The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
By Alfred W. McCoy with
Cathleen B. Read
and Leonard P.Adams II
Gen. U Ba Thein:
Reaping the Whirlwind
Unlike many of the minority leaders who serve the CIA in the Golden Triangle region, U
Ba Thein is not a mere mercenary. At the peak of his power in the mid 1960's, he was one
of the most important Shan revolutionary leaders. Most of the things he did, including his
work for the CIA, were designed to further the cause. While most guerrilla leaders in the
Third World would hardly consider the CIA a partner in national liberation, U Ba Thein viewed the Agency as his natural ideological ally. Most of the Shan rebels are anti-Communist
monarchists, and the Burmese government they are fighting is Marxist
oriented and socialistic. The Shan rebel leaders look on the Burmese as aggressors who
have expropriated their mineral wealth, but they remember the British colonial
administrators with a certain fondness for having built schools and kept the Burmese at a
safe distance. Like many of his generation, U Ba Thein was educated in British schools,
converted to Christianity, and learned to think of white men as his protectors. He said he
was fighting for Shan independence, but he also wanted to place his independent nation
under the protection of Britain or the United States. in September 1971 he told the
authors of his political aspirations:
"We want to be independent from the Burmese, but we are very poor and will need help.
We have many minerals in the Shan States and perhaps the British or Americans will
come and help develop these for us. You know, sir, we have given Bill Young twenty
mineral samples to send to the U.S. to be analyzed. Then if we can get Britain or the U.S.
to come in and hold hands with us we can stand independent."(211)
U Ba Thein enjoyed organizing commando operations for British intelligence during
World War 11 because he was secure in the knowledge that a great white empire was
behind him. When he began building up a Shan revolutionary movement in 1958, his first
thought was to seek aid from the Americans.
Soon after U Ba Thein fled from Burma and arrived in Muong Sing, Laos, in mid 1958,
he contacted Dr. Tom Dooley, a sort of middle American Albert Schweitzer who was
operating a free clinic for the natives in nearby Nam Tha, and asked him to get aid for the
Shans from the U.S. Embassy or the CIA. But although Dr. Dooley was fast becoming
the patron saint of America's anti-Communist crusade in Southeast Asia, he was no
gunrunner. U Ba Thein eventually became associated with a fledgling rebel group called
the Youth party, but in general he accomplished very little during his first two years in
Muong Sing. (212)
However, in 1961 U Ba Thein and another leader of the Youth party, "General" Sao Gnar
Kham, decided to break with the party's incompetent leader and form the Shan National
Army, a loose coalition that eventually included most of the rebel bands operating in
Kengtung State. While U Ba Thein was not an exceptional leader, Sao Gnar Kharn was
one of the very few genuinely charismatic commanders the Shan rebellion has yet
produced. Before joining the rebel movement, he was a practicing Buddhist monk in
Kengtung City. There he used his remarkable personal magnetism to solicit donations for
the construction of orphanages. When the Shan secessionist movement began in 1958,
Gnar Kharn made the mistake of openly expressing his sympathies for the dissidents and
was arrested. After receiving a hideously severe beating he fled into the hills to join the
guerrillas, taking the orphanage donations with him.(213) When the Shan National Army
(SNA) was formed, Gnar Kham's leadership abilities made him the obvious choice for
commander, and U Ba Thein became deputy commander, During its first year, S.N.A operations were severely hampered by a lack of money and
arms. In late 1961 their fortunes were at a low ebb: their absconded funds were running
low, few of the independent rebel bands seemed willing to join the S.N.A, and they
desperately needed modern automatic weapons. At this particular moment in history the
interests of the Shan National Army complemented those of Gen. Ouane Rattikone, and
the opium-arms traffic that later made Laos a major heroin -processing center was born.
As head of General Phoumi's secret Opium Administration, Ouane was charged with the
responsibility for importing large quantities of Burmese opium. General Phourni had an
ample supply of surplus weapons, since the rightist army was receiving large shipments
of modem arms from the CIA, and its generals inflated the troop roster in order to pad the
payroll. For their part, Gnar Kham and U Ba Thein had contacts with rebel groups in
Kengtung State who were trading the local opium they collected as taxes for overpriced
World War I rifles and would welcome a better bargain.
What role, if any, did William Young and the CIA play in bringing the two parties
together? First, it is important to note that the Kengtung rebels and General Ouane had
known of each other for a number of years. When General Ouane was Pathet Lao
commander in northwestern Laos during the 1940s, he was once forced to retreat into
Kengtung State, where he was given asylum by the sawbwa. The incident left General
Ouane with a lasting affection for the Shans, and he kept in sporadic contact over the
years. William Young says that Gnar Kham pleaded with him to arrange air
transportation to Vientiane so that he could meet with General Ouane, but Young insists
that he had no authorization for such trips and denied the request. Young adds, however,
that General Ouane found out about the situation independently and ordered the Secret
Army commander for northwestern Laos to begin making arms available to the S.N.A in
exchange for Burmese opium. Sometime later Ouane himself flew up to Ban Houei Sai
and met with Gnar Kharn to finalize the arrangements. (214) U Ba Thein generally
concurs with Young's account, but adds that Young knew about the arrangement, saw the
stolen arms and opium being exchanged, and never made any move to stop it. Since the
Americans had denied his formal requests for military aid, U Ba Thein assumed that their
benign neglect of the opium-arms trade was another form of repayment for all the
services the S.N.A was providing the Agency. (215) In fact, the security of CIA's listening
posts near Mong Yang and Ving Ngun did depend on the Shans having good automatic
weapons and the Agency's logistics link with these two bases was the S.N.A opium
caravans. Young admits that he adopted a posture of benign neglect toward the traffic,
but denies any personal wrongdoing, claiming that this was the CIA policy throughout
northern Laos. The CIA was afraid that pressure on local mercenary commanders to get
out of the traffic might damage the effectiveness of paramilitary work. (216)
Once matters were finally settled with General Ouane and a steady stream of Shan opium
and U.S. arms began moving in and out of Ban Houei Sai, Gnar Kham and U Ba Thein
launched an ambitious attempt to forge a unified guerrilla army out of Kengtung State's
potpourri of petty warlords. In late 1962 Gnar Kham and U Ba Thein left Ban Houei Sai
and moved across the Mekong River into Thailand where they laid the foundation for
their modern, unified army.(217) (See Map 9 on page 303.)
Under Gnar Kham and U Ba Thein's supervision, the opium-arms commerce produced a
marked improvement in Shan military capabilities and a dramatic shift in the balance of
forces in Kengtung State. In 1962 most of the rebel units in Kengtung were little more
than bands of outlaws hiding in the most remote mountains. After gathering opium taxes
from the few villages under their control, each of the local commanders led a caravan to
Gnar Kham's forward caravan camp at Huei Krai, Thailand, and used the opium to buy
U.S. automatic weapons from the Laotian army. With more weapons, the rebel groups
were able to take control of additional opium-growing villages before the next year's
harvest was in. More opium taxes meant more automatic weapons from U Ba Thein's
rear-area headquarters near Ban Houei Sai, which in turn meant control over more
villages and still more opium. The symbiotic cycle of opium and arms spiraled upward
into a military whirlwind that swept the Burmese army out of the countryside into a few
well guarded cities. By 1965 the S.N.A's seven major local commanders had an estimated
five thousand soldiers under their command and controlled most of Kengtung State's
twelve thousand square miles. (218)
The importance of the opium-arms dynamic in building up the S.N.A is illustrated by the
military impact of the 1964-1965 opium harvest in Mong Yang and Kengtung districts.
The two SNA commanders who controlled the mountains around Kengtung City, Major
Samlor and Maj. Tsai Noie, finished collecting the first round of their opium tax in
January 1965. To protect themselves from the Burmese army and the KNIT, they merged
into a single caravan of ten mules carrying 650 kilos of raw opium and set off for
northern Thailand with a combined force of two hundred armed men. After crossing the
border into Thailand, they unloaded their cargo at Gnar Kham's camp in the mountains
and sold it to a merchant in the nearby town of Mae Sai for $28 a kilo, a rather low price.
Then they purchased sixty rifles in Ban Houei Sai (paying $125 for an ordinary rifle and
$150 for a U.S. M-1 or M-2), and had them smuggled across the river into Chiang Khong
and delivered to Gnar Kham's camp. While the group's leader was in Chiang Khong
supervising the opium-arms transfer, they visited William Young at the CIA bungalow
and briefed him on the situation in their areas of the Shan States. (219) When the caravan
returned to Kengtung District in March, the two commanders divided the sixty rifles
evenly. These thirty rifles represented an important addition to Major Samlor's arsenal of
eighty rifles, four Bren automatics, and one mortar, and an equally important supplement
to Maj. Tsai Noie's collection of fifty rifles, two Brens, and a homemade bazooka.
During the 1964-1965 harvest the S.N.A commander for the Mong Yang region, Maj.
Saeng Wan, sent two large caravans to northern Thailand, which earned over $25,000 and
brought back 120 rifles, some mortars, and several heavy machine guns. Before these two
caravans returned, he had had only 280 armed men, one heavy machine gun, and four
Bren automatics to protect the entire Mong Yang region, which included the nearby CIA
listening post. (220)
While opium was indeed the miracle ingredient that rushed vital arms and money into the
S.N.A's system, it was also a poison that weakened its military effectiveness and finally
destroyed the fragile coalition. There was enough opium in even the smallest district in
Kengtung State to buy arms and equipment for a rebel army and make its leader a wealthy man. As a result, rebel commanders became preoccupied with protecting
territorial prerogatives and expanding their personal fiefs. Instead of sending troops into
an adjoining area to launch a joint operation against the Burmese, S.N.A commanders kept
every man on patrol inside his own territory to collect the opium tax and keep his greedy
comrades at a safe distance. A British journalist who spent five months in Kengtung State
with the S.N.A in 1964-1965 reported that:
". . . it would be far more accurate to describe the S.N.A as a grouping of independent warlords loosely tied into a weak federation with a president as a figurehead. This president has influence through the facilities he offers for selling opium and buying guns and because he presents a front to the outside world, but it is unlikely he will ever wield effective power unless he becomes the channel for outside aid in the forms of guns or money." (221)
The lucrative opium traffic turned into a source of internal corruption alienating commanders from their troops and prompting ranking officers to fight each other for the spoils. Shan troops frequently complained that they were left at Gnar Kham's mountain camp to feed the mules, while their leaders were off in the fleshpots of Chiangmai wasting opium profits on whores and gambling instead of buying arms. Often, as soon as a rebel group grew large enough to be militarily effective, the second in command killed his leader or else split the force in order to increase his personal share of the profits.
Not surprisingly, it was this type of dispute that ultimately destroyed the Shan National Army. U Ba Thein had been concerned about Sao Gnar Kham's enormous popularity and his control over the opium traffic for several years. Evidently there were repeated disagreements among various leaders over the opium profits. In December 1964 the charismatic commander in chief of the S.N.A was shot and killed at the Huei Krai caravan station. Some sources claim that it was an opium profit dispute that led to the murder. (222)
U Ba Thein was selected commander in chief of the S.N.A at a meeting of the local commanders in February 1965, but he lacked the personal magnetism and leadership abilities that Gnar Kham. had used to maintain some semblance of unity within the strife torn coalition. Afraid that he would suffer a fate similar to Gnar Kham's, U Ba Thein refused to venture out of his headquarters either to meet with subordinates or to travel through Kengtung State for a firsthand look at the military situation. Local commanders began to break away from the coalition and the S.N.A gradually dissolved; by 1966 these leaders were marketing their own opium and U Ba Thein had become a forgotten recluse surrounded by a dwindling number of bodyguards. Six years after Gnar Kham's death, five of his seven local commanders had either been captured, forced into retirement, or killed by their own men, while the remaining two have become mercenary warlords, professional opium smugglers.
But even well before Gnar Kham's death, other Shan rebel armies had already begun to play an even more important role in the region's opium trade. While the history of the S.N.A's involvement in the opium traffic is important because of its relationship with Gen.Ouane Rattikone, its caravans probably never carried more than 10 percent of the Burmese opium exported to Thailand and Laos. (223) In fact, the only Shan warlord who ran a truly professional smuggling organization capable of transporting large quantities of opium was the notorious Chan Shee-fu. A half-Shan, half-Chinese native of Lashio District in the northern Shan States, Chan Shee-fu became involved in opium trafficking in 1963, when the Burmese government began authorizing the formation of local self defense forces (called Ka Kwe Ye [or K.K.Y., in Burmese) to combat the Shan rebels. While the Burmese government gave its militia no money, rations, or uniforms, and only a minimum of arms, it compensated for this stinginess by giving them the right to use all government-controlled roads and towns in the Shan States for opium smuggling.
In 1963 Chan Shee-fu was authorized to form a militia of several hundred men, and being a young man of uncommon ambition, he quickly parlayed a number of successful opium shipments to Thailand into a well-armed militia of eight hundred men. After severing his ties with the Burmese army in 1964, Chan Shee fu abandoned his bases at Lashio and Tang Yang and shifted his headquarters eastward to Ving Ngun in the Wa States (one of the most bountiful opium growing regions in Burma), where he established an independent fiefdom. He ruled the Ving Ngun area for two years, and his ruthlessness commanded the respect of even the wild Wa, whose unrelenting headhunting habits had forced both the British and Burmese to adopt a more circumspect attitude. To increase his share of the profits, he built a crude refinery (one of the very few then operating in the Shan States) for processing raw opium into morphine bricks. In 1966 he rejoined the government militia, and using the government's laissez passer to increase his opium shipments to Thailand, he expanded his army to two thousand men. Unlike the S.N.A, which could never mobilize more than two hundred or three hundred of its troops at any one time, Chan Shee-fu ruled his army with an iron hand and could rely on them to do exactly what he ordered. (224)
Despite the size and efficiency of his army, Chan Shee-fu still controlled only a relatively small percentage of the total traffic. In fact, a CIA study prepared by William Young in 1966-1967 showed that Shan caravans carried only 7 percent of Burma's exports, the Kachin Independence Army (the dominant rebel group in Burma's Kachin State) 3 percent, and the K.M.T an overwhelming 90 percent. (225) Even though the K.M.T's position seemed statistically impregnable, Chan Shee-fu's precipitous rise had aroused considerable concern among the K.M.T generals in northern Thailand. And when his massive sixteen-ton opium caravan began rolling south toward Ban Houei Sai in June 1967, the K.M.T realized that its fifteen-year monopoly over the Burmese opium trade was finally being challenged. The situation provoked a serious crisis of confidence in the K.M.T's mountain redoubts, which caused a major internal reorganization.
Actually, some two thousand to three thousand K.M.T regulars had been left behind in Laos and they were hired by the CIA to strengthen the rightist position in the area. According to William Young, these troops were placed under the nominal command of General Phourni Nosavan and became the "Bataillon Speciale 111." They remained at Nam Tha until the rightist garrison began to collapse in mid 1962, and then they moved across the Mekong River into Thailand. With the full knowledge and consent of the Thai government, the K.M.T established two new bases on the top of jungle-covered mountains just a few miles from the Burmese border and resumed their involvement in the opium trade. (228)
Instead of hampering their commercial activities, the move to Thailand actually increased the K.M.T's overall importance in the Golden Triangle's opium trade. Not only did the K.M.T maintain their hold on Burma's opium, but they increased their share of the traffic in northern Thailand. In 1959 the Thai government had outlawed the growing and smoking of opium, and many Thai hill traders, fearful of police action, were in the process of quitting the opium trade. Most small towns and villages in the foothills of northern Thailand that had prospered as opium-trading centers for the last twelve years experienced a micro recession as their local opium merchants were forced out of business. While the lack of reliable data and official obfuscation makes it difficult to describe this transition for the whole of northern Thailand, an Australian anthropologist has provided us with a portrait of the rise and fall of a Thai opium-trading village named Ban Wat. (229)
Situated about three miles from the base of Thailand's western mountain range, with easy access to two mountain trails leading upward into the opium-growing villages, Ban Wat was an ideal base of operations for wandering mountain traders. Moreover, the village was only fifteen miles from Chiangmai, Thailand's northernmost rail terminus, so it was also accessible to merchants and brokers coming up from Bangkok.
Ban Wat's merchants first became involved in the opium trade in the 1920's, when four or five Meo villages were built in the nearby mountain districts. However, the Meo population was quite small, and their poppy cultivation was still secondary to subsistence rice production. Most of Ban Wat's traders were buying such small quantities of opium from the Meo that they sold it directly to individual addicts in the nearby valley towns No big brokers came to Ban Wat from Bangkok or Chiangmai, though one Ban Wat trader occasionally bothered to smuggle a bit of opium down to Bangkok on the train. (230)
Once the Thai government decided to encourage poppy cultivation in 1947, however, the opium trade began to boom, and the village experienced unprecedented prosperity, becoming one of the largest opium markets in northern Thailand. The edict drew many Meo farmers into the nearby mountains, giving Ban Wat traders access to a large supply. Much of Ban Wat's active male population became involved in the opium trade as porters, mule skinners, or independent merchants. During the harvesting and planting season the Meo needed rice to feed themselves. The Ban Wat traders purchased rice in the Chiangmai market and sold it to the Meo on credit. When the opium harvest began, the traders returned to the Meo villages to collect their debts and also to trade silver, salt, rice, and manufactured goods for Meo opium.
While the abolition of legalized opium trading in 1959 has in no way hindered the continued expansion of Thailand's production, it was a disaster for Ban Wat. At the height of the opium boom there were twenty major opium traders operating out of Ban Wat; by 1968 there was only one. Two local merchants went broke when the police confiscated their opium, and another was ruined when his Meo customers moved to another province without paying their debts. These examples served to chasten Ban Wat's merchant community, and many traders quit the opium trade. (231)
The vacuum was not filled by other Thai traders, but by the K.M.T armies and an auxiliary of Yunnanese mountain traders. When the K.M.T and its civilian adherents were forced completely out of Burma in 1961, the entire commercial apparatus moved its headquarters into northern Thailand. (232) In 1965 a census of the most important Yunnanese villages in northern Thailand showed a total population of sixty-six hundred. (233) As the Thai traders were gradually forced out of business after 1959, the K.M.T and its civilian auxiliaries were uniquely qualified centrally organized military to take over the opium trade. With their structure, the K.M.T was in an ideal position to keep track of migrating Meo clans and make sure that they paid their debts in full. With their military power, the K.M.T could protect the enormous capital tied up in the merchant caravans from bandits and keep the exaction's of the Thai police to a minimum.
The Yunnanese traders were the vanguard of the K.M.T's commercial conquest, infiltrating the mountain villages and imposing a form of debt slavery on hill tribe opium farmers. They opened permanent stores in most of the large opium-producing villages and sold such tantalizing items as flashlights, canned goods, silver ornaments, cloth, salt, and shoes. A 1962 report by the Thai Ministry of the Interior described the impact of this "commercial revolution":
"The increasing demand for merchandise deriving from outside has given a corresponding impetus to the raising of cash crops. There can be no doubt that the cultivation of poppy and the production of raw opium is by far the most profitable economic activity known to the hill peoples at present.... The shopkeepers and travelling merchants in the hills compete with each other to get hold of the product, readily granting credit for later sales of opium." (234)
Toward the end of the harvest season, when the Yunnanese merchants have finished buying up most of the opium in their area, armed KNIT caravans go from village to village collecting it. American missionaries who have seen the K.M.T on the march describe it as a disconcerting spectacle. As soon as the caravan's approach is signaled, all the women and children flee into the forest, leaving the men to protect the village. Once the opium is loaded onto the K.M.T's mules, the caravan rides on and the people come back out of the forest. The Ministry of the Interior's 1962 report described the KMT/Yunnanese logistics in some detail:
The key men of the opium traffic in the hills of Northern Thailand are the traders who come from outside the tribal societies.... On the basis of our observations in numerous villages of the 4 tribes we studied we have proof that the overwhelming majority of them are Haw Yunnanesel....
