On Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 8:33:27 PM UTC-8, Hyfler/Rosner wrote:
> Khun Sa
> Nov 8th 2007
> From The Economist print edition
> Khun Sa (Chang Chi-fu), master of the heroin trade, died on
> October 26th, aged 73
>
> PREPARATIONS for his surrender, on January 7th 1996, were
> something to see. At Ho Mong camp in the Shan state-a town
> of 6,000 people, idyllically surrounded by forested hills
> and poppy fields, in the remotest part of northern
> Myanmar-hundreds of rifles had been arranged on long wooden
> racks. Behind them, thousands of rounds of ammunition were
> laid out on the ground. Pride of place went to four
> Soviet-made SAM missiles, labelled with a white placard.
> Round these, appreciatively, strolled officers from the
> Burmese army; and with them walked Khun Sa, smiling and
> chatting.
> He never showed any other face that day, as he apparently
> handed over his life's work to the authorities. From a
> settee on a stage, as evening fell, he watched the sun set
> over the mountains. He then returned to his villa, nicknamed
> the "White House", with the neat gardens where he grew
> orchids and the entertaining rooms where he liked to watch
> folk dancing and belt out Taiwanese songs, and slept.
> Not only the weapons were being surrendered. Ten thousand
> soldiers, many of them children grabbed from neighbouring
> hill villages, were abandoning their uniforms and rifles to
> go home. The refineries, too, were closing down. Not that
> you might have noticed; but deeper into the forest, well
> away from human habitation, you might have stumbled on a
> shack with a canvas roof, beside a creek, with a vile smell
> of chemicals still hanging round it, and recognised this as
> one of the props of a heroin empire that stretched as far as
> Brussels and Brooklyn.
> The Americans put $2m on Khun Sa's head, for good reason.
> Over the two decades of his unrivalled hegemony in the Shan
> state, from 1974 to 1994, the share of New York street
> heroin coming from the Golden Triangle-the northern parts of
> Myanmar, Thailand and Laos-rose from 5% to 80%. It was 90%
> pure, "the best in the business", according to the Drug
> Enforcement Administration. And Khun Sa, the DEA thought,
> had 45% of that trade.
> Prince Prosperous
> It had been a struggle. The Kuomintang, the Chinese
> Nationalist forces, had lured him into opium in the 1950s
> when he trained with them along the Chinese border.
> Soldiering and drug-dabbling seemed ideal for him: a
> chain-smoking country lad of little education, but with a
> way of making friends and a streak of uncompromising
> violence. His nom de guerre, Khun Sa, meant "Prince
> Prosperous". Through the 1960s, mostly in the Shan state, he
> gathered men and changed armies as it suited him in the wars
> for drug-routes and territory. By 1974 he had brushed off
> the Laotians who were ambushing his mule-trains, and by 1982
> he had escaped the Thai air force, which was bombing his
> camps on the border. At his peak he commanded some 20,000
> men, with better weapons than the Burmese army.
> The Shan people were his first priority, he always said. His
> force was first called the Shan United Army, and after 1991
> he headed the Shan State Restoration Council, holding his
> village "parliaments" at a table over a beer. The Shan
> themselves thought him just another drug warlord, and
> half-Chinese anyway. But he claimed to be fighting a war to
> liberate them from the Burmese, and told the world they grew
> opium only to pay for clothes and rice. In 1977 he offered
> the Americans his entire opium crop: buy it, he challenged
> them, take it off the market, and give me the money for my
> people. The Americans, instead, indicted him for
> trafficking.
> Khun Sa had most impressive international contacts-in
> Thailand, Yunnan, Macao, and the murkier docks of Hong Kong
> and Singapore. Some thought he was merely a frontman for
> bigger Chinese drug interests. And indeed, when the heroin
> had left his territory, he often did not know who his
> customers were. Once the DEA, by 1995, had managed to break
> the link between Khun Sa and his terrified brokers, he could
> keep no track of the money he was owed; his revenues dried
> up, and his men began to mutiny. Surrender to the Burmese
> authorities suddenly seemed a good idea.
> In public, they called him names and said they wanted to
> hang him; but he controlled Myanmar's most lucrative export,
> and had long co-opted local soldiers and police. When
> American congressmen were watching, the Burmese army would
> make feeble attempts to take him out, or would organise
> bonfires of heroin that were largely stones and grass. When
> the world's back was turned, the generals made arrangements.
> The ceremonial surrender of 1996 gave Khun Sa government
> protection and a promise that he would not be extradited.
> Hence his smiles. In exchange, the Burmese army obtained a
> chance to infiltrate his empire properly.
> Khun Sa had always said that there were plenty more like
> him. If he was arrested, others would pile in, as long as
> the "drug-crazed West" was desperate for what the East could
> grow. He himself was happy to retire to a Rangoon mansion
> with four young Shan wives, describing himself as "a
> commercial real-estate agent with a foot in the construction
> industry". He ran a ruby mine and made investments. But his
> main business, missing his chutzpah and charisma, moved away
> to Afghanistan, where it blooms.
> --
> Visit www.aodeadpool.com

A true legend. One of the all time greats. He deserves to be glorified much in the way Mexicans and Colombians are now.