Khun Sa (, ; 17 February 1934 – 26 October 2007) was an ethnic Han drug lord and warlord. He was born in Hpa Hpeung village, in the Loi Maw ward of Mongyai, Northern Shan State, Burma. Before he assumed the Shan name "Khun Sa" in 1976, he was known primarily by his Chinese name, Zhang Qifu ().
In his early life, Khun Sa received military equipment and training from both the Kuomintang and Burmese Army before claiming to fight for the independence of Shan State and going on to establish his own independent territory. He was dubbed the "Opium King" in Myanmar due to his massive opium smuggling operations in the Golden Triangle, where he was the dominant opium warlord from approximately 1976 to 1996. Although the American ambassador to Thailand called him "the worst enemy the world has", he successfully co-opted the support of both the Thai and Burmese governments at various times. After the American Drug Enforcement Administration uncovered and broke the link between Khun Sa and his foreign brokers, he "surrendered" to the Burmese government in 1996, disbanding his army and moving to Yangon with his wealth and mistresses. After his retirement some of his forces refused to surrender and continued fighting the government, but he engaged in "legitimate" business projects, especially mining and construction. He died in 2007 at the age of 73. Today, his children are prominent businesspeople in Myanmar.
Biography
Early life
He was primarily known by his Han Chinese name, Chang Chi-fu (Zhang Qifu). When he was three years old, his father died. His mother married a local tax collector, but two years later she died as well. He was raised largely by his Han grandfather, who was the headman of the village in which he was born, Loi Maw. The Han side of his family had been living in Shan State since the 18th century.
He received no formal education but had military training as a soldier with Chinese Nationalist forces that had fled into Burma after the victory of Mao's Communists in 1949.
Although his stepbrothers were sent to missionary schools, the only formal education that Khun Sa received as a boy was spending a few years as a Buddhist novice, and for the rest of his life he remained functionally illiterate. In the early 1950s he received some basic military training from the Kuomintang, which had fled into the border regions of Burma from Yunnan upon its defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. He formed his first independent band of young men when he was sixteen, After establishing his independence he frequently switched sides between the government and various rebel armies, as the situation suited him.
Through the 1960s Khun Sa became one of Burma's most notorious drug traffickers. He challenged the local dominance of the Kuomintang remnants in Shan State, but in 1967 he was decisively defeated in a battle involving both the Kuomintang and the Laotian army on the Thai–Burma–Laos border. In that battle he led a convoy of 500 men and 300 mules into Laos, but the convoy was ambushed by Kuomintang forces en route. As the battle was going on, the Laotian army (which was also involved in the opium/heroin trade) bombed the battleground and stole the opium. This defeat demoralized him and his forces. The Laotian army continued to ambush his mule trains for the next few years, and his military strength declined. After his capture he was charged with high treason for his contacts with the rebels (but not for drug trafficking, which he had government permission to do), and he was imprisoned in Mandalay. While imprisoned Khun Sa read Sun Tzu's the Art of War and Luo Guanzhongs Romance of the Three Kingdoms, after which he developed a political philosophy that he exercised later in life: “In politics there are no lifelong friends, and no lifelong foes... They change according to the gains and losses. A good leader must be able to take advantage of every change and utilize it.”
After Khun Sa's arrest his militia unit dissolved, but his more loyal followers went underground, and in 1973 abducted two Soviet doctors from a hospital in Taunggyi, where they had been working. A division of soldiers from the Burmese army were tasked with rescuing the doctors, but failed. The doctors were ransomed for Khun Sa's freedom, and he was subsequently released in 1974. Khun Sa's release was secretly brokered by Thai General Kriangsak Chomanan.
In Thailand
thumb|Khun Sa in 1974
During the next two decades, from 1974 to 1994, Khun Sa became the dominant opium warlord in the Golden Triangle. The share of heroin sold in New York originating from the Golden Triangle rose from 5% to 80% during this period, and Khun Sa was responsible for 45% of that trade. The DEA assessed that Khun Sa's heroin was 90% pure, "the best in the business". He commanded 20,000 men, and his personal army was better armed than the Burmese military. His notoriety led the American government to put a $2 million bounty on him. (literally "Prince Prosperous") In 1977 he offered to take his territory's entire opium crop off the black market by selling it to the American government, but his offer was rejected.