Usually the Haw traders know each other personally, even if living in hill villages 200 km. [125 miles) and more apart. Most we encountered regard the village of Ban Yang, near Amphur Fang, as their central place [near KMT Third Army headquarters]. Quite a few of them will return to this place, after the closing of the trading season....
There seems to be a fair understanding among all the Haw in the hills and a remarkable coherence or even silent organization.
The Haw traders keep close contacts with the armed bands [K.M.T] that dwell in fortified camps along the Burmese frontier. It is reported that they (the K.M.T) give armed convoy to opium caravans along the jungle trails to the next reloading places. (235)
The fortified camps mentioned in the Ministry of the Interior's report above are the KNIT Fifth Army headquarters on Mae Salong mountain, about thirty miles northwest of Chiangrai, and the KNIT Third Army headquarters at Tam Ngop, a rugged mountain redoubt fifty miles west of Chiangrai. Although KNIT forces had always maintained a unified command structure in Burma, it established these two separate headquarters after moving to Thailand; this was symptomatic of deep internal divisions. For reasons never fully explained, Taiwan ordered its senior commander home in 1961 and subsequently cut back financial support for the remaining troops. Once external discipline was removed, personal rivalries between the generals broke the KNIT into three separate commands: Gen. Tuan Shi-wen formed the Fifth Army with eighteen hundred men; Gen. Ly Wen-huan became commander of the Third Army, a lesser force of fourteen hundred men; and Gen. Ma Ching-kuo and the four hundred intelligence operatives under his command broke away to form the First Independent Unit. (236) Since Gen. Ma Chingkuo's First Independent Unit remained under the overall supervision of President Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Chingkuo, in Taiwan, financial support for its intelligence operations inside China and Burma was continued. (237) As a result, its commander General Ma could afford to remain above the bitter rivalry between General Tuan and General Ly, and came to act as mediator between the two. (238)
After Taiwan cut off their money, Generals Tuan and Ly were forced to rely exclusively on the opium traffic to finance their military operations. "Necessity knows no law," General Tuan told a British journalist in 1967. "That is why we deal with opium. We have to continue to fight the evil of Communism, and to fight you must have an army, and an army must have guns, and to buy guns you must have money. In these mountains the only money is opium." (239)To minimize the possibility of violence between their troops, the two generals apparently agreed to a division of the spoils and used the Salween River to demarcate their respective spheres of influence inside the Shan States; General Tuan sends his caravans into Kengtung and the southern Wa States east of the Salween, while General Ly confines his caravans to the west bank of the river. (240)
While the S.N.A's local commanders were little more than petty smugglers, General Tuan and General Ly have become the robber barons of one of Southeast Asia's major agro-businesses. Their purchasing network covers most of the Shan States' sixty thousand square miles, and their caravans haul approximately 90 percent of Burma's opium exports from the Shan highlands to entrepots in northern Thailand. To manage this vast enterprise, the K.M.T generals have developed a formidable private communications network inside the Shan States and imposed a semblance of order on the once chaotic bill trade. On the western bank of the Salween General Ly has organized a string of seven radio posts that stretch for almost 250 miles from Third Army headquarters at Tam Ngop in northern Thailand to Lashio in the northern Shan States. (241) On the eastern bank, General Tuan maintains a network of eleven radio posts supplemented by the First Independent Unit's four forward listening posts along the Burma-China border. (242)
Each radio post is guarded by eighty to one hundred K.M.T soldiers who double as opium brokers and purchasing agents; as the planting season begins, they canvass the surrounding countryside paying advances to village headmen, negotiating with Shan rebels, and buying options from local opium traders. By the time the K.M.T caravans begin rolling north from Tam Ngop and Mae Salong in October or November, each of the radio posts has transmitted an advance report on the size and value of the harvest in its area to their respective K.M.T headquarters. Thus, K.M.T commanders are in a position to evaluate the size of the upcoming harvest in each district and plan a rough itinerary for the caravans. (243)
The enormous size of the K.M.T caravans makes this advance planning an absolute necessity. While most Shan rebel caravans rarely have more than fifty pack animals, the smallest K.M.T caravan has a hundred mules, and some have as many as six hundred. (244) The commander of a Shan rebel army active in the area west of Lashio reports that most K.M.T Third Army caravans that pass through his area average about four hundred mules. (245) Since an ordinary pack animal can carry about fifty kilos of raw opium on one of these long trips, a single caravan of this size can bring back as much as twenty tons of raw opium. Despite the large number of Shan rebels and government militia prowling the mountains, K.M.T caravans can afford to travel, with a minimum of armed guards (usually about three hundred troops, or only one man for every one or two mules) because they carry portable field radios and can signal their scattered outposts for help if attacked. Scouts are sent out well ahead of the column to look for possible trouble. Since most of the mule drivers and guards are vigorous young tribesmen recruited from northern Thailand, K.M.T caravans are able to move fast enough to avoid ambush. Moreover, the K.M.T carry an impressive arsenal of 60 mm. mortars, .50 caliber machine guns, 75 mm. recoilless rifles, and semiautomatic carbines, which is usually ample deterrence for both poorly armed Shan rebels and crack Burmese army units.
The caravans begin moving south in October or November and stopping at large hill tribe villages, market towns, and K.M.T outposts to pick up waiting shipments of opium. Although there are K.M.T caravans plodding across the Shan highlands throughout most of the year, most caravans seem to be going north from October through March (which includes the harvest season) and riding south from March through August. General Ly's Third Army caravans usually go as far north as Lashio District, about 250 miles from Tam Ngop, where they pick up opium brought down from Kachin State and northern Shan districts by itinerant merchants. (246) General Tuan's Fifth Army caravans used to go all the way to Ving Ngun, about 170 miles north of Mae Salong, until 1969, when the Burmese Communist party began operating in the southern Wa States. Since then K.M.T caravans have been relying on itinerant merchants to bring Kokang and Wa states opium out of these Communist-controlled areas. (247)
When the K.M.T caravans begin to head back to Thailand, they are often joined by smaller Shan rebel or merchant caravans, who travel with them for protection. Predatory bands of Shan rebels, government militia (K.K.Y), and Burmese army troops prowl the hills. According to one Shan rebel leader, a caravan has to have an absolute minimum of fifty armed men to survive, but with two hundred armed men it is completely safe unless something unusual happens. Since the smaller groups cannot afford a sufficient quantity of automatic weapons to protect themselves adequately (in mid 1971 an M-16 cost $250 to $300 in Chiangmai), many prefer to ride with the K.M.T even though they have to pay a protection fee of $9 per kilo of opium (a high fee considering that a kilo of opium retailed for $60 in Chiangmai in 1967). (248)
As a service to the Thai government, the K.M.T Third and Fifth armies act as a border patrol force along the rugged northern frontier and use their authority to collect a "duty" of $4.50 on every kilo of opium entering Thailand. (249) In 1966-1967 the CIA reported that K.M.T forces patrolled a seventy-five-mile stretch of borderland in Chiangmai and Chiangrai provinces (250) but in mid 1971 Shan rebel leaders claimed that K.M.T revenue collectors covered the entire northern border all the way from Mae Sai to Mae Hong Son. Although the rugged mountain terrain and maze of narrow horse trails would frustrate the best ordinary customs service, very few Shan caravans can ever enter Thailand without paying tax to the K.M.T. With their comprehensive radio and intelligence network, the K.M.T spot most caravans soon after they begin moving south and usually have a reception committee waiting when one crosses into Thailand. (251) (See Map 11, page 335.)
Not having to rely on opium for funds like the Third and Fifth armies, the First Independent Unit gives top priority to its military mission of cross-border espionage, and regards opium smuggling as a complementary but secondary activity. Most importantly from Taiwan's perspective, the First Independent Unit has helped perpetuate the myth of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's imminent "return to the mainland" by launching repeated sabotage raids into southern China. (252)
General Tuan's Fifth Army has provided considerable support for General Ma's intelligence operations, and on at least one occasion his troops participated in a full-scale raid into southern China. In exchange for such assistance, General Tuan's troops were allowed to use the First Independent Unit's listening posts as opium-trading centers. (253) While Gen. Tuan is rather tight-lipped about his involvement in the opium trade, he is extremely proud of his vanguard position in the anti-Communist crusade. Describing himself as the "watchdog at the northern gate," General Tuan likes to regale his visitors with stories about his exploits battling Mao Tse-tung during the 1930's, fighting the Japanese during World War II, and raiding Yunnan Province in more recent years. Although the sixty-one-year-old general spends most of his time in Chiangmai enjoying the vast personal fortune he has amassed from the opium business, he still likes to think of himself as a die hard guerrilla fighter and launches an occasional raid into China to polish up his image. (254)
Since General Ma was the only one of the three generals who enjoyed Taiwan's full support, he emerged as the senior KNIT commander in the Golden Triangle region. Although a number of serious disputes had poisoned relations between General Tuan and General Ly, General Ma had remained on good terms with both. At the urging of high command on Taiwan, General Ma began acting as a mediator shortly after the K.M.T moved to Thailand, but with little success. Taiwan was hoping to reestablish a unified command under General Ma, but Generals Tuan and Ly saw little to be gained from giving up their profitable autonomy. (255) Although the battle at Ban Khwan would heal this rift, for the moment, the situation remained static.
In June the main body of Chan Shee-fu's convoy left Ving Ngun and set out on a two hundred-mile trek toward Ban Khwan, a small Laotian lumber town on the Mekong River which Gen. Ouane Rattikone had designated the delivery point when he placed an advance order for this enormous shipment with Chan Shee fu's broker, a Chinese merchant from Mae Sai, Thailand. The caravan was to deliver the opium to the general's refinery at Ban Khwan. As the heavily loaded mules plodded south through the monsoon downpours, the convoy was joined by smaller caravans from market towns like Tang Yang, so that by the time it reached Kengtung City its single-file column of five hundred men and three hundred mules stretched along the ridge lines for over a mile.(259)
From the moment the caravan left Ving Ngun, it was kept under surveillance by the K.M.T's intelligence network, and the radio receivers at Mae Salong hummed with frequent reports from the mountains overlooking the convoy's line of march. After merging their crack units into a thousand-man expeditionary corps, Generals Tuan and Ly sent their forces into the Shan States with orders to intercept the convoy and destroy it. (260) Several days later the KNIT expeditionary force ambushed Chan Shee-fu's main column east of Kengtung City near the Mekong River, but his rearguard counterattacked and the opium caravan escaped. (261) After crossing the Mekong into Laos on July 14 and 15, Chan Shee-fu's troops hiked down the old caravan trail from Muong Mounge and reached Ban Khwan two days later. (262)
Shortly after they arrived, the Shan troops warned the Laotian villagers that the K.M.T were not far behind and that there would probably be fighting. As soon as he heard this news, the principal of Ban Khwan's elementary school raced downriver to Ton Peung, where a company of Royal Laotian Army troops had its field headquarters. The company commander radioed news of the upcoming battle to Ban Houei Sai and urged the principal to evacuate his village. During the next ten days, while Ban Khwan's twenty families moved all their worldly possessions across the Mekong into Thailand, Chan Shee-fu's troops prepared for a confrontation. (263)
Ban Khwan is hardly a likely battlefield: the village consists of small clearings hacked out of a dense forest, fragile stilted houses and narrow winding lanes, which were then mired in knee-deep, monsoon-season mud. A lumber mill belonging to General Ouane sat in the only large clearing in the village, and it was here that the Shans decided to make their stand. In many ways it was an ideal defensive position: the mill is built on a long sand embankment extending a hundred feet into the Mekong and is separated from the surrounding forest by a lumberyard, which had become a moatlike sea of mud. The Shans parked their mules along the embankment, scoured the nearby towns for boats, and used cut logs lying in the lumberyard to form a great semicircular barricade in front of the mill. (264)
The KNIT expeditionary force finally reached Ban Khwan on July 26 and fought a brief skirmish with the Shans in a small hamlet just outside the village. That same day the Laotian army's provincial cornmander flew up from Ban Houei Sai in an air force helicopter to deliver a personal message from General Ouane: he ordered them all to get out of Laos. The KNIT scornfully demanded $250,000 to do so, and Chan Shee-fu radioed his men from Burma, ordering them to stay put. After several hundred reinforcements arrived from Mae Salong, the KNIT troops attacked the Shan barricades on July 29 Since both sides were armed with an impressive array of .50 caliber machine guns, 60 mm. mortars, and 57 mm. recoilless rifles, the firefight was intense, and the noise from it could be heard for miles. However, at 12:00 noon on July 30 the staccato chatter of automatic weapons was suddenly interrupted by the droning roar of six T-28 prop fighters flying low up the Mekong River and then the deafening thunder of the five hundred pound bombs that came crashing down indiscriminately on Shans and KNIT alike.
General Ouane, apparently somewhat disconcerted by the unforeseen outcome of his dealings with Chan Shee-fu, had decided to play the part of an outraged commander in chief defending his nation's territorial integrity. With Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna's full consent he had dispatched a squadron of T-28 fighters from Luang Prabang and airlifted the crack Second Paratroop Battalion (Capt. Kong Le's old unit) up to Ban Houei Sai. General Ouane took personal command of the operation and displayed all of the tactical brilliance one would expect from a general who had just received his nation's highest state decoration, "The Grand Cross of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol" (266)
Once the Second Paratroop Battalion had gone upriver to Ban Khwan and taken up a blocking position just south of the battlefield, the T-28's began two solid days of bombing and strafing at the rate of four or five squadron sorties daily. To ensure against a possible retaliatory attack on Ban Houei Sai, General Ouane ordered two marine launches to patrol the upper reaches of the Mekong near Ban Khwan. Finally, two regular Laotian infantry battalions began moving down the old caravan trail from Muong Mounge to cut off the only remaining escape route. (267)
Under the pressure of the repeated bombing attacks, the four hundred surviving Shans piled into the boats tied up along the embankment and retreated across the Mekong into Burma, leaving behind eighty-two dead, fifteen mules, and most of the opium. (268) Lacking boats and unwilling to abandon their heavy equipment, the K.M.T troops fled north along the Mekong, but only got six miles before their retreat was cut off by the two Laotian infantry battalions moving south from Muong Mounge. When the Shans and K.M.T had abandoned Ban Khwan, the Second Paratroop Battalion swept the battlefield, gathered up the opium and sent it downriver to Ban Houei Sai. Reinforcements were flown up from Vientiane, and superior numbers of Laotian army troops surrounded the K.M.T. (269) Following two weeks of tense negotiations, the KNIT finally agreed to pay General Ouane an indemnity of $7,500 for the right to return to Thailand. (270) According to Thai police reports, some seven hundred KMT troops crossed the Mekong into Thailand on August 19, leaving behind seventy dead, twenty-four machine guns, and a number of dead mules. Although the Thai police made a pro forma attempt at disarming the K.M.T, the troops clambered aboard eighteen chartered buses and drove off to Mae Salong with three hundred carbines, seventy machine guns, and two recoilless rifles. (271)
Gen. Ouane Rattikone was clearly the winner of this historic battle. His troops had captured most of the sixteen tons of raw opium, and only suffered a handful of casualties. Admittedly, his lumber mill was damaged and his opium refinery had been burned to the ground, but this loss was really insignificant, since General Ouane reportedly operated another five refineries between Ban Khwan and Ban Houei Sai. (272) His profits from the confiscated opium were substantial, and displaying the generosity for which he is so justly famous, he shared the spoils with the men of the Second Paratroop Battalion. Each man reportedly received enough money to build a simple house on the outskirts of Vientiane. (273) The village of Ban Khwan itself emerged from the conflagration relatively unscathed; when the people started moving back across the Mekong River three days after the battle, they found six burned-out houses, but other than that suffered no appreciable Loss. (274)
At the time it was fought, the 1967 Opium War struck most observers, even the most sober, as a curious historical anachronism that conjured up romantic memories of China's warlords in the 1920's and bandit desperadoes of bygone eras. However, looking back on it in light of events in the Golden Triangle over the last five years-particularly the development of large-scale production of no. 4 heroin-the 1967 Opium War appears to have been a significant turning point in the growth of Southeast Asia's drug traffic. Each group's share of Burma's opium exports and its subsequent role in the growth of the Golden Triangle's heroin industry were largely determined by the historic battle and its aftermath. K.M.T caravans still carry the overwhelming percentage of Burma's opium exports, and Shan caravans have continued to pay the K.M.T duty when they enter Thailand. Chan Shee-fu, of course, was the big loser; he left $500,000 worth of raw opium, thousands of dollars in arms and mules, and much of his prestige lying in the mud at Ban Khwan. Moreover, Chan Shee-fu represented the first and last challenge to KNIT control over the Shan States opium trade and that challenge was decisively defeated. Since the destruction of Chan Shee fu's convoy, Shan military leaders have played an increasingly unimportant role in their own opium trade; Shan caravans usually have less than a hundred mules, and their opium refineries are processing only a small percentage of the opium grown in the Shan States. However, General Ouane's troops won the right to tax Burmese opium entering Laos, a prerogative formerly enjoyed by the K.M.T, and the Ban Houei Sai region later emerged as the major processing center for Burmese opium.
In order to ensure that it would not be similarly embarrassed in the future, the Thai government placed the K.M.T's fortified camps under the supervision of the Royal Army, and K.M.T generals became accountable to the high command in Bangkok for every move in and out of their headquarters. Aside from these rather limited gestures, however, the Thai government made no effort to weaken the K.M.T. In fact, the Thai military has moved in the opposite direction by granting the Third and Fifth armies official status as legitimate paramilitary forces. Although the K.M.T had been responsible for security in the northern frontier areas for a number of -years without receiving official recognition, the recent outbreak of the "Red" Meo revolt in Nan and Chiangrai provinces has brought about a gradual reversal of this nonrecognition policy.
