Word: khun
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That is what drove Horn to push for better cooperation with Burma's military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council. He and his DEA bosses concluded there was no other way to hurt Burma's drug kingpins like Khun Sa, who has some 20,000 men organizing production and distribution routes. But that goal collided with the main thrust of U.S. policy. After the junta nullified an election and killed thousands of protesters, the U.S. cut off aid and trade privileges and then refused to send a new ambassador. Ever since, the State Department has tried to minimize...
...triangle, where bandits, remnants of China's pre-1949 Nationalist army, and more than half a 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...
Equally threatened are the 450 civilians who live in Doi Luang, a picturesque mountain town straddling the Thai-Burmese border. While Thai border police patrol the streets, three mercenary armies camp atop a 7,200-ft. mountain near by. Among them are Khun Sa's mercenaries and their local allies. In the surrounding jungle are the rival forces of a pro-Communist warlord known as ABe. Periodically, bursts of machine-gun fire echo down the mountainside. Ambushes are frequent, and victims seldom receive a proper burial. Says a Western narcotics agent: "There seems to be only one rule when...
...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