Return to Burma
After combined forces of the Thai military and remaining Kuomintang in Thailand defeated entrenched Communist rebels in Northwest Thailand in 1981, American officials began to pressure the Thai government to expel Khun Sa. In July 1981, Thai authorities announced a 50,000 baht ($2,000 US) bounty on his head. In August this was raised to 500,000 baht, "valid until 30 Sept. 1982". In October 1981 a 39-man unit of Thai Rangers and local rebel guerillas attempted to assassinate Khun Sa at the insistence of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The attempt failed, and almost the entire unit was wiped out. In January 1982 a 1,000-man force of the Thai Army appeared at the borders of his base area. The Thai force consisted of Thai rangers from Pak Thong Chai, local paramilitary border police from Tak, and several airplanes and helicopter gunships. The battle lasted for four days, with heavy casualties on both sides. At the conclusion of the battle Khun Sa was forced to retreat back into Burma. He maintained a cordial relationship with the highest-ranking Burmese general in the region, Maung Aye, and established relationships with many foreign socialites and business people, including Lady and Lord Brockett, and James "Bo" Gritz. In 1984 his forces bombed the fortified residence of his rival, Li Wenhuan, in Chiang Mai. His organization maintained a trade organization in the government-held city of Taunggyi and re-established cordial relations with the Thai intelligence service after relocating to Burma.
When the Americans donated several million dollars to the Burmese government for "drug suppression" in 1987, the Burmese military fabricated reports, leaked to the Thai press, that they had attacked and defeated Khun Sa in battles involving thousands of Burmese and Thai soldiers and several F-5E jets. However, these reports were completely false, and no action was taken against him. In reality, the Burmese and Thai governments were cooperating with him to build a highway into the region that he controlled. The Burmese army did conduct anti-narcotics operations at the time in many other areas of Burma, but the area controlled by Khun Sa was one of the few areas not targeted.
In 1988, Khun Sa was interviewed by Australian journalist Stephen Rice, who had crossed the border from Thailand into Burma illegally. Khun Sa offered to sell his entire heroin crop to the Australian Government for A$50m a year (paid in either cash or agricultural aid) for the next eight years, a move that would have immediately destroyed half the world's heroin supply. The Australian Government rejected the offer, with Senator Gareth Evans declaring: "The Australian Government is simply not in the business of paying criminals to refrain from criminal activity." In September 1989, when American photojournalist Karen Petersen interviewed the General for People magazine at his camp in Ner Mone, Shan State, he claimed he had a total army of 12,000 men. At the time he was acting as head of a coalition of Shan rebel forces, the Mong Tai Army (MTA), a force he then claimed consisted of 18,000 troops, a reserve of 5,000, and a local militia numbering 8,000. At this time he named his price for opium eradication as US$210 million in UN assistance, US$265 million in foreign investment and US$89.5 million in private aid for a program of crop substitution, education, and health care. The offer was rejected as blackmail by US authorities; and, rather than accepting his offer, the American government placed a $2 million bounty on him. In the early 1990s his organization began to be challenged militarily by another nominally independent ethnic rebel organization in northern Myanmar, the United Wa State Army. This conflict put pressure on his leadership. After his front man within the Mong Tai Army, his longtime subordinate, Chairman Moh Heng, died of cancer in 1991, his control over the organization began to weaken. and by the 1990s he had co-opted many of the most high-ranking military leaders in the country. By 1996 they made a secret agreement for Khun Sa to surrender to the Burmese government, under the understanding that he would receive government protection and that he would not be extradited. While living in Yangoon, Khun Sa maintained a low profile. His movements and communications with the outside world were restricted by the Burmese government, and his activities were monitored by Burmese intelligence. heart disease, and issues related to smoking. He was cremated four days after his death. Before his death he had decided not to be buried in Shan state, due to fears that his tomb would be vandalized or destroyed. staffed by Chinese doctors.