The "Red" Meo revolt began in May 1967 when Thai officials visited the same Meo village in Chiangrai Province on three separate occasions to collect payoffs; for letting the Meo farmers clear their opium fields. The Meo paid off the first two visitors, but when the Provincial Police showed up to collect their rake-off the Meo attacked them. The next day sixty police returned to the village and burned it to the ground. Although there was no further violence, this incident apparently convinced counterinsurgency strategists in Bangkok that the Meo in Chiangrai and adjoining Nan Province were about to revolt. (278) In October the Thai army and police initiated a series of heavy-handed "Communist suppression operations" that provoked a major uprising. To reduce its mounting casualties, the army began napalming selected villages and herding their inhabitants into guarded relocation centers in early 1968. The revolt spread rapidly, and as the army had to withdraw into a series of fortified positions in June, the air force was unleashed over the insurgent areas, which had been declared free fire zones. By 1970 guerrillas were beginning to sortie out of their mountain "liberated zones," attacking lowland villages and ambushing cars along the highways.(279)
It was obvious to many Thai and American counterinsurgency planners that troops had to go in on the ground to clean up guerrilla mountain sanctuaries before the insurgency spread into the lowlands, However, as their earlier performances had shown, the Thai army was ill suited for mountain warfare. (280) The Thai military, with American financial support, turned to the K.M.T for help. In the past, General Tuan had claimed credit for keeping Chiangrai. Province free from "communist terrorists. (281)The K.M.T had all the necessary skills for mountain warfare that the Thai army so obviously lacked: they understood small unit tactics, had twenty years' experience at recruiting hill tribe paramilitary forces, and could converse with the hill tribes in their own languages or Yunnanese, which many tribesmen spoke fluently. (282) But most important of all, the K.M.T knew how to pit tribe against tribe. While the Thai military had tried to get Meo to fight Meo with little success, General Tuan recruited Akha, Lisu, and Lahu from western Chiangrai Province and sent them to fight Meo in eastern Chiangrai. In December 1969 General Tuan ordered five hundred of these polyglot Fifth Army troops into the mountains just north of Chiang Khong, near the Mekong, to attack the "Red" Meo, and General Ly sent nine hundred of his Third Army troops in an adjoining clump of mountains to the east of Chiang Kham. (283) By mid 1971 two Thai air force UH-IH helicopters were shuttling back and forth between the K.M.T camps and Thai army bases in eastern Chiangrai. A special photo reconnaissance lab was working round the clock, and a ranking Thai general had been placed in command. When asked what he was doing in Chiang Khong, General Krirksin replied, "I cannot tell you, these are secret operations." (284) However, the senior K.M.T officer at Chiang Khong, Col. Chen Mosup, insisted that his forces had the "Red" Meo on the run and claimed that his troops had killed more than 150 of them.(285)
Even though the K.M.T have now been integrated into the Thai counterinsurgency establishment, the government has made no appreciable effort to reduce their involvement in the opium trade. In mid 1971 the CIA reported that Mae Salong, K.M.T Fifth Army headquarters, was the home of one of the "most important" heroin laboratories in the Golden Triangle, and in April 1972 NBC news reported that a laboratory was operating at Tam Ngop, the K.M.T Third Army headquarters.286 In addition, reliable Shan rebel leaders say that K.M.T caravans are still operating at full strength, the opium duty is being collected, and no Shan army is even close to challenging the K.M.T's hegemony.
But there is a
moral to this
story. The rise
and fall of
Chan Shee-fu
and the Shan
National Army
shows how
difficult it is
going to be for
any Shan
military leader
to restore order
in the strife torn
Shan
States. Rather
than producing
an independent,
unified Shan
land, the Shan
rebellion seems
to have opened
a Pandora's box
of chaos that
has populated
the countryside
with petty
warlords and
impoverished the people. When the rebellion began in 1958, there were only three or four rebel groups
active in the entire Shan States. In mid 1971 one Shan rebel leader estimated that there
were more than a hundred different armed bands prowling the highlands. But he
cautioned that this was probably a conservative estimate, and added that "it would take a
computer to keep track of them all. (291) Most of these armed groups are extremely
unstable; they are constantly switching from rebel to militia (K.K.Y) status and back again,
splitting in amoeba like fashion to form new armies, or entering into ineffectual alliances.
Moreover, the situation gets more chaotic every year as succeeding opium harvests pump
more and more weapons into the Shan States. In the early 1960's the S.N.A was content
with semiautomatic U.S. M-1 or M-2 carbines, but seven years later every armed band
has to have its quotient of fully automatic M16's in order to survive. Although the S.N.A
never managed to impose effective discipline on its local commanders, it achieved a level
of unity that has yet to be equaled. Since its demise in 1965-1966, the military situation in
the Shan States has become much more chaotic. In 1968 another faction made an attempt
at drawing the movement together by establishing "the Shan Unity Preparatory
Committee." It issued a few pompous communiques warning about threats of
communism or offering a cease-fire, but collapsed after a few acrimonious meetings in
Chiangmai, Thailand. (292)
Although most Shan rebel leaders speak loftily about millions of oppressed peasants flocking to their side, a few of the franker ones admit that people have become progressively alienated from the independence movement. Repeated taxation at gunpoint by roving Shan warlords has discouraged most forms of legitimate economic activity and reduced the peasants to a state of poverty. Salt prices have skyrocketed in the hills, and goiter is becoming a serious problem. In some of the more distant areas essential medicines like quinine have not been available for years. Vaccination programs and qualified medical treatment have almost disappeared.
Ironically, the political chaos, which has damaged most other forms of agriculture and commerce, has promoted a steady expansion of opium production in the Shan States. Since opium buys more guns and am munition in Thailand than any other local product, Shan rebels and the local militia (K.K.Y) have imposed a heavy opium tax on mountain villages under their control. While mountain farmers sell all the opium they can produce to merchants who regularly visit their villages, the insurgency makes it difficult and dangerous to venture into the market towns to sell other agricultural commodities. Moreover, the Burmese government controls very few of the poppy-growing areas, and is therefore in no position to discourage opium production. Other nations can be pressured into abolishing poppy cultivation, but Burma can honestly claim that it is powerless to deal with the problem. If the present political situation continues, and there is every indication that it will, the Shan States will be growing vast quantities of opium long after the poppy has disappeared from Turkey or Afghanistan.
The Shan States' political tradition of being divided into thirty-four small principalities ruled over by autocratic sawbwas is only partly responsible for the lack of unity among present-day rebel leaders. Laos, for example, shares the same tradition of small valley principalities, but the Pathet Lao have managed to form a strongly unified national liberation movement.
Indeed, there are more important reasons for the chaotic political conditions inside the Shan States. The Shan rebellion and its accompanying chaos could not have survived had not the CIA, the K.M.T, and the Thai government intervened. None of these groups is particularly interested in the establishment of an independent Shan nation. However, each of them has certain limited political or military interests that have been served by providing the Shans with a limited amount of support and keeping the caldron bubbling. Although it is most definitely not in the K.M.T's interests for a powerful Shan leader like Chan Shee-fu to develop, the chaotic conditions promoted by dozens of smaller rebel groups are absolutely vital to their survival. The K.M.T Third and Fifth armies are only able to send their large, lightly guarded caravans deep into the Shan States because the Burmese army is tied down fighting the insurgents. The K.M.T recognizes the importance of this distraction and has financed a number of small Shan rebel groups. However, the K.M.T tries to keep the Shan armies small and weak by explicitly refusing to allow any Shan opium caravan larger than one hundred mules to enter Thailand. This policy was evidently adopted after the 1967 Opium War. (293) Perhaps the most notable victim of this new policy was the Shan State Army (S.S.A). Founded by students from Mandalay and Rangoon Universities, it began operating in the mountains west of Lashio in 1958 (294) but did not start smuggling opium until five years later. After shipping 160 kilos of raw opium to Thailand in 1964, the Shan State Army increased its shipments year by year, reaching a peak of 1,600 kilos in 1967. But with the exception of 80 kilos it managed to slip by the K.M.T in 1969, this was its last shipment of opium to Thailand. Relations between the K.M.T and S.S.A had never been good, but the K.M.T embargo on S.S.A opium smuggling brought relations to a new low. When the K.M.T Third Army tried to establish a radio post in S.S.A territory in late 1969, the two groups engaged in a series of indecisive running battles for over three months. (295)
The CIA has played an equally cynical role inside the Shan States. Although it too has no real interest in an independent Shan land, the CIA has supported individual rebel armies in order to accomplish its intelligence gathering missions inside China. Without the CIA's tolerance of its opium-arms traffic, the Shan National Army could never have occupied so much of Kentung State. However, the CIA refused to grant the S.N.A enough direct military aid to drive the Burmese out of the state and reestablish public order. During the 1950's the CIA had tried to turn the eastern Shan States into an, independent strategic bastion for operations along China's southern frontier by using K.M.T troops to drive the Burmese army out of the area. But after the K.M.T were driven out of Burma in 1961, the CIA apparently decided to adopt a lower profile for its clandestine operations. While direct military support for the S.N.A might have produced new diplomatic embarrassments, an informal alliance and the resulting breakdown of public order in Kengtung were entirely compatible with CIA interests. After the S.N.A forced the Burmese army into the cities and towns, the CIA's forward radio posts floated securely in this sea of chaos while its cross-border espionage teams passed through Burma virtually undetected. (296)
In the final analysis, the Thai government probably bears the major responsibility for the chaos. Most Thai leaders have a deep traditional distrust for the Burmese, who have frequently invaded Thailand in past centuries. No Thai student graduates from elementary school without reading at least one gruesome description of the atrocities committed by Burmese troops when they burned the royal Thai capital at Ayuthia in 1769. Convinced that Burma will always pose a potential threat to its security, the Thai government has granted asylum to all of the insurgents operating along the Burma-Thailand border and supplied some of the groups with enough arms and equipment to keep operating. This low level insurgency keeps the Burmese army tied down defending its own cities, while the chaotic military situation in Burma's borderland regions gives Thailand a reassuring buffer zone. Although Thai leaders have given Rangoon repeated assurances that they will not let Burmese exiles "abuse their privileges" as political refugees, they have opened a number of sanctuary areas for guerrillas near the Burmese border. (297) The Huei Krai camp north of Chiangrai has long been the major sanctuary area for Shan rebels from Kengtung State. The area surrounding K.M.T Third Army headquarters at Tam Ngop is the most important sanctuary for rebel armies from northeastern Burma: Gen. Mo Heng's Shan United Revolutionary Army, Brig. Gen. Jimmy Yang's Kokang Revolutionary Force, Gen. Zau Seng's Kachin Independence Army, Gen. Jao Nhu's Shan State Army, and General Kyansone's Pa-0 rebels are all crowded together on a few mountaintops under the watchful eye of K.M.T General Ly. Entrances to these camps are tightly guarded by Thai police, and the guerrillas have to notify Thai authorities every time they enter or leave. Even though activities at these camps are closely watched, Shan rebel leaders claim that Thai authorities have never made any attempt to interfere with their opium caravans. While foreign journalists are barred, Chiangmai opium buyers are free to come and go at will. (298)
In an effort to cope with an impossible situation, the Burmese government has adopted a counterinsurgency program that has legitimized some aspects of the opium trade and added to the general political instability. The Burmese army has organized local militia forces (K.K.Y), granted them the right to use government-controlled towns as opium trading centers and major highways as smuggling routes and has removed all restrictions on the refining of opium. It is their pious hope that the local militias' natural greed will motivate them to battle the rebels for control of the opium hills. The logic behind this policy is rather simple; if the local militia control most of the opium harvest, then the rebels will not have any money to buy arms in Thailand and will have to give up their struggle. Despite its seductive simplicity, the program has had a rather mixed record of success. While it has weaned a number of rebel armies to the government side, just as many local militia have become rebels. On the whole, the program has compounded the endemic warlordism that has become the curse of the Shan States without really reducing the level of rebel activity.
In addition, the Burmese government has sound economic reasons for tolerating the opium traffic. After seizing power from a civilian government in 1962, Commander in Chief of the Army Gen. Ne Win decreed a series of poorly executed economic reforms, which crippled Burma's foreign trade and disrupted the consumer economy. After eight years of the "Burmese Way to Socialism," practically all of the consumer goods being sold in Burma's major cities--everything from transistor radios and motor bikes to watches, pens, and toothpaste-were being smuggled across the border from Thailand on mule caravans. On the way down to Thailand, Shan smugglers carry opium, and on the way back they carry U.S. weapons and consumer goods. By the time a bottle of CocaCola reaches Mandalay in northern Burma it can cost a dollar, and a Japanese toothbrush goes for $3.50 in Rangoon. (299) Afraid of straining the patience of its already beleaguered consumers, the Burmese government has made no real effort to close the black markets or stop the smuggling. Opium has become one of the nation's most valuable export commodities, and without it the consumer economy would grind to a complete halt.
The opium traffic itself has contributed to the chaotic conditions inside the Shan States by changing the military leaders from legitimate nationalist rebels into apolitical mercenaries. The case of Maj. On Chan is perhaps the most striking example. During the early 1960's he joined the Shan National Army and remained one of its more effective local commanders until the coalition split apart in 1965-1966. After deserting from the S.N.A, On Chan and about three hundred of his men were hired as mercenaries by the CIA and moved across the Mekong into northwestern Laos, where they fought in the Secret Army, disguised as local Lu militia. Two or three years later On Chan and his men deserted the Secret Army and moved back into the Shan States. With the ample supply of arms and ammunition be brought back to Burma, On Chan carved an independent fief out of eastern Kengtung. He has remained there ever since, trading in opium and fighting only to defend his autonomy. (300)
Since the Burmese army offers such convenient opium-trading facilities, corrupted rebel leaders frequently desert the cause for the more comfortable life of a government militia commander. While Chan Sheefu is the most notorious example of this kind of Shan military leader, the case of Yang Sun is much more typical. Yang Sun started his career in the opium trade as a government militia leader, but switched to the rebel side in the mid 1960's and opened a base camp in the Huei Krai region of northern Thailand. Several years later he changed his allegiance once more and soon became the most powerful government militia leader in Kengtung State. Although rebel leaders have tried to woo him back to their side, he is making so much money from the opium traffic as a militia leader that he has consistently brushed their overtures aside.
Thanks to the good graces of the Burmese army, Yang Sun patrols a strategic piece of geography between Kengtung City and the Thai border. Caravans traveling along government-controlled roads from the opium-rich Kokang and Wa states to the north have to pass through this area on their way to opium refineries in the three-border region to the south. Caravans belonging to both Law Sik Han, a powerful militia leader from Kokang, and Bo Loi Oo, the influential Wa States' militia commander, are required to stop in Kengtung City to have their opium weighed and taxed by Yang Sun before they can proceed down the road to their private opium refineries in Tachilek. In addition, Yang Sun's troops provide armed escorts between Kengtung City and the border for private merchant caravans out of the Kokang and Wa states. For a nominal fee of six dollars per kilo of opium, merchants are guaranteed safe conduct by the Burmese government and protection from bandits and rebels. (301)
Although some of the opium carried by Shan rebels and the K.M.T is smuggled across the border in raw form, most of the militia's opium is processed into smoking opium, morphine, or heroin at Shan militia (K.K.Y) refineries in the Tachilek 'area before being shipped into nearby Thailand. Yang Sun operates a large opium refinery about six miles north of Tachilek capable of producing both no. 3 and no. 4 heroin. (302) This laboratory is only one of fourteen in the Tachilek region, which, according to a 1971 CIA report, processed a total of thirty tons of raw opium during 1970. (303) While this represents a considerable increase from the mid 1960s when Chan Shee-fu's morphine factory at Ving Ngun was the only known refinery, thirty tons of raw opium is still only a tiny fraction of Burma's total estimated exports of five hundred tons. The relative weakness of Burma's processing industry is one of the legacies of Chan Shee-fu's defeat in the 1967 Opium War. Since KMT caravans have continued to ship about 90 percent of the Shan States' opium to Thailand and Laos for processing in their own refineries or transshipment, the growth of Tachilek's laboratories has been hampered by a shortage of raw materials.
Until public order is restored to the Shan States, there is absolutely no chance that Burma's opium production can be eradicated or its heroin laboratories shut down. It seems highly unlikely that the squabbling Shan rebels will ever be capable of driving the Burmese army completely out of the Shan States. It seems even more unlikely that the profit oriented militia commanders would ever be willing to divert enough effort from their flourishing opium businesses to make a serious effort at cleaning the rebels out of the hills. Despite its claim of success, the Burmese army is even further away from victory than it was a decade ago.
If we eliminate the Burmese army and the Shan military groups, there are only two possible contenders for ultimate control over the Shan States-the Burmese Communist party and a coalition of right-wing rebels led by Burma's former prime minister U Nu. A year after he fled to Thailand in April 1969, U Nu concluded an alliance with Mon and right-wing Karen insurgents active in the Burma-Thailand frontier areas and announced the formation of a revolutionary army, the United National Liberation Front (U.N.L.F). (304) To raise money U Nu and his assistants (among them William Young, now retired from the CIA) circled the globe, contacting wealthy financiers and offering future guarantees on lucrative oil and mineral concessions in exchange for cash donations. Burma's future was mortgaged to the hilt, but by the end of 1970 U Nu had a war chest of over $2 million. (305)
With the tacit support of the Thai government, U Nu built up his guerrilla army inside Thailand: three major bases were opened up along the Thailand-Burma border at Mae Hong Son, Mae Sariang and Mae Sot. (306) Recognizing Burma's ethnic diversity, U Nu divided the eastern part of the country into three separate military zones: the Mon and Burmese areas in the southeast, the Karen region in the east, and the Shan and Kachin states in the northeast. (307)
While the U.N.L.F alliance gave U Nu a strong basis for operations in the Mon and Karen areas, he has almost no influence in the northeast. There are so many Shan armies that it would be meaningless to ally with any one of them, and they arc so divided among themselves that forming a coalition required special tactics. (308) Instead of allying with established rebel groups as they had done with the Mons and Karens, U Nu and his assistants assigned William Young and Gen. Jimmy Yang the task of building an independent rebel force inside the Shan States.
A member of Kokang State's royal family, Jimmy Yang began organizing guerrilla resistance in 1962. Since his family had worked closely with the K.M.T for more than a decade, he was able to finance his infant rebellion by sending caravans loaded with Kokang opium to Thailand under the protection of General Ly's Third Army. After three years of fighting in Kokang, Jimmy and some of his men moved to northern Thailand and built a base camp in the shadow of General Ly's headquarters at Tam Ngop. While his men raised chickens and smuggled opium in the mountains, Jimmy moved down to Chiangmai and became assistant manager of the most luxurious tourist hotel in northern Thailand, the Rincome Hotel.
Jimmy had known U Nu in Rangoon, and when the former prime minister first arrived in Thailand Jimmy renewed the friendship by soliciting a $10,000 contribution for democracy's cause from General Ly. (309) U Nu returned the favor several months later by appointing Brig. Gen. Jimmy Yang commander of the U.N.L.F's northern region, the Kachin and Shan States, and reportedly allocated $200,000 from the war chest to build up an effective Shan army. (310)
Rather than trying to build up the five-thousand-man army he thought would be necessary to steamroll the hundred or so armed bands that roamed the hills, Jimmy decided to forge an elite strike force of about a hundred men to guarantee his security while he traveled through the strife-torn Shan States negotiating with bandits, opium armies, rebels, and government militia. In exchange for their allegiance, he planned to offer them officers' commissions and government jobs in U Nu's administration-to-be. By scrupulously avoiding the opium traffic and relying on U Nu's war chest for financial support, Jimmy hoped to remain aloof from the opium squabbles and territorial disputes that had destroyed past coalitions. Once the fighting was over, Jimmy intended to return the sawbwas to power. They would appeal to their dutiful subjects to come out of the hills; the rebels would lay down their arms and order would be restored. (311)
To implement his plan, Jimmy recruited about a hundred young Shans and equipped them with some of the best military equipment available on Chiangmai's black market: U.S. M2 carbines at $150 apiece, M-16 rifles at $250 each, U.S. M-79 grenade launchers at $500 apiece, high grade U.S. jungle uniforms, and Communist Chinese tennis sneakers. General Ly contributed some Nationalist Chinese training manuals on jungle warfare. Confidently, Jimmy set September 1971 as his target date for jumping off into the Shan States, but almost from the beginning his program was hampered by the same problems that had destroyed similar efforts in the past. When September 1971 finally arrived, Jimmy's men were deserting, potential alliances had fallen through, and he had been forced to postpone his departure indefinitely. (312)
Jimmy Yang's men deserted because of the same type of racial and political conflicts that had promoted disunity among previous Shan armies. While almost all his troops were Shans, Jimmy's instructors, like himself and most residents of Kokang, were ethnic Chinese. Since ethnic chauvinism is the most important tenet of Shan nationalist ideology, internal discord was almost inevitable.
