Pablo Escobar is often considered the most wanted drug trafficker of all time
but if you ask the DEA, they will name someone else.
The one they never managed to catch despite being on top of their most-wanted list.
Welcome to Nutty History and this is the story of Khun Sa, The Drug King of the Golden Triangle.
When the Communists won the civil war in China in 1949 most of Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT forces fled to
Taiwan. Others cut off in the interior of China, retreating across China’s southern border into
the upland country where Burma, now named Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos met. Khun Sa’s unit was among
them. The land occupied by the KMT was a wild and remote area and it was inhabited by hill-tribe
people. The governments of Yangon, Vientiane, and Bangkok effectively had no reach here. During
the 1950s the Kuomintang began to transform the land into a base area for a guerilla war against
the new Communist regime in China. How did they manage that? Support of the CIA, silly. The KMT
was fighting against communists and there was no way Uncle Sam wouldn't be involved in it. However,
the guerilla base failed to serve its purpose as Mao installed a ruthless security system
in southern China. This resulted in a miserable failure of all efforts to launch anti-Communist
uprisings in the Indochina peninsula. However, the area which KMT was holding on, was part of
a geographic belt that stretched from Southern China to Turkey in the west and was native to a
peculiar plant, Opium Poppy. No army can survive without finances and the KMT was no exception.
They also had a history with the opium trade back in China as well. So obviously, Chiang Kai-Shek
ordered his soldiers to take over the opium trade in Burma to keep the money flowing. The KMT had
to face near to no resistance as they commandeered the trade routes and fields of Opium. Officers of
the KMT army already had connections with the anti-communist politicians and businessmen of
Laos, Thailand, and Southern Vietnam. But the main source of income for KMT’s brand of opium was Hong
Kong. Hong Kong back in the day was the largest market for opiates. Back then, Hong Kong was under
British rule and the imperialist overlords turned their back towards the trade and consumption of
opium to strengthen their Cold War allies in the form of these drug smuggling militias.
Khun Sa was given the opportunity to form his own band of young men during his early days in KMT.
As the lines between resistance and drug trading became a blur, Khun Sa’s own band
which had multiplied exponentially in numbers grew disillusioned with the party and not exactly for
the right reason. He wanted a piece for himself of this booming business and he also figured he
could earn more by playing both sides. In 1963, he re-formed his personal army into a local
‘Ka Kwe Ye’ and based it in a nearby town called Lashio. It was a home guard unit under the control
of the northeast command of the Burmese army. Khun Sa was fighting against local Shan rebels,
his own people, and in return the Burmese government allowed him to use their land and roads
to grow and trade opium and heroin. Around this time, Khun Sa gave up his Chinese birth name and
started calling himself Khun Sa which meant Lord of Prosperity in Burmese. And Khun Sa
did prosper. Through the 1960s, Khun Sa became one of Burma’s most notorious drug traffickers.
The demand for opiate drugs was raging during this decade and though governments were trying to crack
down the operations, they only made supplying the market illegal and risky. This pushed prices up,
and profits went up with them, making the trade a highly lucrative criminal enterprise.
It also shifted the trade from opium to heroin, which was less bulky, easier to smuggle, and had
an assured market because so many consumers became addicts. Moreover, the Vietnam war opened up new
possibilities for Khun Sa. Vietnamese criminals, police, and military officers plied the GIs with
cheap heroin. Many of them became addicts. Heroin use also exploded in the United States itself,
creating vast opportunities for entrepreneurs able to obtain their heroin from Asia.
The KMT controlled area of Burma, Thailand, and Laos became the “Golden Triangle” of
drug production and in the middle of it was its golden king, Khun Sa.
But before Khun Sa became a king, he was born as Chang Chi Fu.
Raised largely by his Chinese grandfather, who was the headman of the Loi Maw village,
he never received any formal education unlike his step brothers who attended missionary schools.
Khun Sa spent a few years in a Buddhist monastery and after growing up he got involved with Chiang
Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang army and received proper military training to become a soldier. Kuomintang
or KMT worked with the Communist Party of China during the 1920s to end warlordism in China and
unite the country but after achieving the goal, the two parties dissolved their alliance as Chiang
Kai-Shek, leader of KMT, was not happy with Soviet influence on CPC’s vision for the future of China.
Khun Sa may have not been formally educated but he had a keen industrious eye for opportunities.
Kuomintang competitors were still content to organize mule-trains carrying raw opium out of
the Golden Triangle, to be processed elsewhere. Khun Sa recognized that the lion’s share of the
profits went to those who processed the opium and supplied pure heroin, so he hired chemists and
built his own laboratories in remote villages. He also sought to build up his own business,
political and military connections to protect his operations and sell his product.
At first, he built up a relationship with officers in the Burmese military.
They were mainly keen to use him to undermine the Kuomintang takeover of a large swathe of Burma.
Kuomintang officers in Shan states saw Khun Sa’s overreaching efforts as a challenge to
their local dominance. This led to war between the KMT and their former recruit Khun Sa in 1967.
Khun Sa was leading a convoy of 500 men and 300 mules into Laos but was ambushed by the
Kuomintang army. As the battle was going on, the Laotian army, which was also involved in
the opium trade bombed the battleground and stole the opium. The battle left Khun Sa feeling weak
and demoralized and to bitter his misery the Laotian army launched a full-scale gang war
against his surviving operations to make him run for his life. Lao General Ouane
Rattikone, who seized 16 tons of Kun Sa’s opium and launched his own career as a drug trafficker.
After being kicked out of Laos, Khun Sa returned to Burma to find unexpected friends.
