Word: hin
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...dozen "liberation armies" scramble for their share of the $800 million annual opium haul. Last February Thai armed forces ousted the region's biggest opium smuggler, Khun Sa, and his 3,000-member Shan United Army from their luxurious mountain aerie in the border town of Ban Hin Taek. Khun Sa fled back to Burma, and his departure created a power vacuum that lesser warlords are now fighting to occupy. In Burma, Khun Sa has tried to muscle his way into territory controlled by smaller criminal gangs. Even the 10,000-member insurgent Burmese Communist Party (B.C.P.) has joined...
...daybreak the convoy reached the border town of Ban Hin Taek, the fortified mountain stronghold of Khun Sa, the most powerful opium warlord in Asia. Their objective: capture the town and crush the 2,000 mercenaries of Khun Sa's Shan United Army, who ran the opium refineries and ruthlessly held sway over the entire region. The Thai soldiers promptly took up battle lines on one side of the town's main street. Ten yards away stood the surprised drug traffickers, many of them routed from bed and still in their underwear-but heavily armed with automatic weapons...
...surrounding jungle, were the government forces able to defeat the opium mercenaries, who fled across the border into Burma. At least 51 mercenaries and 16 Thais were killed in the fighting. When the Thai soldiers picked their way through the rubble afterward, they were amazed to find that Ban Hin Taek in no way resembled a jungle village. It was a modern town with tennis courts, a soccer field and shops stocked with electric guitars and leather furniture. Officers and chemists in Khun Sa's narcotics army lived in spacious villas with manicured lawns. The warlord himself kept...
Khun Sa's tactics, meanwhile, became ever more brutal. One Thai government informant was buried alive, another drawn and quartered on the main street of Ban Hin Taek. In 1980 the American wife of DEA Agent Michael Powers was gunned down on a street in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Bangkok offered a $25,000 reward for the warlord's head. When a group of Thai paramilitary troops set off to capture Khun Sa and cop the reward, they were ambushed by Shan mercenaries. The open clash on Thai soil enraged Bangkok, already under mounting pressure from...
...destruction of Ban Hin Taek may disrupt the heroin flow for a while. Thai officials claim they have swept Khun Sa's mercenaries out of Thailand and captured ten tons of guns and ammunition worth $2 million. But narcotics officials admit that the opium war is far from over. Says one Bangkok agent: "The syndicate will start up again. The problem is not supply but demand. People will continue to want heroin and be willing to pay big money for it." -By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David DeVoss/Bangkok