In April 1971 Jimmy's deputy commander, a Shan named Hsai Kiao, met with members of U Nu's revolutionary government in Bangkok and presented Shan grievances. U Nu's assistants offered no major concessions, and several weeks later Hsai Kiao moved to Chiangrai, opening his own camp in the Huei Krai area. Shan recruits continued to desert to Hsai Kiao, and by September U Nu's northern command was a complete shambles. Jimmy was losing his men to Hsai Kiao, but Hsai Kiao, lacking any financial backing whatsoever, was sending them off to work in the mines at Lampang to raise money, Hsai Kiao plans to save enough money to buy a shipment of automatic weapons in Laos, pack them into the Shan States, and trade them for opium. With the profits from the opium arms trade he eventually hopes to build up a large enough army to drive the Burmese out of Kengtung State. (313)
While Jimmy Yang's troop training program had its problems, his attempts at forging political alliances with local warlords encountered an insuperable obstacle-William Young. After he finished a fund-raising tour in the United States, William Young returned to Chiangmai and began building support for U Nu among the hill tribes of the eastern Shan States. Prior to making contact with Lahu and Wa leaders, Young spent months gathering precise data on every armed band in the eastern Shan States. He concluded that there were about seventeen thousand Lahu and Wa tribesmen armed with modern weapons. If only a fraction of these could be mobilized, U Nu would have the largest army in eastern Burma. (314)
Young began sending personal representatives to meet with the more important tribal leaders and arranged round table discussions in Chiangmai. In the mountains north of Kengtung City, the Young name still commands respect from Lahu and Wa Christians, and the enthusiastic response was to be expected. (315) However, Young's success among the animist Lahu south and west of Kengtung City was unexpected. The Young family's divinity in these areas had been preempted by an innovative Lahu shaman, known as the "Man God" or "Big Shaman." In mid 1970, when William Young convened an assembly of Lahu chiefs at Chiangmai, the "Man God" sent one of his sons as a representative. When it was his turn to speak, the son announced that the "Man God" was willing to join with the other Lahu tribes in a united effort to drive the Burmese out of the Shan States. (316)
After receiving similar commitments from most of the important Lahu and Wa leaders in Burma, Young approached U Nu's war council without Jimmy's knowledge and requested $60,000 for equipment and training. The council agreed with the proviso that the money would be channeled through Jimmy Yang. In August 1970 Young arranged a meeting between himself, Jimmy, and the tribal leaders to reach a final understanding. When Jimmy adopted a condescending attitude toward the Lahu and Wa, they conferred privately with Young, and he advised them to withhold their allegiance. Young says that all the chiefs agreed to boycott the U.N.L.F until they were confident of full support and claims that none of them are willing to work with Jimmy. (317)
Given these enormous problems, neither U Nu nor Jimmy Yang seems to have a very promising future in the Shan States. In fact, Jimmy feels that the Burmese Communist party and its leader Naw Seng are the only group capable of restoring order to the Shan States. According to Jimmy, Naw Seng and the Communists have all the assets their rivals seem to lack. First, Naw Seng is one of the best guerrilla strategists in Burma. During World War II he fought behind Japanese lines with General Wingate's British commando unit, the Chindits, and was awarded the Burma Gallantry Medal for heroism. Like many Kachin veterans, he enlisted in the First Kachin Rifles after the war, and quickly rose to the rank of captain and adjutant commander. (318) The First Kachin Rifles were sent into Communist-controlled areas, and Naw Seng played such an important role in the pacification program that one British author called him "the terror of the Pyinmana Communists." However, many prominent Burmese took a dim view of Kachins attacking Burmese villages under any circumstances, and there were reports that Naw Seng was about to be investigated by a court of inquiry. Faced with an uncertain future, Naw Seng and many of his troops mutinied in February 1949 and joined with Karen rebels fighting in eastern and central Burma. (319)After leading a series of brilliant campaigns, Naw Seng was driven into Yunnan by the Burmese army in 1949. Little was heard of him until 1969, when he became commander of a Communist hill tribe alliance called the Northeast Command and went on the offensive in the Burma-China borderlands. (320) In March 1970 the Communists captured three border towns, and by mid 1971 they controlled a four hundred-mile-long strip of territory paralleling the Chinese border.
While Naw Seng's tactical skills are an important asset, Jimmy Yang feels that the Communists' social policies are the key to their success. Instead of compromising with the warlords, the Communists have driven them out of all the areas under their control. This policy has apparently resulted in a number of violent confrontations with the Kachin Independence Army, the remnants of Chan Shee-fu's forces, and government militi leaders such as Law Sik Han and Bo Loi Oo. In each case, the Communists have bested their rivals and pushed them steadily westward. Once in control of some new territory, the Communists have abolished the opium tax, which has impoverished the hill tribes for the last fifteen years, and encouraged the people to substitute other cash crops and handicraft work. In addition, the Communists have distributed salt, started a public health program, and restored public order. As a result of these measures, they have been able to develop a mass following, something that has eluded other army groups for so long. However, a crop substitution program takes up to five years to develop fully even under the best of circumstances, and so opium production has continued. Hill traders buy opium from villagers inside the Communist zones and transport it to such market towns as Lashio and Kengtung, where it is sold to government militia, K.M.T buyers, and private opium armies. (321)
General Ouane's prominent role in the battle attracted a good deal of unfavorable publicity in the international press, and in 1967 and 1968 he was visited by representatives from Interpol, a multinational police force that plays a major role in combating narcotics smuggling. The authorities were upset that the commander in chief of a national army was promoting the international drug traffic with such enthusiasm, such vigor. Wouldn't the good general consider retiring from the opium business? General Ouane was stunned by the naivete of their request and gave them a stern lecture about the economic realities of opium. Recalling the incident several years later, General Ouane said:
"Interpol visited me in 1967 and 1968 about the opium. I told them there would be commerce as long as the opium was grown in the hills. They should pay the tribesmen to stop growing opium....
I told Interpol that opium was grown in a band of mountains from Turkey to the Tonkin Gulf. Unless they stopped the opium from being grown all their work meant nothing. I told Interpol to buy tractors so we could clear the trees off the plains. Then we would move the montagnards out of the mountains onto the plains. It's too warm there, and there would be no more opium growing. In the mountains the people work ten months a year to grow 100,000 kip [$200] worth of opium and rice. And if the weather is bad, or the insects come, or the rain is wrong they will have nothing. But on the plains the people can have irrigated rice fields, grow vegetables, and make handicrafts. On the plain in five months of work they can make 700,000 kip [$1,400] a year.
I told Interpol that if they didn't do something about the people in the mountains the commerce Would continue. Just as the Mekong flows downstream to Saigon, so the opium would continue to flow. But they simply wanted me to stop. And when I explained this reality to them they left my office quite discontented." (322)
Despite his apparent cockiness, General Ouane interpreted the visit as a warning and began to exercise more discretion. When the authors inquired about his current involvement in the opium traffic he admitted his past complicity but claimed that he had given up his interest in the business.
Before 1967 opium caravans had followed Chan Shee-fu's route entering Laos north of Muong Mounge, traveling down the old caravan trail, and crossing the Mekong into Thailand at Chiang Saen. To conceal Laos's growing role in the traffic, General Ouane apparently discouraged caravans from crossing into Laos and ordered them to unload their cargoes on the Burmese side of the Mekong River. Residents of Chiang Saen, Thailand, report that the heavily armed caravans that used to ford the Mekong and ride through the center of town in broad daylight several times a year have not passed through since 1967. (323) Some Laotian air force officers have described an opium-arms exchange they carried out in 1968 that illustrates the complexity of the new system: they loaded crates of weapons (M- Is, M- I 6s, M-79 grenade launchers, and recoil-less rifles) into an air force C-47 in Vientiane; flew to Ban Houei Sai, where they transferred the crates to a Laotian air force helicopter; and then flew the weapons to a group of Shans camped on the Burmese side of the Mekong north of Ban Khwan. The opium had already been sent downriver by boat and was later loaded aboard the C-47 and flown to Vientiane. (324)
When Golden Triangle refineries began producing high-grade no. 4 heroin in 1969-1970, access to seemingly limitless supplies of Burmese opium enabled Ban Houei Sai manufacturers to play a key role in these developments. At the time of the 1967 Opium War, morphine and no. 3 heroin were being processed at a large refinery near Ban Houei Sai and at five smaller ones strung out along the Mekong north of that city. In August 1967 one Time-Life correspondent cabled New York this description of these refineries:
"The opium refineries along the Mekong mentioned in Vanderwicken's take [earlier cable] are manned almost entirely by pharmacists imported by the syndicate from Bangkok and Hong Kong. They live moderately good lives (their security is insured by Laotian troops in some locations) and are paid far above what they would receive working in pharmacies in their home cities. Most apparently take on the job by way of building a stake and few are believed to get involved personally in the trade. Except, of course, to reduce the raw opium to morphine." (325)
At the same time another Time-Life correspondent reported that "the kingpin of the Laotian opium trade is General Ouane.... He is reputed to own one of Laos' two major opium refineries, near Houei Sai, and five smaller refineries scattered along the Mekong. (326)
As the demand for no. 4 heroin among G.I's in South Vietnam grew, skilled Chinese chemists were brought in from Hong Kong to add the dangerous ether-precipitation process and upgrade production capability. After the five smaller laboratories along the Mekong were consolidated into a single operation, General Ouane's refinery at Ban Houei Tap, just north of Ban Houei Sai, became the largest, most efficient heroin laboratory in the tri-border area and its trade-mark, the Double U-0 Globe brand, soon became infamous. (327) According to a CIA report leaked to the press in June 1971, it was capable of processing a hundred kilos of raw opium per day. (328) Under the supervision of a skilled chemist, this output would yield ten kilos of no. 4 heroin per day and exceed the combined production of all fourteen opium refineries in Tachilek, Burma. Although belated American gestures forced the chemists to abandon the building in Ban Houei Tap in July 1971, it reportedly moved to a more clandestine location. The refinery operating under Maj. Chao La's protection north of Nam Keung was also forced to move in July, but it, too, has probably relocated in a more discreet area. (329)
Moreover, Ban Houci Sai opium merchants have become the major suppliers of morphine base and raw opium for heroin laboratories in Vientiane and Long Tieng. As the massive bombing campaign and the refugee relocation program reduced the amount of Meo opium available for heroin in northeastern Laos, Gen. Vang Pao's officers were forced to turn to northwestern Laos for supplies of Burmese opium in order to keep the Long Tieng laboratory running at full capacity. (330) In addition, there are reliable reports that Gen. Ouane Rattikone has been supplying the raw materials for a heroin laboratory operating in the Vientiane region managed by a Sino-Vietnamese entrepreneur, Huu Tim Heng. (331)
Despite the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, Laotian prospects for continuing success in the international heroin traffic appear to be excellent. Although most American narcotics officials hope that the Golden Triangle's flourishing heroin laboratories will be abandoned and become covered over with dense jungle once the G.I's have left Vietnam, there is every indication that Laotian drug merchants are opening direct pipelines to the United States. In 1971, two important shipments of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin, which Saigon police say is manufactured in the Ban Houei Sai area, were seized in the United States:
1. On April 5 a package containing 7.7 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin was seized in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. It had been sent through the military postal service from Bangkok, Thailand.
2. On November 11, a Filipino diplomat attached to his nation's embassy in Vientiane and a Chinese merchant from Bangkok were arrested in New York City with 15.5 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin shortly after they arrived from Laos.
While these seizures established the fact that Laotian heroin was reaching the United States, they were otherwise unexceptional cases. However, the seizure of Prince Sopsaisana's sixty kilos in Paris provided ominous evidence of connections between Laotian heroin manufacturers, Corsican gangsters in Vientiane, Corsican syndicates in France, and American heroin distributors. American narcotics officials are convinced that Corsican syndicates in France and Latin America are the most important suppliers of heroin for American distributors. But, hopelessly addicted to the myth of Turkey's importance, they have never investigated the links between Corsican syndicates in France and Corsican-French gangsters in Vientiane. This has been a costly oversight. For, in fact, Vientiane's Corsican gangsters are the connection between Laos's heroin laboratories and heroin distributors in the United States.
When the Corsican charter airlines were forced out of business in 1965, most of the Corsican and French gangsters stayed in Vientiane waiting for something new to turn up. "Doing less well than previously," reported a Time-Life correspondent in September 1965, "are opium traders, mainly Corsican's who since the fall of grafting Phourni have found operations more difficult. Some opium exporters have even opened bistros in Vientiane to tide them over until the good bad old days return-if they ever [do]." (332) A few of the bosses managed to stay in the drug business by serving as contact men, other Corsican's found jobs working for the Americans, and some just hung around.
After months of drinking and carousing in Vientiane's French bars, five down and-out Corsican gangsters decided to make one last, desperate bid for the fortunes that had been snatched out of their grasp. Led by a Corsican named Le Rouzic, who had reportedly owned a piece of a small charter airline, and his mechanic, Housset, the five men planned and executed the boldest crime in the history of modern Laos-the Great Unarmored Car Robbery. On the morning of March 15, 1966, two clerks from the Banque de I'Indochine loaded $420,000 cash and $260,000 in checks into an automobile, and headed to Wattay Airport to put the money aboard a Royal Air Lao flight for Bangkok. As soon as the bank car stopped at the airport, a jeep pulled up alongside and three of the Corsicans jumped out. Throwing handfuls of ground pepper into the clerks' faces, they fled with the money while their victims floundered about, sneezing and rubbing their eyes.
Laotian police showed a rather uncharacteristic efficiency in their handling of the case; in less than twenty-four hours they recovered almost all the money and arrested Le Rouzic, his mistress, and three of his accomplices. Acting on information supplied by Vientiane police, Thai police arrested Housset in Bangkok and found $3,940 hidden in his socks. (333) At a press conference following these arrests, the Laotian police colonel in charge of the investigation credited his astounding success to "honest citizens" and thanked the French community for "immediate cooperation." (334) Or, as one informed observer later explained, Vientiane's Corsican bosses informed on Le Rouzic and Housset in order to avoid a police crackdown on their involvement in the narcotics traffic.
Unlike these unsavory riffraff, most of Vientiane's Corsican-French bosses have respectable jobs and move in the best social circles. Roger Zoile, who owned one of the three largest Corsican charter airlines, is now president of Laos Air Charter. (335) During the 1950's and early 1960's, Zoile worked closely with the Paul Louis Levet syndicate, then smuggling morphine base from Southeast Asia to heroin laboratories in Germany, Italy, and France. Two other "Air Opium" pioneers still reside in Vientiane: Rene Enjabal, the former manager of "Babal Air Force," is now a pilot for one of Laos's many civil air lines, while Gerard Labenski, the former proprietor of the Snow Leopard Inn, "retired" to Laos in 1964 after serving four years in a Vietnamese prison for international narcotics smuggling. The co-managers of Vientiane's swingingest nightclub, The Spot, have a long history of involvement in the international drug traffic: Frangois Mittard headed one of the most powerful drug syndicates in Indochina until he was arrested for narcotics smuggling in 1960 and sentenced to five years in a Vietnamese prison; his co-manager, Michel Libert, was Paul Louis Levet's right hand man, and he served five years in a Thai prison after being arrested for drug smuggling in 1963. "My opium days are all in the past," Libert told a Thai undercover policeman in Vientiane some time after his release from prison. "Let me convince you. I'll work for you as an informer and help you make arrests to show you I'm honest." But the Thai policeman knew Libert too well to be taken in, and not wanting to become a pawn in some Corsican vendetta, refused the offer. (336) In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics has identified another Vientiane resident, Lars Bugatti, a former Nazi officer, as a drug trafficker with close ties to Corsican international syndicates. (337) All of these men have been linked to the clandestine Corsican narcotics networks that ring the globe. Through the efforts of these syndicates large quantities of Laotian heroin are finding their way to France and from there to the United States.
The Prince Sopsaisana affair has provided us with a rare glimpse into the machinations of powerful Laotian politicians and French heroin syndicates. When the King of Laos announced Prince Sopsaisana's appointment as ambassador-designate to France on April 7, 1971, he set in motion a chain of events that led to Sopsaisana's downfall and the loss of $13.5 million of top-grade Laotian heroin. Confident that his diplomatic passport would protect him from the prying eyes of French customs Sopsaisana apparently decided to bankroll his stay in Paris by smuggling this cache of heroin into France. According to reliable diplomatic sources in Vientiane, Gen. Vang Pao entrusted Sopsaisana, his chief political adviser, with sixty kilos of pure no. 4 heroin from his laboratory at Long Tieng and a local French hotel manager and civic leader who is on intimate terms with many of the Lao elite found a connection in Paris. (338)
Before Sopsaisana's flight landed in Paris, however, a reliable Laotian source warned the French Embassy in Vientiane that the new ambassador would be carrying heroin in his luggage. After a discreet search by airport customs officials turned up the sixty kilos, the French Foreign Ministry asked the Laotian government to withdraw its arnbassador designate. Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna, repaying his political debts, tried to keep Sopsaisana in Paris, and it took the French weeks of intricate negotiations to secure his removal. When Sopsaisana returned to Vientiane in late June, he made a public statement claiming that his enemies had framed him by checking the heroin filled suitcase onto the flight without his knowledge. Privately, he accused Khamphan Panya, the assistant foreign minister, of being the villain in the plot. Sopsaisana's assertion that Khamphan framed him is utterly absurd, for Khamphan simply does not have $240,000 to throw away. However, until the ambitious Sopsaisana interfered, Khamphan had been assured the ambassadorship and had spent months preparing for his new assignment. He had even ordered the staff in Paris to have the Embassy refurbished and authorized a complete overhaul for the Mercedes limousine. (339)
Diplomatic sources in Vientiane report that he was outraged by Sopsaisana's appointment. And, only a few weeks after Sopsaisana returned in disgrace, the Laotian government announced that Khamphan Panya would be the new ambassador to France. (340)
If the heroin shipment had gotten through, the profits would have been enormous: the raw opium only cost Vang Pao about $30,000; Sopsaisana could sell the sixty kilos for $240,000 in Paris; Corsican smugglers could expect $1.5 million from American distributors; and street pushers in urban America would earn $13.5 million.
The important question for the United States, is, of course, how many similar shipments have gotten through undetected? Obviously if someone had not informed on Sopsaisana, his luggage would have been waved through French customs, the heroin delivered as planned to a Corsican syndicate, and Sopsaisana would be a respected member of Paris's diplomatic community. Another sixty kilos of "Marseille" heroin would have reached the United States and nobody would have been the wiser. But might have-been's did not happen, and suddenly here was more evidence of French gangsters in Vientiane finding ways to connect with Corsican syndicates in France. Unfortunately, the evidence was generally disregarded: the French government covered up the affair for diplomatic reasons, the international press generally ignored it, and the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics regarded it as a curiosity.
However, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics was not entirely to blame for its woeful ignorance about the logistics of the Laotian heroin trade. Throughout the 1950's and most of the 1960's, the bureau had concentrated its efforts in Europe and paid almost no attention to Southeast Asia, let alone Laos. However, as thousands of GI's serving in Vietnam became addicted to Laotian heroin, the bureau tried to adjust its priorities by sending a team of agents to Laos, but its investigations were blocked by the Laotian government, the State Department, and the CIA. (341) Although the Royal Laotian government had told the U.N. it was enforcing a "policy of absolute prohibition" of narcotics, it was in fact one of the few governments in the world with no laws against the growing, processing, and smoking of opium. Laos had become something of a free port for opium; convenient opium dens are found on every city block and the location of opium refineries is a matter of public knowledge. Laos's leading citizens control the opium traffic and protect it like a strategic national industry. Under these circumstances, the Laotian government could hardly be expected to welcome the Bureau of Narcotics with open arms.
