs. Actually, I am a king without a crown," he told this reporter, who visited his remote headquarters of Ho Mong after an 11-hour mule ride.

At the height of his notoriety, Khun Sa presided over a veritable narcotics kingdom complete with satellite television, schools and surface-to-air missiles in the drug-producing Golden Triangle region where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet.

He preferred to paint himself as a liberation fighter for the Shan ethnic minority, heading up the Shan United Army -- later the Mong Tai Army -- in Myanmar's northeastern Shan State.
He had lived in seclusion in Yangon since 1996, when he surrendered to the country's ruling military junta who allowed him to run a string of businesses behind a veil of secrecy.

Born of a Chinese father and Shan mother on February 17, 1933, Khun Sa received little education but learned the ways of battle and opium from the Kuomintang, remnants of forces defeated by China's communists and forced to flee into Myanmar.

By the early 1960s Khun Sa, also known as Chang Chi-fu, had become a major player in the Golden Triangle, then the world's major source for opium and its derivative, heroin.

He suffered a near knockout blow in the so-called 1967 Opium War, fighting a pitched battle with the Kuomintang in Laos. Laotian troops intervened by bombing both sides and making off with the opium.

For a time he served in the Myanmar government militia, but was jailed in 1969 after allying himself with the Shan cause. He was freed five years later in exchange for two Russian doctors his followers had kidnapped.

The wily operator sought a less hostile environment in Thailand, setting up a hilltop base protected by his sizable Shan United Army. But he was driven out in 1982 and lodged himself in Ho Mong, an idyllic valley near the Thai frontier inside Myanmar, also known as Burma.

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. Washington estimated that up to 60 percent of the heroin in the United States was refined from opium in his area.

Khun Sa claimed he only used the drug trade to finance his Shan struggle. Peter Bourne, an adviser to former President Carter, called him "one of the most impressive national leaders I have met."
Khun Sa argued that only economic development in the impoverished Shan State, still one of the major sources of the world's 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.

He carried out a one-way correspondence with U.S. presidents, offering to sell Washington the entire crop of opium in exchange for funds to implement his development plans for the Shans.

But in 1989, he was indicted for heroin trafficking by the U.S. 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 amnesty. He disbanded his Mong Tai Army of about 10,000 fighters and moved to Yangon, the Myanmar capital.

Although difficult to confirm, reports said he 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.

There was speculation that he was still involved in the narcotics trade, which was largely taken over by his former enemies, the Wa.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/30/ warlord.death.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

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