The Shan people were interested in turning him to their side and thus the two parties began
meeting in secret to negotiate. However, the Burmese government got the whiff of what Khun
Sa was brewing and arrested him. The authorities threw him in Mandalay prison where he languished
for years till 1974. Interestingly, the Burmese judiciary system charged and sentenced him for
high treason and not for drug trafficking as he had the government clearance for it. While
imprisoned Khun Sa read Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
The two books shaped the political philosophy Khun Sa used for the remainder of his 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.”
Meanwhile, Khun Sa’s private army disbanded and his loyal followers went underground. In 1973,
they finally resurfaced again when they kidnapped two soviet doctors from a hospital in Taunggyi.
In a secret negotiation, they managed to negotiate Khun Sa’s release as ransom in return for the
safe return of the doctors. The negotiator representative for the Burmese government,
Thai General Kriangsak Chomanan, became good friends with Khun Sa and benefited
financially in his election campaigns from helping the King of the Golden Triangle.
After his release, Khun Sa established his new base at Ban Hin Taek, Thailand, thanks
to his newfound friendship with Thai generals. The generals were interested in drug revenues,
of course. But they also hoped to use Khun Sa to weaken the grip of both the Kuomintang and Yangon
on the highlands of northeastern Myanmar, and to expand Thai influence there. Khun Sa began to pose
himself as a liberator as he began regaining the opium belt and restarted his negotiation with the
Shan community. Promising to free them of Burmese rule, Khun Sa also pledged that he will eradicate
Beijing-backed communist politicians from the land of Myanmar and Thailand. Communist victories in
Laos and Southern Vietnam had anti-communists in the peninsula desperate enough to latch onto any
hope of resurgence and that strengthened Khun Sa’s position. But the drug lord had a new challenge,
Kuomintang-dominated drug-smuggling routes through Vietnam and Laos were disrupted
and thus, Thailand assumed unparalleled importance for him. Using his new political alliances,
Khun Sa formed the Shan United Army which would end up helping his dominance over the
opium trade for the next 20 years. The very first objective of this army was to regain
control of the Golden Triangle. By the early 1980s, Khun Sa and SUA grabbed most of the
Golden Triangle back and had the strength of 20,000 men. The army was controlling a
population of about 8 million people by an estimate. But, were these people liberated?
By this time Khun Sa had caused enough waves to get the attention of the DEA. According to the
agency's estimate, 70% of opiate drugs consumed by the USA were Khun Sa-made. The US government
placed a reward of $US 2 million on his head, but this was mere petty change in comparison
to what Khun Sa was making in one month. To gain invincibility from uncle Sam, Khun Sa was spending
money generously to make friends everywhere. He became an increasingly public figure.
While the Thai police and military supposedly had no idea of Khun Sa’s whereabouts, many journalists
trekked to Ban Hin Taek to interview him. He even invited a group of US Congressmen to meet him,
offering to help Washington suppress world heroin trafficking in a mocking fashion. According to
Khun Sa, Thai authorities were being paid by Americans to capture him, but he would pay them,
even more, to lie about being unable to find him. However, as they say in economics, the principle
of diminishing return applies to everything. Khun Sa was no exception and his sun began setting
right after he peaked as well. With the fall of the government of General Chomanan in 1980,
Khun Sa lost his key support and the alliance of Khun Sa’s drug operations with Thailand was over.
General Chomanan’s successor, General Tinsulanonda, was not in favor of harboring an
International Drug Lord and launched an operation to shut down Khun Sa’s operations in Thailand.
Someone tipped off Khun Sa beforehand, and he hastily relocated his headquarters to the town
of Hua Muang, in the Burmese highlands. However, this doesn’t stop Thai officials from hunting down
important links in his drug trafficking network who were still hiding in Thailand. The Burmese
army was in no mood to tolerate Khun Sa anymore either and tried to arrest him, but Khun Sa’s
army was far better equipped and trained than the Burmese National Army. Humiliated, the Burmese
army agreed to a ceasefire if Khun Sa would help them suppress the various insurgent groups
plaguing Myanmar’s borderlands. This was just the opportunity Khun Sa was looking for to get
back on top. The sham of the liberator was dropped and Khun Sa was yet again an oppressor. However,
by the beginning of the 1990s, the Burmese army gained an upper hand against their opponents as
well as over Khun Sa’s military prowess of the last decade. With Americans pushing Burma with
International pressure to take care of the drug problem and the Burmese army needing Khun Sa no
more, the days of the drug lord were numbered once again. Khun Sa was aware that he didn’t have the
advantage anymore but he wasn’t too arrogant to not accept the reality. To avoid being hunted
down, Khun Sa negotiated another deal with the Burmese government. He called for quits on Opium
processing and trading and in return brokered a haven within Myanmar far from the hands of DEA.
However, the entire story had another layer. Khun Sa was forced to retire because of losing one
of his most trusted allies Moh Heng. Moh Heng was a Shan leader who died of cancer in 1991.
After his death, the Shang community was broken and the fighting for leadership had begun.
Khun Sa tried to unify them by announcing Shan a free state and posing himself as its president but
couldn’t manage a consensus among Shan leaders. Many of them saw through his ploy and accused
him of trying to ensure his immunity and safety of the drug trade over the independence of Shan.
Khun Sa enjoyed a peaceful life in Yangon after his retirement with all of his 8 children allowed
to run and operate a legitimate business in Myanmar. Surprisingly, the 1996 deal largely held
itself until Khun Sa’s death. The Golden Triangle territory is still producing drugs but the numbers
have dropped massively. Amidst everything, Khun Sa achieved something which no other drug lord could.
He lived a long and free life and died of natural causes, never tried for his drug crimes. So, what
do you think, who was the worst criminal, Pablo Escobar or Khun Sa? And who was the smartest?
Tell us in the comments. And thanks for watching Nutty History.