While the Laotian government's hostility toward the bureau is understandable, the reticence shown by the CIA and the U.S. Embassy requires some explanation. According to U.S. narcotics agents serving in Southeast Asia, the bureau encountered a good deal of resistance from the CIA and the Embassy when it first decided to open an office in Vientiane. The Embassy claimed that American narcotics agents had no right to operate in Vientiane, since Laos had no drug laws of its own. The Embassy said that investigative work by the bureau would represent a violation of Laotian sovereignty, and refused to cooperate. (342) The U.S. Embassy was well aware that prominent Laotian leaders ran the traffic and feared that pressure on them to get out of the narcotics business might somehow damage the war effort. In December 1970- thousands of GI's in Vietnam were becoming addicted to heroin processed in laboratories protected by the Royal Laotian Army-the U.S. Ambassador to Laos, G. McMurtrie Godley III, told an American writer, "I believe the Royal Laotian Government takes its responsibility seriously to prohibit international opium traffic." (343)
When President Nixon issued his declaration of war on the international heroin traffic in mid 1971, the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane was finally forced to take action. Instead of trying to break up drug syndicates and purge the government leaders involved, however, the Embassy introduced legal reforms and urged a police crackdown on opium addicts. A new opium law, which was submitted to government ministries for consideration on June 8, went into effect on November 15. As a result of the new law, U.S. narcotics agents were allowed to open an office in early November-two full years after GI's started using Laotian heroin in Vietnam and six months after the first large seizures were made in the United States. Only a few days after their arrival, U.S. agents received a tip that a Filipino diplomat and Chinese businessman were going to smuggle heroin directly into the United States. (344) U.S. agents boarded the plane with them in Vientiane, flew halfway around the world, and arrested them with 15.5 kilos of no. 4 heroin in New York City, Even though these men were carrying a large quantity of heroin, they were still only messenger boys for the powerful Laotian drug merchants. But so far political expediency has been the order of the day, and the U.S. Embassy has made absolutely no effort to go after the men at the top. (345)
In the long run, the American anti-narcotics campaign may do more harm than good. Most of the American effort seems to be aimed at closing Vientiane's hundreds of wide-open opium dens and making life difficult for the average Laotian drug user (most of whom are opium smokers). The Americans are pressuring the Laotian police into launching a massive crackdown on opium smoking, and there is evidence that the campaign is getting underway. Since little money is being made available for detoxification centers or outpatient clinics, most of Vientiane's opium smokers will be forced to become heroin users. In a September 1971 interview, Gen. Ouane Rattikone expressed grave doubts about the wisdom of the American anti-opium. campaign:
Now they want to outlaw opium smoking. But if they outlaw opium, everyone in Vientiane will turn to heroin. Opium is not bad, but heroin is made with acid, which kills a man. In Thailand Marshal Sarit outlawed opium [1958-1959], and now everybody takes heroin in Thailand. Very bad. (346)
Although General Ouane's viewpoint may be influenced by his own interests, he is essentially correct.
In Hong Kong, Iran, and Thailand repressive anti opium. campaigns have driven the population to heroin and magnified the seriousness of the drug problem in all three nations. Vientiane's brand of no. 3 heroin seems to be particularly high in acid content, and has already produced some horribly debilitated zombie-addicts. One Laotian heroin pusher thinks that Vientiane's brand of no. 3 can kill a healthy man in less than a year. It would indeed be ironic if America's anti-drug campaign drove Laos's opium smokers to a heroin death while it left the manufacturers and international traffickers untouched.
NEXT
Conclusion
notes
211. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
212. Ibid.
213. Interview with Rev. Paul Lewis, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 7, 1971; interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
214. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
215. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
216. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
217. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang KhoUg District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
218. Adrian Cowell, "Report on a Five Month Journey in the State of Kengtung with the Shan National Army," typescript (1965).
219. Ibid.; For Eastern Economic Review, July 24, 1971, p. 40; interview with Adrian Cowell, London, England, March 9, 1971.
220. Cowell, "Report on a Five Month Journey in the State of Kengtung"; Far Eastern Economic Review, July 24, 1971, p. 40.
221. Cowell, "Report on a Five Month Journey in the State of Kengtune."
222. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chianamai, Thailand, September 14, 1971. (This story was confirmed by several former members of the SNA, leaders of other Shan armies, and residents of the Huei Krai area.)
223. Out of the seven hundred tons of raw opium produced in northeastern Burma, approximately five hundred tons are exported to Laos and Thailand. A maximum of 15 percent of the opium harvest is consumed by hill tribe addicts before it leaves the village (Gordon Young, The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, The Siam Society, Monograph no. 1 [Bangkok, 19621, p. 90). In addition, an estimated sixtyfive tons are smuggled into Burma's major cities for local consumption (interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971).
224. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
225. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
226. The New York Times, February 17, 1961, p. 4; ibid., February 18, 1961, p. 1.
227. Dommen, Conflict in Laos, p. 193; according to President Kennedy's Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern affairs, Roger Hilsman, Kennedy pressured Taiwan to withdraw the KNIT forces from Burma in order to improve relations with mainland China. However, Taiwan insisted that the evacuation be voluntary and so "a few bands of irregulars continued to roam the wilds (Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation,pp. 304- 305).
228. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
229. Paul T. Cohen, "Hill Trading in the Mountain Ranges of Northern Thailand" (1968). 230. Ibid., pp. 2-3.
231. Ibid., pp. I 1- 14.
232. Young, The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, p. 83. 233. F. W. Mote, "The Rural 'Haw' (Yurmanese Chinese) of Northern Thailand," p. 489.
234. Ministry of the Interior, Department of Public Welfare, "Report on the SocioEconomic Survey of the Hill Tribes in Northern Thailand," mimeographed (Bangkok, September 1962), p. 23.
235. Ibid., p. 37.
236. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971; The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1.
237. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
238. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
239. The Weekend Telegraph (London), March 10, 1967, p. 25.
240. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971; interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971; interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
241. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1; interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
242. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1; interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
243. Interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
244. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
245. Interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
246. Ibid.; The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2.
247. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2; interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
248. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
249. Ibid.
250. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1.
251. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
252. In May 1965, for example, The New York Times reported that General Ma was operating in a mountainous area of western Yunnan about twenty miles across the border from Ving Ngun and said that unmarked aircraft were making regular supply drops to his troops (The New York Times, May 18, 1965, p. I).
253. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
254. The Weekend Telegraph (London), March 10, 1967, pp. 27-28. In September 1966 four hundred of General Tuan's best troops left their barren wooden barracks on top of Mae Salong mountain, saluted the gaudy, twenty-foot-high portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that decorates the parade ground and marched off into the jungle. After plunging across the Burma-China border into western Yunnan Province, General Tuan's troops fled back across the border, leaving eighty casualties behind (The New York Times, September 9, 1966, p. 3; The Weekend Telegraph, March 10, 1967, p. 27).
255. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
256. "Opium War-Take Three," dispatch from McCulloch, Hong Kong, filing from Saigon, to Time World, New York (August 22, 1967), p. 10.
257. Jeffrey Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand" (1971), p. 26.
258. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
259. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971; "Opium War Add," dispatch from McCulloch, Hong Kong, filing from Saigon, to Time World (August 23, 1967), p. 2.
260. "Opium War-Take Two," dispatch from Vanderwicken, Hong Kong, filing from Saigon, to Time World, New York (August 22, 1967), p. 4.
261. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1
262. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 27; interview with Lawrence Peet, Chiangrai, Thailand, August 9, 1971. (Lawrence Peet is a missionary who was working in Lahu villages near the caravan trail at the time of the Opium War.)
263. Interview with the principal of Ban Khwan public school, Ban Khwan, Laos, August 9, 1971.
264. Ibid.; interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
265. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 27.
266. Interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
267. Ibid.
268. "Opium War-Take Two," dispatch from Vanderwicken, p. 5.
269. Interview with Gen. Quane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
270. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1.
271. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 28.
272. "Opium War-Take Two," dispatch from Vanderwicken, pp. 4, 6; The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 19, 1972.
273. The New York Times, AuPust 11, 197 1, p. 1.
274. Interview with the principal of Ban Khwan Public School, Ban Khwan, Laos, August 9, 1971.
275. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 28; Mote, "The Rural 'Haw' (Yunnanese Chinese) of Northern Thailand," pp. 488, 492-493.
276. Report of the United Nations Survey Team on the Economic and Social Needs of the OpiumProducing Areas in Thailand, p. 64.
277. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," pp. 21-23.
278. Ibid.
279. Ibid., pp. 29-3 1; the insurgency in northern Thailand is regarded as the "most serious" military problem now facing the Thai government. (A Staff Report, U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia: January 1972, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1972, p. 14.)
280. Alfred W. McCoy, "Subcontracting Counterinsurgency: Academics in Thailand, 1954-1970," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, December 1970, pp. 64-67.
281. The Weekend Telegraph, p. 27.
282. According to a 1961 report by Gordon Young, 50 percent of the Meo, 20 percent of the Lahu, 75 percent of the Lisu, and 25 percent of the Akha tribesmen in northern Thailand have some fluency in Yunnanese. In contrast, only 5 percent of the Meo, 10 percent of the Lahu, 50 percent of the Lisu, and 25 percent of the Akha speak Thai or Laotian (Young, The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, p. 92).
283. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
284. Interview with General Krirksin, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
285. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
286. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2; NBC Chronolog, April 28, 1972.
287. "Opium War-Take Three," dispatch from McCulloch, pp. 1-2.
288. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Cb~angmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
289. Interview with Hsai Kiao, ChiaNrai, Thailand, September 13, 1971.
290. Interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
291. Inter-view with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
292. The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee was a coalition of the rightwing Shan rebel groups formed mainly to provide effective joint action against the Burmese Communist party. This quotation from one of their communiqués conveys the group's conservative character and its anti-Communist first principles: "In the areas bordering Communist China in the Kachin and Northern Shan States particularly, armed bands trained and armed by the Communist Chinese composed mostly of China born Kachins and Shans are now very active.... The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee (SUPC) believes unity within the Union of Burma is definitely attainable and there is no reason why unity based on anti-communism, a belief in Parliamentary democracy and free economy, and last but not least, a unity based on the principles of Federalism cannot be achieved..." (The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee, "Communiqué No. 5," mimeographed [Shan State, March 14, 1968], pp. 12).
293. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
294. Communiqu6 from the Central Executive Committee, Shan State Progress Party, September 1971, pp. 1-2.
295. The Shan State Army admits to having transported the following quantities of raw opium from the northern Shan States to northern Thailand: 160 kilos in 1964, 290 kilos in 1965, 960 kilos in 1966, 1,600 kilos in 1967, nothing in 1968, and 80 kilos in 1969 (interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971).
296. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
297. Far Eastern Economic Review, 1968 Yearbook (14ong Kong), p. 123; Far Eastern Economic Review, 1971 Yearbook (Hong Kong), p. 108.
298. In September 1971, for example, the authors were invited to visit a Shan rebel camp near Huci Krai. However, on the morning of the visit (September 13) the authors received the following note: "Sorry to inform you that your trip with us to Mae Sai is not approved by the Thai authorities. Because it is near the Burmese border and it might be possible for the Burmese to know it. "It is better to stay within the regulations since the host, the Thais, is giving us a warm and friendly reception. [signed] Hsai Kiao"
299. Far Eastern Economic Review, May 1, 1971, pp. 47-49; ibid., April 17,1971,pp.19-20.
300. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971; interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
301. Interview with Hsai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, September 12, 1971; interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
302. Interview with Psai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, September 12, 1971.
303. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2.
304. Far Eastern Economic Review, December 12, 1970, p. 22; ibid., April 17, 1971, p. 20.
305. Newsweek, March 22, 1971, p. 42,1 interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
306. The New York Times, January 3, 1971, p. 9; ibid., January 31, 1971, p. 3.
307. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
308. It was not possible for U Nu to ally with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which controls much of Kachin State. Its leaders are Bantist Christians who resented U Nu's establishment of Buddhism as a state religion. The head of the KIA is a Baptist Christian named Zau Seng. He founded the Kachin Independence Army with his brothers in 1957, and with the exception of brief negotiations with Ne Win in 1963, he has been fighting ever since. When he is in Thailand trading in opium and buying arms, his brothers, Zau Dan and Zau Tu direct military operations in Kachin State. Unlike the Shans, Zau Seng is the undisputed leader of the conservative Kachins, and his troops control most of Kachin State. Relations between Zau Seng and the Kachin Communist leader, Naw Seng, are reportedly quite hostile.
309. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
310. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
311. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
312. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
313. Interview with Hsai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, Sentember 13, 1971; interview with Brig. Gen. Tommy Clift, Bangkok, Thailand, September 21, 1971.
314. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
315. Interview with Hsai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, September 13, 1971.
316. It appears that the Young family is revered mainly by the Black Lahu of northern Kengtung State and western Yunnan. The original prophecy of the White God was made by a Black Lahu, and the Youngs had a remarkable conversion rate among them. In contrast, the Red Lahu have generally remained animist and regard the "Man God" as their living deity. The "Man God" has his headquarters west of Mong Hsat and is influential among the Red Lahu of southern Kengtung State. The terms "red" and "black" derive from the fact that different Lahu subgroups wear different-colored clothes. On the other hand, the term "Red" Meo is a political term used to designate Communist Meo insurgents. Many Red Lahu tribesmen have now become afraid that their ethnolinguistic designation may be misinterpreted as a political label. Red Lahu tribesmen in northern Thailand usually claim to be Black Lahu when questioned by anthropologists. Thus, when the "Man God's" son spoke, he said that the Red Lahu were not Communists as many people thought and would willingly join their brother Lahu in the struggle against Ne Win (interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971).
317. Ibid.
318. Tinker, The Union of Burma, pp. 38, 395.
319. Ibid., pp. 40-41.
320. Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram 2, no. 3 (March-April 1971), 6.
321. The Burmese Communist party's (BCP) reasons for abolishing the opium trade are very pragmatic: 1. Since the BCP is a political enemy of the Burmese government, the KMT, and the Shan rebels, it would be impossible for it to send an opium caravan into Thailand even if it wanted to. 2. Continuing the exploitative opium tax would alienate the BCP from the people. 3. Since Shan rebels and government militia are only interested in occupying opiumproducing territories, opium eradication weakens their desire to retake lost territory (interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971).
322. Interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
323. Interview with residents of Chiang Saen, Thailand, August 1971.
324. Interview with officers in the Royal Laotian Air Force, Vientiane, Laos, JulyAugust 1971.
325. "Opium War Add," dispatch from McCulloch, p. 2.
326. "Opium War-Take 2," dispatch from Vanderwicken, p. 6.
327. According to a U.S. narcotics analyst, General Ouane's control over the opium traffic in the Ban Houei Sai region was further improved in 1968 when Colonel Khampay, a loyal Ouane follower, was appointed regional commander. Colonel Khampay reportedly devoted most of his military resources to protecting the Ban Houei Tap refinery and moving supplies back and forth between Ban Houei Sai and the refinery (interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, New Haven, Connecticut, May 3, 1972); The Evening, Star, Washington, D.C., June 19, 1972.
328. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2.
329. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
330. The attack on Long Tieng in early 1972 has inevitably created problems for narcotics dealings among Vang Pao's troops. It is entirely possible that they are no longer in the heroin business, but it will require time before we know whether they have reopened their laboratory somewhere else.
331. Interview with Elliot K. Chan, Vientiane, Laos, August 15, 1971.
332. Cabled dispatch from Shaw, Vientiane (Hong Kong Bureau), to Time, Inc., received September 16-17, 1965.
333. Lao Presse (Vientiane: Ministry of Information, #56/66), March 16, 1966.
334. Lao Presse (Vientiane: Ministry of Information, #58/66), March 18, 1966.
335. Direction du Protocole, Ministre des Affaires ttrang6res, "Liste des Personality Lao," mimeographed (Rovaume du Laos: n.d.), p.155.
336. Interview with a Thai police official, Bangkok, Thailand, September 1971.
337. Interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, New Haven, Conn., May 3 - 1972.
338. Interview with Western dir)lomatic official, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971; interview with Third World diplomatic official, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971 (this account of the incident has been corroborat(- .d by reports received by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [Interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, New Haven, Connecticut, November 18, 19711) -, interview with a Laotian political observer, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971.
339. Interview with a Laotian political observer, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971.
340. Lao Presse (Vientiane: Ministry of Information, #1566/71), September 6, 1971.
341. Interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Southeast Asia, September 1971.
342. Ibid.
343. Hamilton-Paterson, The Greedy War, p. 194.
344. Far Eastern Economic Review, December 4, 1971, pp. 40-41.
345. In its July 19, 1971, issue, Newsweek magazine hinted that the United States had used its "other means of persuasion" to force Gen. Ouane Rattikone into retirement. This suggestion is based only on the imagination of Newsweek's New York editorial staff. According to the Vientiane press corps, Newsweek cabled its Vientiane correspondent for confirmation of this story and he replied that Ouane's retirement had been planned for over a year (which it was). Reliable diplomatic sources in Vientiane found Newsweek's suggestion absurd and General Ouane himself flatly denied that there had been any pressure on him to retire (Newsweek, July 19, 1971, pp. 23-24).
346. Interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
". . . it would be far more accurate to describe the S.N.A as a grouping of independent warlords loosely tied into a weak federation with a president as a figurehead. This president has influence through the facilities he offers for selling opium and buying guns and because he presents a front to the outside world, but it is unlikely he will ever wield effective power unless he becomes the channel for outside aid in the forms of guns or money." (221)
The lucrative opium traffic turned into a source of internal corruption alienating commanders from their troops and prompting ranking officers to fight each other for the spoils. Shan troops frequently complained that they were left at Gnar Kham's mountain camp to feed the mules, while their leaders were off in the fleshpots of Chiangmai wasting opium profits on whores and gambling instead of buying arms. Often, as soon as a rebel group grew large enough to be militarily effective, the second in command killed his leader or else split the force in order to increase his personal share of the profits.
Not surprisingly, it was this type of dispute that ultimately destroyed the Shan National Army. U Ba Thein had been concerned about Sao Gnar Kham's enormous popularity and his control over the opium traffic for several years. Evidently there were repeated disagreements among various leaders over the opium profits. In December 1964 the charismatic commander in chief of the S.N.A was shot and killed at the Huei Krai caravan station. Some sources claim that it was an opium profit dispute that led to the murder. (222)
U Ba Thein was selected commander in chief of the S.N.A at a meeting of the local commanders in February 1965, but he lacked the personal magnetism and leadership abilities that Gnar Kham. had used to maintain some semblance of unity within the strife torn coalition. Afraid that he would suffer a fate similar to Gnar Kham's, U Ba Thein refused to venture out of his headquarters either to meet with subordinates or to travel through Kengtung State for a firsthand look at the military situation. Local commanders began to break away from the coalition and the S.N.A gradually dissolved; by 1966 these leaders were marketing their own opium and U Ba Thein had become a forgotten recluse surrounded by a dwindling number of bodyguards. Six years after Gnar Kham's death, five of his seven local commanders had either been captured, forced into retirement, or killed by their own men, while the remaining two have become mercenary warlords, professional opium smugglers.
