Word: khun
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...Khun Sa has increased his power through intimidation, execution and murder," says an official of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which has more than 20 agents in Thailand. "He pays his men well and has won surprising loyalty from them." In 1978 he even tried to make a deal with the U.S. to sell it 500 tons of raw opium over a five-year period for $30 million. DEA officials convinced the Carter Administration that such preemptive buying would be futile, since Khun Sa could still flood the market with opium. Officials now estimate that about 600 tons of opium...
...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...
...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 a hilltop aerie outfitted with a television in every room, an elaborate stereo system and a swimming pool. There were even photograph albums of family vacations in Hong Kong. The soldiers also discovered huge...
...Khun Sa, who at 50 is regarded as the undisputed "king of the Golden Triangle," proved as elusive as ever. Born in Burma to Chinese parents, he turned to soldiering at an early age and adroitly manipulated a princely marriage for his mother and connections with the Burmese government to set himself up in the drug trade. Since 1964, he has successfully challenged the opium operations of several now aging Nationalist Chinese generals, who with their armies sought sanctuary in the triangle in 1950 and developed the lucrative drug trade...
...long as Khun Sa did not threaten Thailand's national security, Bangkok refrained from direct attacks on him. But last year he made a deal with Burma's Communist Party to provide its cadres with rice in return for opium. The Communists soon became a major supplier. Khun Sa's army in turn acted as a conduit that enabled Communists to establish a toehold near the Thai border...