But even well before Gnar Kham's death, other Shan rebel armies had already begun to play an even more important role in the region's opium trade. While the history of the S.N.A's involvement in the opium traffic is important because of its relationship with Gen.Ouane Rattikone, its caravans probably never carried more than 10 percent of the Burmese opium exported to Thailand and Laos. (223) In fact, the only Shan warlord who ran a truly professional smuggling organization capable of transporting large quantities of opium was the notorious Chan Shee-fu. A half-Shan, half-Chinese native of Lashio District in the northern Shan States, Chan Shee-fu became involved in opium trafficking in 1963, when the Burmese government began authorizing the formation of local self defense forces (called Ka Kwe Ye [or K.K.Y., in Burmese) to combat the Shan rebels. While the Burmese government gave its militia no money, rations, or uniforms, and only a minimum of arms, it compensated for this stinginess by giving them the right to use all government-controlled roads and towns in the Shan States for opium smuggling.
In 1963 Chan Shee-fu was authorized to form a militia of several hundred men, and being a young man of uncommon ambition, he quickly parlayed a number of successful opium shipments to Thailand into a well-armed militia of eight hundred men. After severing his ties with the Burmese army in 1964, Chan Shee fu abandoned his bases at Lashio and Tang Yang and shifted his headquarters eastward to Ving Ngun in the Wa States (one of the most bountiful opium growing regions in Burma), where he established an independent fiefdom. He ruled the Ving Ngun area for two years, and his ruthlessness commanded the respect of even the wild Wa, whose unrelenting headhunting habits had forced both the British and Burmese to adopt a more circumspect attitude. To increase his share of the profits, he built a crude refinery (one of the very few then operating in the Shan States) for processing raw opium into morphine bricks. In 1966 he rejoined the government militia, and using the government's laissez passer to increase his opium shipments to Thailand, he expanded his army to two thousand men. Unlike the S.N.A, which could never mobilize more than two hundred or three hundred of its troops at any one time, Chan Shee-fu ruled his army with an iron hand and could rely on them to do exactly what he ordered. (224)
Despite the size and efficiency of his army, Chan Shee-fu still controlled only a relatively small percentage of the total traffic. In fact, a CIA study prepared by William Young in 1966-1967 showed that Shan caravans carried only 7 percent of Burma's exports, the Kachin Independence Army (the dominant rebel group in Burma's Kachin State) 3 percent, and the K.M.T an overwhelming 90 percent. (225) Even though the K.M.T's position seemed statistically impregnable, Chan Shee-fu's precipitous rise had aroused considerable concern among the K.M.T generals in northern Thailand. And when his massive sixteen-ton opium caravan began rolling south toward Ban Houei Sai in June 1967, the K.M.T realized that its fifteen-year monopoly over the Burmese opium trade was finally being challenged. The situation provoked a serious crisis of confidence in the K.M.T's mountain redoubts, which caused a major internal reorganization.
The KNIT in Thailand:
Guardian at the Northern Gate
Although K.M.T armies control about 90 percent of Burma's opium trade, they have not
maintained any major bases inside the Shan States since 1961. After five thousand
Burmese army troops and twenty thousand Communist Chinese troops launched a "surprise assault" on KMT headquarters at Mong Pa Liao, Kengtung State, in January
1961, most of the ten thousand KMT defenders fled across the Mekong into northwestern
Laos and took refuge at Nam Tha City. Five tons of U.S. ammunition were discovered at
Mong Pa Liao, and on February 16 the Burmese air force shot down an American-made
Liberator bomber making supply drops to K.M.T holdouts inside Burma. (226) Apparently
embarrassed by these incidents, the U.S. State Department offered to assist in the
repatriation of K.M.T troops to Taiwan, and on March 14 the evacuation began. About
forty-two hundred K.M.T regulars were flown from Nam Tha City to Ban Houei Sai,
ferried across the Mekong, and trucked to Chiangrai, where they boarded flights for
Taiwan. On April 12 the airlift came to an end, and Taiwan disclaimed any responsibility
for the "few" who remained. (227) Actually, some two thousand to three thousand K.M.T regulars had been left behind in Laos and they were hired by the CIA to strengthen the rightist position in the area. According to William Young, these troops were placed under the nominal command of General Phourni Nosavan and became the "Bataillon Speciale 111." They remained at Nam Tha until the rightist garrison began to collapse in mid 1962, and then they moved across the Mekong River into Thailand. With the full knowledge and consent of the Thai government, the K.M.T established two new bases on the top of jungle-covered mountains just a few miles from the Burmese border and resumed their involvement in the opium trade. (228)
Instead of hampering their commercial activities, the move to Thailand actually increased the K.M.T's overall importance in the Golden Triangle's opium trade. Not only did the K.M.T maintain their hold on Burma's opium, but they increased their share of the traffic in northern Thailand. In 1959 the Thai government had outlawed the growing and smoking of opium, and many Thai hill traders, fearful of police action, were in the process of quitting the opium trade. Most small towns and villages in the foothills of northern Thailand that had prospered as opium-trading centers for the last twelve years experienced a micro recession as their local opium merchants were forced out of business. While the lack of reliable data and official obfuscation makes it difficult to describe this transition for the whole of northern Thailand, an Australian anthropologist has provided us with a portrait of the rise and fall of a Thai opium-trading village named Ban Wat. (229)
Situated about three miles from the base of Thailand's western mountain range, with easy access to two mountain trails leading upward into the opium-growing villages, Ban Wat was an ideal base of operations for wandering mountain traders. Moreover, the village was only fifteen miles from Chiangmai, Thailand's northernmost rail terminus, so it was also accessible to merchants and brokers coming up from Bangkok.
Ban Wat's merchants first became involved in the opium trade in the 1920's, when four or five Meo villages were built in the nearby mountain districts. However, the Meo population was quite small, and their poppy cultivation was still secondary to subsistence rice production. Most of Ban Wat's traders were buying such small quantities of opium from the Meo that they sold it directly to individual addicts in the nearby valley towns No big brokers came to Ban Wat from Bangkok or Chiangmai, though one Ban Wat trader occasionally bothered to smuggle a bit of opium down to Bangkok on the train. (230)
Once the Thai government decided to encourage poppy cultivation in 1947, however, the opium trade began to boom, and the village experienced unprecedented prosperity, becoming one of the largest opium markets in northern Thailand. The edict drew many Meo farmers into the nearby mountains, giving Ban Wat traders access to a large supply. Much of Ban Wat's active male population became involved in the opium trade as porters, mule skinners, or independent merchants. During the harvesting and planting season the Meo needed rice to feed themselves. The Ban Wat traders purchased rice in the Chiangmai market and sold it to the Meo on credit. When the opium harvest began, the traders returned to the Meo villages to collect their debts and also to trade silver, salt, rice, and manufactured goods for Meo opium.
While the abolition of legalized opium trading in 1959 has in no way hindered the continued expansion of Thailand's production, it was a disaster for Ban Wat. At the height of the opium boom there were twenty major opium traders operating out of Ban Wat; by 1968 there was only one. Two local merchants went broke when the police confiscated their opium, and another was ruined when his Meo customers moved to another province without paying their debts. These examples served to chasten Ban Wat's merchant community, and many traders quit the opium trade. (231)
The vacuum was not filled by other Thai traders, but by the K.M.T armies and an auxiliary of Yunnanese mountain traders. When the K.M.T and its civilian adherents were forced completely out of Burma in 1961, the entire commercial apparatus moved its headquarters into northern Thailand. (232) In 1965 a census of the most important Yunnanese villages in northern Thailand showed a total population of sixty-six hundred. (233) As the Thai traders were gradually forced out of business after 1959, the K.M.T and its civilian auxiliaries were uniquely qualified centrally organized military to take over the opium trade. With their structure, the K.M.T was in an ideal position to keep track of migrating Meo clans and make sure that they paid their debts in full. With their military power, the K.M.T could protect the enormous capital tied up in the merchant caravans from bandits and keep the exaction's of the Thai police to a minimum.
The Yunnanese traders were the vanguard of the K.M.T's commercial conquest, infiltrating the mountain villages and imposing a form of debt slavery on hill tribe opium farmers. They opened permanent stores in most of the large opium-producing villages and sold such tantalizing items as flashlights, canned goods, silver ornaments, cloth, salt, and shoes. A 1962 report by the Thai Ministry of the Interior described the impact of this "commercial revolution":
"The increasing demand for merchandise deriving from outside has given a corresponding impetus to the raising of cash crops. There can be no doubt that the cultivation of poppy and the production of raw opium is by far the most profitable economic activity known to the hill peoples at present.... The shopkeepers and travelling merchants in the hills compete with each other to get hold of the product, readily granting credit for later sales of opium." (234)
Toward the end of the harvest season, when the Yunnanese merchants have finished buying up most of the opium in their area, armed KNIT caravans go from village to village collecting it. American missionaries who have seen the K.M.T on the march describe it as a disconcerting spectacle. As soon as the caravan's approach is signaled, all the women and children flee into the forest, leaving the men to protect the village. Once the opium is loaded onto the K.M.T's mules, the caravan rides on and the people come back out of the forest. The Ministry of the Interior's 1962 report described the KMT/Yunnanese logistics in some detail:
The key men of the opium traffic in the hills of Northern Thailand are the traders who come from outside the tribal societies.... On the basis of our observations in numerous villages of the 4 tribes we studied we have proof that the overwhelming majority of them are Haw Yunnanesel....
Usually the Haw traders know each other personally, even if living in hill villages 200 km. [125 miles) and more apart. Most we encountered regard the village of Ban Yang, near Amphur Fang, as their central place [near KMT Third Army headquarters]. Quite a few of them will return to this place, after the closing of the trading season....
There seems to be a fair understanding among all the Haw in the hills and a remarkable coherence or even silent organization.
The Haw traders keep close contacts with the armed bands [K.M.T] that dwell in fortified camps along the Burmese frontier. It is reported that they (the K.M.T) give armed convoy to opium caravans along the jungle trails to the next reloading places. (235)
The fortified camps mentioned in the Ministry of the Interior's report above are the KNIT Fifth Army headquarters on Mae Salong mountain, about thirty miles northwest of Chiangrai, and the KNIT Third Army headquarters at Tam Ngop, a rugged mountain redoubt fifty miles west of Chiangrai. Although KNIT forces had always maintained a unified command structure in Burma, it established these two separate headquarters after moving to Thailand; this was symptomatic of deep internal divisions. For reasons never fully explained, Taiwan ordered its senior commander home in 1961 and subsequently cut back financial support for the remaining troops. Once external discipline was removed, personal rivalries between the generals broke the KNIT into three separate commands: Gen. Tuan Shi-wen formed the Fifth Army with eighteen hundred men; Gen. Ly Wen-huan became commander of the Third Army, a lesser force of fourteen hundred men; and Gen. Ma Ching-kuo and the four hundred intelligence operatives under his command broke away to form the First Independent Unit. (236) Since Gen. Ma Chingkuo's First Independent Unit remained under the overall supervision of President Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Chingkuo, in Taiwan, financial support for its intelligence operations inside China and Burma was continued. (237) As a result, its commander General Ma could afford to remain above the bitter rivalry between General Tuan and General Ly, and came to act as mediator between the two. (238)
After Taiwan cut off their money, Generals Tuan and Ly were forced to rely exclusively on the opium traffic to finance their military operations. "Necessity knows no law," General Tuan told a British journalist in 1967. "That is why we deal with opium. We have to continue to fight the evil of Communism, and to fight you must have an army, and an army must have guns, and to buy guns you must have money. In these mountains the only money is opium." (239)To minimize the possibility of violence between their troops, the two generals apparently agreed to a division of the spoils and used the Salween River to demarcate their respective spheres of influence inside the Shan States; General Tuan sends his caravans into Kengtung and the southern Wa States east of the Salween, while General Ly confines his caravans to the west bank of the river. (240)
While the S.N.A's local commanders were little more than petty smugglers, General Tuan and General Ly have become the robber barons of one of Southeast Asia's major agro-businesses. Their purchasing network covers most of the Shan States' sixty thousand square miles, and their caravans haul approximately 90 percent of Burma's opium exports from the Shan highlands to entrepots in northern Thailand. To manage this vast enterprise, the K.M.T generals have developed a formidable private communications network inside the Shan States and imposed a semblance of order on the once chaotic bill trade. On the western bank of the Salween General Ly has organized a string of seven radio posts that stretch for almost 250 miles from Third Army headquarters at Tam Ngop in northern Thailand to Lashio in the northern Shan States. (241) On the eastern bank, General Tuan maintains a network of eleven radio posts supplemented by the First Independent Unit's four forward listening posts along the Burma-China border. (242)
Each radio post is guarded by eighty to one hundred K.M.T soldiers who double as opium brokers and purchasing agents; as the planting season begins, they canvass the surrounding countryside paying advances to village headmen, negotiating with Shan rebels, and buying options from local opium traders. By the time the K.M.T caravans begin rolling north from Tam Ngop and Mae Salong in October or November, each of the radio posts has transmitted an advance report on the size and value of the harvest in its area to their respective K.M.T headquarters. Thus, K.M.T commanders are in a position to evaluate the size of the upcoming harvest in each district and plan a rough itinerary for the caravans. (243)
The enormous size of the K.M.T caravans makes this advance planning an absolute necessity. While most Shan rebel caravans rarely have more than fifty pack animals, the smallest K.M.T caravan has a hundred mules, and some have as many as six hundred. (244) The commander of a Shan rebel army active in the area west of Lashio reports that most K.M.T Third Army caravans that pass through his area average about four hundred mules. (245) Since an ordinary pack animal can carry about fifty kilos of raw opium on one of these long trips, a single caravan of this size can bring back as much as twenty tons of raw opium. Despite the large number of Shan rebels and government militia prowling the mountains, K.M.T caravans can afford to travel, with a minimum of armed guards (usually about three hundred troops, or only one man for every one or two mules) because they carry portable field radios and can signal their scattered outposts for help if attacked. Scouts are sent out well ahead of the column to look for possible trouble. Since most of the mule drivers and guards are vigorous young tribesmen recruited from northern Thailand, K.M.T caravans are able to move fast enough to avoid ambush. Moreover, the K.M.T carry an impressive arsenal of 60 mm. mortars, .50 caliber machine guns, 75 mm. recoilless rifles, and semiautomatic carbines, which is usually ample deterrence for both poorly armed Shan rebels and crack Burmese army units.
The caravans begin moving south in October or November and stopping at large hill tribe villages, market towns, and K.M.T outposts to pick up waiting shipments of opium. Although there are K.M.T caravans plodding across the Shan highlands throughout most of the year, most caravans seem to be going north from October through March (which includes the harvest season) and riding south from March through August. General Ly's Third Army caravans usually go as far north as Lashio District, about 250 miles from Tam Ngop, where they pick up opium brought down from Kachin State and northern Shan districts by itinerant merchants. (246) General Tuan's Fifth Army caravans used to go all the way to Ving Ngun, about 170 miles north of Mae Salong, until 1969, when the Burmese Communist party began operating in the southern Wa States. Since then K.M.T caravans have been relying on itinerant merchants to bring Kokang and Wa states opium out of these Communist-controlled areas. (247)
When the K.M.T caravans begin to head back to Thailand, they are often joined by smaller Shan rebel or merchant caravans, who travel with them for protection. Predatory bands of Shan rebels, government militia (K.K.Y), and Burmese army troops prowl the hills. According to one Shan rebel leader, a caravan has to have an absolute minimum of fifty armed men to survive, but with two hundred armed men it is completely safe unless something unusual happens. Since the smaller groups cannot afford a sufficient quantity of automatic weapons to protect themselves adequately (in mid 1971 an M-16 cost $250 to $300 in Chiangmai), many prefer to ride with the K.M.T even though they have to pay a protection fee of $9 per kilo of opium (a high fee considering that a kilo of opium retailed for $60 in Chiangmai in 1967). (248)
As a service to the Thai government, the K.M.T Third and Fifth armies act as a border patrol force along the rugged northern frontier and use their authority to collect a "duty" of $4.50 on every kilo of opium entering Thailand. (249) In 1966-1967 the CIA reported that K.M.T forces patrolled a seventy-five-mile stretch of borderland in Chiangmai and Chiangrai provinces (250) but in mid 1971 Shan rebel leaders claimed that K.M.T revenue collectors covered the entire northern border all the way from Mae Sai to Mae Hong Son. Although the rugged mountain terrain and maze of narrow horse trails would frustrate the best ordinary customs service, very few Shan caravans can ever enter Thailand without paying tax to the K.M.T. With their comprehensive radio and intelligence network, the K.M.T spot most caravans soon after they begin moving south and usually have a reception committee waiting when one crosses into Thailand. (251) (See Map 11, page 335.)
Not having to rely on opium for funds like the Third and Fifth armies, the First Independent Unit gives top priority to its military mission of cross-border espionage, and regards opium smuggling as a complementary but secondary activity. Most importantly from Taiwan's perspective, the First Independent Unit has helped perpetuate the myth of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's imminent "return to the mainland" by launching repeated sabotage raids into southern China. (252)
General Tuan's Fifth Army has provided considerable support for General Ma's intelligence operations, and on at least one occasion his troops participated in a full-scale raid into southern China. In exchange for such assistance, General Tuan's troops were allowed to use the First Independent Unit's listening posts as opium-trading centers. (253) While Gen. Tuan is rather tight-lipped about his involvement in the opium trade, he is extremely proud of his vanguard position in the anti-Communist crusade. Describing himself as the "watchdog at the northern gate," General Tuan likes to regale his visitors with stories about his exploits battling Mao Tse-tung during the 1930's, fighting the Japanese during World War II, and raiding Yunnan Province in more recent years. Although the sixty-one-year-old general spends most of his time in Chiangmai enjoying the vast personal fortune he has amassed from the opium business, he still likes to think of himself as a die hard guerrilla fighter and launches an occasional raid into China to polish up his image. (254)
Since General Ma was the only one of the three generals who enjoyed Taiwan's full support, he emerged as the senior KNIT commander in the Golden Triangle region. Although a number of serious disputes had poisoned relations between General Tuan and General Ly, General Ma had remained on good terms with both. At the urging of high command on Taiwan, General Ma began acting as a mediator shortly after the K.M.T moved to Thailand, but with little success. Taiwan was hoping to reestablish a unified command under General Ma, but Generals Tuan and Ly saw little to be gained from giving up their profitable autonomy. (255) Although the battle at Ban Khwan would heal this rift, for the moment, the situation remained static.
Battle at Ban Khwan:
The Challenge of Chan Shee-Fu
General Ma had his chance as mediator in early 1967 when Generals Tuan and Ly began
receiving disturbing information about Chan Shee fu's activities in the Shan States. The
K.M.T's radio network was sending back reports that the Shan warlord's brokers were
buying up unprecedented quantities of opium in the northern Shan and Wa states. In
February, Chan Shee-fu had delivered a de facto declaration of war when he demanded
that KNIT caravans trading in the Wa States pay him the same transit tax that his
caravans had to pay the KNIT whenever they crossed into Thailand or Laos. (256) When
Chan Shee-fu's caravan of three hundred mules assembled in June it was carrying sixteen
tons of raw opium worth $500,000 wholesale in Chiangmai. (257) With his share of the
profits, Chan Shee-fu could purchase at least one thousand new carbines and expand his
army from two thousand to three thousand men-a force almost equal in size to the
combined thirty-two hundred troops of the K.M.T Third and Fifth armies. If Chan Shee fu's caravan reached Laos, the fifteen-year dominance of the KNIT would be in jeopardy.
The point was not lost on the KNIT generals, and through General Ma's mediation, the
two feuding generals agreed to resolve their differences and form a combined army to
destroy Chan Shee-fu. (258) In June the main body of Chan Shee-fu's convoy left Ving Ngun and set out on a two hundred-mile trek toward Ban Khwan, a small Laotian lumber town on the Mekong River which Gen. Ouane Rattikone had designated the delivery point when he placed an advance order for this enormous shipment with Chan Shee fu's broker, a Chinese merchant from Mae Sai, Thailand. The caravan was to deliver the opium to the general's refinery at Ban Khwan. As the heavily loaded mules plodded south through the monsoon downpours, the convoy was joined by smaller caravans from market towns like Tang Yang, so that by the time it reached Kengtung City its single-file column of five hundred men and three hundred mules stretched along the ridge lines for over a mile.(259)
From the moment the caravan left Ving Ngun, it was kept under surveillance by the K.M.T's intelligence network, and the radio receivers at Mae Salong hummed with frequent reports from the mountains overlooking the convoy's line of march. After merging their crack units into a thousand-man expeditionary corps, Generals Tuan and Ly sent their forces into the Shan States with orders to intercept the convoy and destroy it. (260) Several days later the KNIT expeditionary force ambushed Chan Shee-fu's main column east of Kengtung City near the Mekong River, but his rearguard counterattacked and the opium caravan escaped. (261) After crossing the Mekong into Laos on July 14 and 15, Chan Shee-fu's troops hiked down the old caravan trail from Muong Mounge and reached Ban Khwan two days later. (262)
Shortly after they arrived, the Shan troops warned the Laotian villagers that the K.M.T were not far behind and that there would probably be fighting. As soon as he heard this news, the principal of Ban Khwan's elementary school raced downriver to Ton Peung, where a company of Royal Laotian Army troops had its field headquarters. The company commander radioed news of the upcoming battle to Ban Houei Sai and urged the principal to evacuate his village. During the next ten days, while Ban Khwan's twenty families moved all their worldly possessions across the Mekong into Thailand, Chan Shee-fu's troops prepared for a confrontation. (263)
Ban Khwan is hardly a likely battlefield: the village consists of small clearings hacked out of a dense forest, fragile stilted houses and narrow winding lanes, which were then mired in knee-deep, monsoon-season mud. A lumber mill belonging to General Ouane sat in the only large clearing in the village, and it was here that the Shans decided to make their stand. In many ways it was an ideal defensive position: the mill is built on a long sand embankment extending a hundred feet into the Mekong and is separated from the surrounding forest by a lumberyard, which had become a moatlike sea of mud. The Shans parked their mules along the embankment, scoured the nearby towns for boats, and used cut logs lying in the lumberyard to form a great semicircular barricade in front of the mill. (264)
The KNIT expeditionary force finally reached Ban Khwan on July 26 and fought a brief skirmish with the Shans in a small hamlet just outside the village. That same day the Laotian army's provincial cornmander flew up from Ban Houei Sai in an air force helicopter to deliver a personal message from General Ouane: he ordered them all to get out of Laos. The KNIT scornfully demanded $250,000 to do so, and Chan Shee-fu radioed his men from Burma, ordering them to stay put. After several hundred reinforcements arrived from Mae Salong, the KNIT troops attacked the Shan barricades on July 29 Since both sides were armed with an impressive array of .50 caliber machine guns, 60 mm. mortars, and 57 mm. recoilless rifles, the firefight was intense, and the noise from it could be heard for miles. However, at 12:00 noon on July 30 the staccato chatter of automatic weapons was suddenly interrupted by the droning roar of six T-28 prop fighters flying low up the Mekong River and then the deafening thunder of the five hundred pound bombs that came crashing down indiscriminately on Shans and KNIT alike.
General Ouane, apparently somewhat disconcerted by the unforeseen outcome of his dealings with Chan Shee-fu, had decided to play the part of an outraged commander in chief defending his nation's territorial integrity. With Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna's full consent he had dispatched a squadron of T-28 fighters from Luang Prabang and airlifted the crack Second Paratroop Battalion (Capt. Kong Le's old unit) up to Ban Houei Sai. General Ouane took personal command of the operation and displayed all of the tactical brilliance one would expect from a general who had just received his nation's highest state decoration, "The Grand Cross of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol" (266)
Once the Second Paratroop Battalion had gone upriver to Ban Khwan and taken up a blocking position just south of the battlefield, the T-28's began two solid days of bombing and strafing at the rate of four or five squadron sorties daily. To ensure against a possible retaliatory attack on Ban Houei Sai, General Ouane ordered two marine launches to patrol the upper reaches of the Mekong near Ban Khwan. Finally, two regular Laotian infantry battalions began moving down the old caravan trail from Muong Mounge to cut off the only remaining escape route. (267)
Under the pressure of the repeated bombing attacks, the four hundred surviving Shans piled into the boats tied up along the embankment and retreated across the Mekong into Burma, leaving behind eighty-two dead, fifteen mules, and most of the opium. (268) Lacking boats and unwilling to abandon their heavy equipment, the K.M.T troops fled north along the Mekong, but only got six miles before their retreat was cut off by the two Laotian infantry battalions moving south from Muong Mounge. When the Shans and K.M.T had abandoned Ban Khwan, the Second Paratroop Battalion swept the battlefield, gathered up the opium and sent it downriver to Ban Houei Sai. Reinforcements were flown up from Vientiane, and superior numbers of Laotian army troops surrounded the K.M.T. (269) Following two weeks of tense negotiations, the KNIT finally agreed to pay General Ouane an indemnity of $7,500 for the right to return to Thailand. (270) According to Thai police reports, some seven hundred KMT troops crossed the Mekong into Thailand on August 19, leaving behind seventy dead, twenty-four machine guns, and a number of dead mules. Although the Thai police made a pro forma attempt at disarming the K.M.T, the troops clambered aboard eighteen chartered buses and drove off to Mae Salong with three hundred carbines, seventy machine guns, and two recoilless rifles. (271)
Gen. Ouane Rattikone was clearly the winner of this historic battle. His troops had captured most of the sixteen tons of raw opium, and only suffered a handful of casualties. Admittedly, his lumber mill was damaged and his opium refinery had been burned to the ground, but this loss was really insignificant, since General Ouane reportedly operated another five refineries between Ban Khwan and Ban Houei Sai. (272) His profits from the confiscated opium were substantial, and displaying the generosity for which he is so justly famous, he shared the spoils with the men of the Second Paratroop Battalion. Each man reportedly received enough money to build a simple house on the outskirts of Vientiane. (273) The village of Ban Khwan itself emerged from the conflagration relatively unscathed; when the people started moving back across the Mekong River three days after the battle, they found six burned-out houses, but other than that suffered no appreciable Loss. (274)
At the time it was fought, the 1967 Opium War struck most observers, even the most sober, as a curious historical anachronism that conjured up romantic memories of China's warlords in the 1920's and bandit desperadoes of bygone eras. However, looking back on it in light of events in the Golden Triangle over the last five years-particularly the development of large-scale production of no. 4 heroin-the 1967 Opium War appears to have been a significant turning point in the growth of Southeast Asia's drug traffic. Each group's share of Burma's opium exports and its subsequent role in the growth of the Golden Triangle's heroin industry were largely determined by the historic battle and its aftermath. K.M.T caravans still carry the overwhelming percentage of Burma's opium exports, and Shan caravans have continued to pay the K.M.T duty when they enter Thailand. Chan Shee-fu, of course, was the big loser; he left $500,000 worth of raw opium, thousands of dollars in arms and mules, and much of his prestige lying in the mud at Ban Khwan. Moreover, Chan Shee-fu represented the first and last challenge to KNIT control over the Shan States opium trade and that challenge was decisively defeated. Since the destruction of Chan Shee fu's convoy, Shan military leaders have played an increasingly unimportant role in their own opium trade; Shan caravans usually have less than a hundred mules, and their opium refineries are processing only a small percentage of the opium grown in the Shan States. However, General Ouane's troops won the right to tax Burmese opium entering Laos, a prerogative formerly enjoyed by the K.M.T, and the Ban Houei Sai region later emerged as the major processing center for Burmese opium.
Survival of the Fittest
Although the 1967 Opium War strengthened the K.M.T's position inside the Shan States, it
complicated the K.M.T's amicable relations with its host, the Thai government. Ever since
the mid 1950's, when the Thai police commander, General Phao, became notorious as one
of the major opium traffickers in Southeast Asia, the Thai government has been
extremely sensitive about covering up its involvement in the opium trade. When the
K.M.T moved to Thailand in 1962, the government labeled them "civilian refugees" and
claimed that their organized military units had been broken up. (275)The K.M.T reinforced
this face-saving fiction by isolating themselves in their mountain redoubts and wearing
civilian clothes whenever they went into nearby towns. On the whole, the Thai
government was quite successful in convincing the world that the KMT Third and Fifth
armies no longer existed. Only five months before the battle, for example, a full-fledged
U.N. investigating team spent two months examining the drug problem in Thailand
without discovering any substantial evidence of K.M.T activity. (276) When the 1967
Opium War shattered this carefully constructed myth, the Thai government claimed that
it was being "invaded" by the K.M.T and dispatched several thousand troops to Chiangmai
to defend the northern frontier. (277) In order to ensure that it would not be similarly embarrassed in the future, the Thai government placed the K.M.T's fortified camps under the supervision of the Royal Army, and K.M.T generals became accountable to the high command in Bangkok for every move in and out of their headquarters. Aside from these rather limited gestures, however, the Thai government made no effort to weaken the K.M.T. In fact, the Thai military has moved in the opposite direction by granting the Third and Fifth armies official status as legitimate paramilitary forces. Although the K.M.T had been responsible for security in the northern frontier areas for a number of -years without receiving official recognition, the recent outbreak of the "Red" Meo revolt in Nan and Chiangrai provinces has brought about a gradual reversal of this nonrecognition policy.
The "Red" Meo revolt began in May 1967 when Thai officials visited the same Meo village in Chiangrai Province on three separate occasions to collect payoffs; for letting the Meo farmers clear their opium fields. The Meo paid off the first two visitors, but when the Provincial Police showed up to collect their rake-off the Meo attacked them. The next day sixty police returned to the village and burned it to the ground. Although there was no further violence, this incident apparently convinced counterinsurgency strategists in Bangkok that the Meo in Chiangrai and adjoining Nan Province were about to revolt. (278) In October the Thai army and police initiated a series of heavy-handed "Communist suppression operations" that provoked a major uprising. To reduce its mounting casualties, the army began napalming selected villages and herding their inhabitants into guarded relocation centers in early 1968. The revolt spread rapidly, and as the army had to withdraw into a series of fortified positions in June, the air force was unleashed over the insurgent areas, which had been declared free fire zones. By 1970 guerrillas were beginning to sortie out of their mountain "liberated zones," attacking lowland villages and ambushing cars along the highways.(279)
It was obvious to many Thai and American counterinsurgency planners that troops had to go in on the ground to clean up guerrilla mountain sanctuaries before the insurgency spread into the lowlands, However, as their earlier performances had shown, the Thai army was ill suited for mountain warfare. (280) The Thai military, with American financial support, turned to the K.M.T for help. In the past, General Tuan had claimed credit for keeping Chiangrai. Province free from "communist terrorists. (281)The K.M.T had all the necessary skills for mountain warfare that the Thai army so obviously lacked: they understood small unit tactics, had twenty years' experience at recruiting hill tribe paramilitary forces, and could converse with the hill tribes in their own languages or Yunnanese, which many tribesmen spoke fluently. (282) But most important of all, the K.M.T knew how to pit tribe against tribe. While the Thai military had tried to get Meo to fight Meo with little success, General Tuan recruited Akha, Lisu, and Lahu from western Chiangrai Province and sent them to fight Meo in eastern Chiangrai. In December 1969 General Tuan ordered five hundred of these polyglot Fifth Army troops into the mountains just north of Chiang Khong, near the Mekong, to attack the "Red" Meo, and General Ly sent nine hundred of his Third Army troops in an adjoining clump of mountains to the east of Chiang Kham. (283) By mid 1971 two Thai air force UH-IH helicopters were shuttling back and forth between the K.M.T camps and Thai army bases in eastern Chiangrai. A special photo reconnaissance lab was working round the clock, and a ranking Thai general had been placed in command. When asked what he was doing in Chiang Khong, General Krirksin replied, "I cannot tell you, these are secret operations." (284) However, the senior K.M.T officer at Chiang Khong, Col. Chen Mosup, insisted that his forces had the "Red" Meo on the run and claimed that his troops had killed more than 150 of them.(285)
Even though the K.M.T have now been integrated into the Thai counterinsurgency establishment, the government has made no appreciable effort to reduce their involvement in the opium trade. In mid 1971 the CIA reported that Mae Salong, K.M.T Fifth Army headquarters, was the home of one of the "most important" heroin laboratories in the Golden Triangle, and in April 1972 NBC news reported that a laboratory was operating at Tam Ngop, the K.M.T Third Army headquarters.286 In addition, reliable Shan rebel leaders say that K.M.T caravans are still operating at full strength, the opium duty is being collected, and no Shan army is even close to challenging the K.M.T's hegemony.
The Shan Rebellion: The Road to Chaos
For Chan Shee-fu the 1967 Opium War marked the beginning of the end. Far more
importantly for the Shan movement as a whole, his defeat represented the last significant
attempt by any rebel leader to establish himself as something more than just another petty warlord. After his troops retreated across the Mekong from Ban Khwan, Chan Shee-fu
remained in the mountains near the Thai border, reportedly waiting for another crack at
the K.M.T. (287)However for reasons never satisfactorily explained, the second battle
never took place, and he returned to the northern Shan States in late 1967. Since Chan
Shee-fu had lost a considerable amount of money, arms, and prestige at Ban Khwan, his
troops began to drift away, and by late 1968 he had considerably less than a thousand
men under arms. (288) Apparently convinced that another stint as a guerrilla would
revive his sagging fortunes, Chan Shee-fu began making contact with a number of Shan
rebel leaders. When Burmese military intelligence learned that he was engaged in serious
negotiations with the rebels, they had him arrested and sent off to a Rangoon jail for an
indefinite period of confinement. (289) Many of his officers and men were arrested as
well, but Shan rebel leaders claim that several hundred more are still actively battling
government
forces in the
northern Shan
States. (290) Although most Shan rebel leaders speak loftily about millions of oppressed peasants flocking to their side, a few of the franker ones admit that people have become progressively alienated from the independence movement. Repeated taxation at gunpoint by roving Shan warlords has discouraged most forms of legitimate economic activity and reduced the peasants to a state of poverty. Salt prices have skyrocketed in the hills, and goiter is becoming a serious problem. In some of the more distant areas essential medicines like quinine have not been available for years. Vaccination programs and qualified medical treatment have almost disappeared.
Ironically, the political chaos, which has damaged most other forms of agriculture and commerce, has promoted a steady expansion of opium production in the Shan States. Since opium buys more guns and am munition in Thailand than any other local product, Shan rebels and the local militia (K.K.Y) have imposed a heavy opium tax on mountain villages under their control. While mountain farmers sell all the opium they can produce to merchants who regularly visit their villages, the insurgency makes it difficult and dangerous to venture into the market towns to sell other agricultural commodities. Moreover, the Burmese government controls very few of the poppy-growing areas, and is therefore in no position to discourage opium production. Other nations can be pressured into abolishing poppy cultivation, but Burma can honestly claim that it is powerless to deal with the problem. If the present political situation continues, and there is every indication that it will, the Shan States will be growing vast quantities of opium long after the poppy has disappeared from Turkey or Afghanistan.
The Shan States' political tradition of being divided into thirty-four small principalities ruled over by autocratic sawbwas is only partly responsible for the lack of unity among present-day rebel leaders. Laos, for example, shares the same tradition of small valley principalities, but the Pathet Lao have managed to form a strongly unified national liberation movement.
Indeed, there are more important reasons for the chaotic political conditions inside the Shan States. The Shan rebellion and its accompanying chaos could not have survived had not the CIA, the K.M.T, and the Thai government intervened. None of these groups is particularly interested in the establishment of an independent Shan nation. However, each of them has certain limited political or military interests that have been served by providing the Shans with a limited amount of support and keeping the caldron bubbling. Although it is most definitely not in the K.M.T's interests for a powerful Shan leader like Chan Shee-fu to develop, the chaotic conditions promoted by dozens of smaller rebel groups are absolutely vital to their survival. The K.M.T Third and Fifth armies are only able to send their large, lightly guarded caravans deep into the Shan States because the Burmese army is tied down fighting the insurgents. The K.M.T recognizes the importance of this distraction and has financed a number of small Shan rebel groups. However, the K.M.T tries to keep the Shan armies small and weak by explicitly refusing to allow any Shan opium caravan larger than one hundred mules to enter Thailand. This policy was evidently adopted after the 1967 Opium War. (293) Perhaps the most notable victim of this new policy was the Shan State Army (S.S.A). Founded by students from Mandalay and Rangoon Universities, it began operating in the mountains west of Lashio in 1958 (294) but did not start smuggling opium until five years later. After shipping 160 kilos of raw opium to Thailand in 1964, the Shan State Army increased its shipments year by year, reaching a peak of 1,600 kilos in 1967. But with the exception of 80 kilos it managed to slip by the K.M.T in 1969, this was its last shipment of opium to Thailand. Relations between the K.M.T and S.S.A had never been good, but the K.M.T embargo on S.S.A opium smuggling brought relations to a new low. When the K.M.T Third Army tried to establish a radio post in S.S.A territory in late 1969, the two groups engaged in a series of indecisive running battles for over three months. (295)
The CIA has played an equally cynical role inside the Shan States. Although it too has no real interest in an independent Shan land, the CIA has supported individual rebel armies in order to accomplish its intelligence gathering missions inside China. Without the CIA's tolerance of its opium-arms traffic, the Shan National Army could never have occupied so much of Kentung State. However, the CIA refused to grant the S.N.A enough direct military aid to drive the Burmese out of the state and reestablish public order. During the 1950's the CIA had tried to turn the eastern Shan States into an, independent strategic bastion for operations along China's southern frontier by using K.M.T troops to drive the Burmese army out of the area. But after the K.M.T were driven out of Burma in 1961, the CIA apparently decided to adopt a lower profile for its clandestine operations. While direct military support for the S.N.A might have produced new diplomatic embarrassments, an informal alliance and the resulting breakdown of public order in Kengtung were entirely compatible with CIA interests. After the S.N.A forced the Burmese army into the cities and towns, the CIA's forward radio posts floated securely in this sea of chaos while its cross-border espionage teams passed through Burma virtually undetected. (296)
In the final analysis, the Thai government probably bears the major responsibility for the chaos. Most Thai leaders have a deep traditional distrust for the Burmese, who have frequently invaded Thailand in past centuries. No Thai student graduates from elementary school without reading at least one gruesome description of the atrocities committed by Burmese troops when they burned the royal Thai capital at Ayuthia in 1769. Convinced that Burma will always pose a potential threat to its security, the Thai government has granted asylum to all of the insurgents operating along the Burma-Thailand border and supplied some of the groups with enough arms and equipment to keep operating. This low level insurgency keeps the Burmese army tied down defending its own cities, while the chaotic military situation in Burma's borderland regions gives Thailand a reassuring buffer zone. Although Thai leaders have given Rangoon repeated assurances that they will not let Burmese exiles "abuse their privileges" as political refugees, they have opened a number of sanctuary areas for guerrillas near the Burmese border. (297) The Huei Krai camp north of Chiangrai has long been the major sanctuary area for Shan rebels from Kengtung State. The area surrounding K.M.T Third Army headquarters at Tam Ngop is the most important sanctuary for rebel armies from northeastern Burma: Gen. Mo Heng's Shan United Revolutionary Army, Brig. Gen. Jimmy Yang's Kokang Revolutionary Force, Gen. Zau Seng's Kachin Independence Army, Gen. Jao Nhu's Shan State Army, and General Kyansone's Pa-0 rebels are all crowded together on a few mountaintops under the watchful eye of K.M.T General Ly. Entrances to these camps are tightly guarded by Thai police, and the guerrillas have to notify Thai authorities every time they enter or leave. Even though activities at these camps are closely watched, Shan rebel leaders claim that Thai authorities have never made any attempt to interfere with their opium caravans. While foreign journalists are barred, Chiangmai opium buyers are free to come and go at will. (298)
In an effort to cope with an impossible situation, the Burmese government has adopted a counterinsurgency program that has legitimized some aspects of the opium trade and added to the general political instability. The Burmese army has organized local militia forces (K.K.Y), granted them the right to use government-controlled towns as opium trading centers and major highways as smuggling routes and has removed all restrictions on the refining of opium. It is their pious hope that the local militias' natural greed will motivate them to battle the rebels for control of the opium hills. The logic behind this policy is rather simple; if the local militia control most of the opium harvest, then the rebels will not have any money to buy arms in Thailand and will have to give up their struggle. Despite its seductive simplicity, the program has had a rather mixed record of success. While it has weaned a number of rebel armies to the government side, just as many local militia have become rebels. On the whole, the program has compounded the endemic warlordism that has become the curse of the Shan States without really reducing the level of rebel activity.
In addition, the Burmese government has sound economic reasons for tolerating the opium traffic. After seizing power from a civilian government in 1962, Commander in Chief of the Army Gen. Ne Win decreed a series of poorly executed economic reforms, which crippled Burma's foreign trade and disrupted the consumer economy. After eight years of the "Burmese Way to Socialism," practically all of the consumer goods being sold in Burma's major cities--everything from transistor radios and motor bikes to watches, pens, and toothpaste-were being smuggled across the border from Thailand on mule caravans. On the way down to Thailand, Shan smugglers carry opium, and on the way back they carry U.S. weapons and consumer goods. By the time a bottle of CocaCola reaches Mandalay in northern Burma it can cost a dollar, and a Japanese toothbrush goes for $3.50 in Rangoon. (299) Afraid of straining the patience of its already beleaguered consumers, the Burmese government has made no real effort to close the black markets or stop the smuggling. Opium has become one of the nation's most valuable export commodities, and without it the consumer economy would grind to a complete halt.
The opium traffic itself has contributed to the chaotic conditions inside the Shan States by changing the military leaders from legitimate nationalist rebels into apolitical mercenaries. The case of Maj. On Chan is perhaps the most striking example. During the early 1960's he joined the Shan National Army and remained one of its more effective local commanders until the coalition split apart in 1965-1966. After deserting from the S.N.A, On Chan and about three hundred of his men were hired as mercenaries by the CIA and moved across the Mekong into northwestern Laos, where they fought in the Secret Army, disguised as local Lu militia. Two or three years later On Chan and his men deserted the Secret Army and moved back into the Shan States. With the ample supply of arms and ammunition be brought back to Burma, On Chan carved an independent fief out of eastern Kengtung. He has remained there ever since, trading in opium and fighting only to defend his autonomy. (300)
Since the Burmese army offers such convenient opium-trading facilities, corrupted rebel leaders frequently desert the cause for the more comfortable life of a government militia commander. While Chan Sheefu is the most notorious example of this kind of Shan military leader, the case of Yang Sun is much more typical. Yang Sun started his career in the opium trade as a government militia leader, but switched to the rebel side in the mid 1960's and opened a base camp in the Huei Krai region of northern Thailand. Several years later he changed his allegiance once more and soon became the most powerful government militia leader in Kengtung State. Although rebel leaders have tried to woo him back to their side, he is making so much money from the opium traffic as a militia leader that he has consistently brushed their overtures aside.
Thanks to the good graces of the Burmese army, Yang Sun patrols a strategic piece of geography between Kengtung City and the Thai border. Caravans traveling along government-controlled roads from the opium-rich Kokang and Wa states to the north have to pass through this area on their way to opium refineries in the three-border region to the south. Caravans belonging to both Law Sik Han, a powerful militia leader from Kokang, and Bo Loi Oo, the influential Wa States' militia commander, are required to stop in Kengtung City to have their opium weighed and taxed by Yang Sun before they can proceed down the road to their private opium refineries in Tachilek. In addition, Yang Sun's troops provide armed escorts between Kengtung City and the border for private merchant caravans out of the Kokang and Wa states. For a nominal fee of six dollars per kilo of opium, merchants are guaranteed safe conduct by the Burmese government and protection from bandits and rebels. (301)
Although some of the opium carried by Shan rebels and the K.M.T is smuggled across the border in raw form, most of the militia's opium is processed into smoking opium, morphine, or heroin at Shan militia (K.K.Y) refineries in the Tachilek 'area before being shipped into nearby Thailand. Yang Sun operates a large opium refinery about six miles north of Tachilek capable of producing both no. 3 and no. 4 heroin. (302) This laboratory is only one of fourteen in the Tachilek region, which, according to a 1971 CIA report, processed a total of thirty tons of raw opium during 1970. (303) While this represents a considerable increase from the mid 1960s when Chan Shee-fu's morphine factory at Ving Ngun was the only known refinery, thirty tons of raw opium is still only a tiny fraction of Burma's total estimated exports of five hundred tons. The relative weakness of Burma's processing industry is one of the legacies of Chan Shee-fu's defeat in the 1967 Opium War. Since KMT caravans have continued to ship about 90 percent of the Shan States' opium to Thailand and Laos for processing in their own refineries or transshipment, the growth of Tachilek's laboratories has been hampered by a shortage of raw materials.
Until public order is restored to the Shan States, there is absolutely no chance that Burma's opium production can be eradicated or its heroin laboratories shut down. It seems highly unlikely that the squabbling Shan rebels will ever be capable of driving the Burmese army completely out of the Shan States. It seems even more unlikely that the profit oriented militia commanders would ever be willing to divert enough effort from their flourishing opium businesses to make a serious effort at cleaning the rebels out of the hills. Despite its claim of success, the Burmese army is even further away from victory than it was a decade ago.
If we eliminate the Burmese army and the Shan military groups, there are only two possible contenders for ultimate control over the Shan States-the Burmese Communist party and a coalition of right-wing rebels led by Burma's former prime minister U Nu. A year after he fled to Thailand in April 1969, U Nu concluded an alliance with Mon and right-wing Karen insurgents active in the Burma-Thailand frontier areas and announced the formation of a revolutionary army, the United National Liberation Front (U.N.L.F). (304) To raise money U Nu and his assistants (among them William Young, now retired from the CIA) circled the globe, contacting wealthy financiers and offering future guarantees on lucrative oil and mineral concessions in exchange for cash donations. Burma's future was mortgaged to the hilt, but by the end of 1970 U Nu had a war chest of over $2 million. (305)
With the tacit support of the Thai government, U Nu built up his guerrilla army inside Thailand: three major bases were opened up along the Thailand-Burma border at Mae Hong Son, Mae Sariang and Mae Sot. (306) Recognizing Burma's ethnic diversity, U Nu divided the eastern part of the country into three separate military zones: the Mon and Burmese areas in the southeast, the Karen region in the east, and the Shan and Kachin states in the northeast. (307)
While the U.N.L.F alliance gave U Nu a strong basis for operations in the Mon and Karen areas, he has almost no influence in the northeast. There are so many Shan armies that it would be meaningless to ally with any one of them, and they arc so divided among themselves that forming a coalition required special tactics. (308) Instead of allying with established rebel groups as they had done with the Mons and Karens, U Nu and his assistants assigned William Young and Gen. Jimmy Yang the task of building an independent rebel force inside the Shan States.
A member of Kokang State's royal family, Jimmy Yang began organizing guerrilla resistance in 1962. Since his family had worked closely with the K.M.T for more than a decade, he was able to finance his infant rebellion by sending caravans loaded with Kokang opium to Thailand under the protection of General Ly's Third Army. After three years of fighting in Kokang, Jimmy and some of his men moved to northern Thailand and built a base camp in the shadow of General Ly's headquarters at Tam Ngop. While his men raised chickens and smuggled opium in the mountains, Jimmy moved down to Chiangmai and became assistant manager of the most luxurious tourist hotel in northern Thailand, the Rincome Hotel.
Jimmy had known U Nu in Rangoon, and when the former prime minister first arrived in Thailand Jimmy renewed the friendship by soliciting a $10,000 contribution for democracy's cause from General Ly. (309) U Nu returned the favor several months later by appointing Brig. Gen. Jimmy Yang commander of the U.N.L.F's northern region, the Kachin and Shan States, and reportedly allocated $200,000 from the war chest to build up an effective Shan army. (310)
Rather than trying to build up the five-thousand-man army he thought would be necessary to steamroll the hundred or so armed bands that roamed the hills, Jimmy decided to forge an elite strike force of about a hundred men to guarantee his security while he traveled through the strife-torn Shan States negotiating with bandits, opium armies, rebels, and government militia. In exchange for their allegiance, he planned to offer them officers' commissions and government jobs in U Nu's administration-to-be. By scrupulously avoiding the opium traffic and relying on U Nu's war chest for financial support, Jimmy hoped to remain aloof from the opium squabbles and territorial disputes that had destroyed past coalitions. Once the fighting was over, Jimmy intended to return the sawbwas to power. They would appeal to their dutiful subjects to come out of the hills; the rebels would lay down their arms and order would be restored. (311)
To implement his plan, Jimmy recruited about a hundred young Shans and equipped them with some of the best military equipment available on Chiangmai's black market: U.S. M2 carbines at $150 apiece, M-16 rifles at $250 each, U.S. M-79 grenade launchers at $500 apiece, high grade U.S. jungle uniforms, and Communist Chinese tennis sneakers. General Ly contributed some Nationalist Chinese training manuals on jungle warfare. Confidently, Jimmy set September 1971 as his target date for jumping off into the Shan States, but almost from the beginning his program was hampered by the same problems that had destroyed similar efforts in the past. When September 1971 finally arrived, Jimmy's men were deserting, potential alliances had fallen through, and he had been forced to postpone his departure indefinitely. (312)
Jimmy Yang's men deserted because of the same type of racial and political conflicts that had promoted disunity among previous Shan armies. While almost all his troops were Shans, Jimmy's instructors, like himself and most residents of Kokang, were ethnic Chinese. Since ethnic chauvinism is the most important tenet of Shan nationalist ideology, internal discord was almost inevitable.
In April 1971 Jimmy's deputy commander, a Shan named Hsai Kiao, met with members of U Nu's revolutionary government in Bangkok and presented Shan grievances. U Nu's assistants offered no major concessions, and several weeks later Hsai Kiao moved to Chiangrai, opening his own camp in the Huei Krai area. Shan recruits continued to desert to Hsai Kiao, and by September U Nu's northern command was a complete shambles. Jimmy was losing his men to Hsai Kiao, but Hsai Kiao, lacking any financial backing whatsoever, was sending them off to work in the mines at Lampang to raise money, Hsai Kiao plans to save enough money to buy a shipment of automatic weapons in Laos, pack them into the Shan States, and trade them for opium. With the profits from the opium arms trade he eventually hopes to build up a large enough army to drive the Burmese out of Kengtung State. (313)
While Jimmy Yang's troop training program had its problems, his attempts at forging political alliances with local warlords encountered an insuperable obstacle-William Young. After he finished a fund-raising tour in the United States, William Young returned to Chiangmai and began building support for U Nu among the hill tribes of the eastern Shan States. Prior to making contact with Lahu and Wa leaders, Young spent months gathering precise data on every armed band in the eastern Shan States. He concluded that there were about seventeen thousand Lahu and Wa tribesmen armed with modern weapons. If only a fraction of these could be mobilized, U Nu would have the largest army in eastern Burma. (314)
Young began sending personal representatives to meet with the more important tribal leaders and arranged round table discussions in Chiangmai. In the mountains north of Kengtung City, the Young name still commands respect from Lahu and Wa Christians, and the enthusiastic response was to be expected. (315) However, Young's success among the animist Lahu south and west of Kengtung City was unexpected. The Young family's divinity in these areas had been preempted by an innovative Lahu shaman, known as the "Man God" or "Big Shaman." In mid 1970, when William Young convened an assembly of Lahu chiefs at Chiangmai, the "Man God" sent one of his sons as a representative. When it was his turn to speak, the son announced that the "Man God" was willing to join with the other Lahu tribes in a united effort to drive the Burmese out of the Shan States. (316)
After receiving similar commitments from most of the important Lahu and Wa leaders in Burma, Young approached U Nu's war council without Jimmy's knowledge and requested $60,000 for equipment and training. The council agreed with the proviso that the money would be channeled through Jimmy Yang. In August 1970 Young arranged a meeting between himself, Jimmy, and the tribal leaders to reach a final understanding. When Jimmy adopted a condescending attitude toward the Lahu and Wa, they conferred privately with Young, and he advised them to withhold their allegiance. Young says that all the chiefs agreed to boycott the U.N.L.F until they were confident of full support and claims that none of them are willing to work with Jimmy. (317)
Given these enormous problems, neither U Nu nor Jimmy Yang seems to have a very promising future in the Shan States. In fact, Jimmy feels that the Burmese Communist party and its leader Naw Seng are the only group capable of restoring order to the Shan States. According to Jimmy, Naw Seng and the Communists have all the assets their rivals seem to lack. First, Naw Seng is one of the best guerrilla strategists in Burma. During World War II he fought behind Japanese lines with General Wingate's British commando unit, the Chindits, and was awarded the Burma Gallantry Medal for heroism. Like many Kachin veterans, he enlisted in the First Kachin Rifles after the war, and quickly rose to the rank of captain and adjutant commander. (318) The First Kachin Rifles were sent into Communist-controlled areas, and Naw Seng played such an important role in the pacification program that one British author called him "the terror of the Pyinmana Communists." However, many prominent Burmese took a dim view of Kachins attacking Burmese villages under any circumstances, and there were reports that Naw Seng was about to be investigated by a court of inquiry. Faced with an uncertain future, Naw Seng and many of his troops mutinied in February 1949 and joined with Karen rebels fighting in eastern and central Burma. (319)After leading a series of brilliant campaigns, Naw Seng was driven into Yunnan by the Burmese army in 1949. Little was heard of him until 1969, when he became commander of a Communist hill tribe alliance called the Northeast Command and went on the offensive in the Burma-China borderlands. (320) In March 1970 the Communists captured three border towns, and by mid 1971 they controlled a four hundred-mile-long strip of territory paralleling the Chinese border.
While Naw Seng's tactical skills are an important asset, Jimmy Yang feels that the Communists' social policies are the key to their success. Instead of compromising with the warlords, the Communists have driven them out of all the areas under their control. This policy has apparently resulted in a number of violent confrontations with the Kachin Independence Army, the remnants of Chan Shee-fu's forces, and government militi leaders such as Law Sik Han and Bo Loi Oo. In each case, the Communists have bested their rivals and pushed them steadily westward. Once in control of some new territory, the Communists have abolished the opium tax, which has impoverished the hill tribes for the last fifteen years, and encouraged the people to substitute other cash crops and handicraft work. In addition, the Communists have distributed salt, started a public health program, and restored public order. As a result of these measures, they have been able to develop a mass following, something that has eluded other army groups for so long. However, a crop substitution program takes up to five years to develop fully even under the best of circumstances, and so opium production has continued. Hill traders buy opium from villagers inside the Communist zones and transport it to such market towns as Lashio and Kengtung, where it is sold to government militia, K.M.T buyers, and private opium armies. (321)
Gen. Ouane Rattikone:
Winner Takes Something
In the aftermath of General Ouane's victory in the 1967 Opium War, Laos emerged as the
most important processing center of raw opium in the Golden Triangle region. The
stunning defeat General Ouane dealt his enemies on the Ban Khwan battlefield forced the
KMT to drop its duties on Burmese opium destined for Laos. Freed from the KMT's
discriminatory taxation, the Laotian army was able to impose its own import duties.
Subsequently, opium refineries in the Ban Houei Sai region increased their processing of
Burmese opium. General Ouane's prominent role in the battle attracted a good deal of unfavorable publicity in the international press, and in 1967 and 1968 he was visited by representatives from Interpol, a multinational police force that plays a major role in combating narcotics smuggling. The authorities were upset that the commander in chief of a national army was promoting the international drug traffic with such enthusiasm, such vigor. Wouldn't the good general consider retiring from the opium business? General Ouane was stunned by the naivete of their request and gave them a stern lecture about the economic realities of opium. Recalling the incident several years later, General Ouane said:
"Interpol visited me in 1967 and 1968 about the opium. I told them there would be commerce as long as the opium was grown in the hills. They should pay the tribesmen to stop growing opium....
I told Interpol that opium was grown in a band of mountains from Turkey to the Tonkin Gulf. Unless they stopped the opium from being grown all their work meant nothing. I told Interpol to buy tractors so we could clear the trees off the plains. Then we would move the montagnards out of the mountains onto the plains. It's too warm there, and there would be no more opium growing. In the mountains the people work ten months a year to grow 100,000 kip [$200] worth of opium and rice. And if the weather is bad, or the insects come, or the rain is wrong they will have nothing. But on the plains the people can have irrigated rice fields, grow vegetables, and make handicrafts. On the plain in five months of work they can make 700,000 kip [$1,400] a year.
I told Interpol that if they didn't do something about the people in the mountains the commerce Would continue. Just as the Mekong flows downstream to Saigon, so the opium would continue to flow. But they simply wanted me to stop. And when I explained this reality to them they left my office quite discontented." (322)
Despite his apparent cockiness, General Ouane interpreted the visit as a warning and began to exercise more discretion. When the authors inquired about his current involvement in the opium traffic he admitted his past complicity but claimed that he had given up his interest in the business.
Before 1967 opium caravans had followed Chan Shee-fu's route entering Laos north of Muong Mounge, traveling down the old caravan trail, and crossing the Mekong into Thailand at Chiang Saen. To conceal Laos's growing role in the traffic, General Ouane apparently discouraged caravans from crossing into Laos and ordered them to unload their cargoes on the Burmese side of the Mekong River. Residents of Chiang Saen, Thailand, report that the heavily armed caravans that used to ford the Mekong and ride through the center of town in broad daylight several times a year have not passed through since 1967. (323) Some Laotian air force officers have described an opium-arms exchange they carried out in 1968 that illustrates the complexity of the new system: they loaded crates of weapons (M- Is, M- I 6s, M-79 grenade launchers, and recoil-less rifles) into an air force C-47 in Vientiane; flew to Ban Houei Sai, where they transferred the crates to a Laotian air force helicopter; and then flew the weapons to a group of Shans camped on the Burmese side of the Mekong north of Ban Khwan. The opium had already been sent downriver by boat and was later loaded aboard the C-47 and flown to Vientiane. (324)
When Golden Triangle refineries began producing high-grade no. 4 heroin in 1969-1970, access to seemingly limitless supplies of Burmese opium enabled Ban Houei Sai manufacturers to play a key role in these developments. At the time of the 1967 Opium War, morphine and no. 3 heroin were being processed at a large refinery near Ban Houei Sai and at five smaller ones strung out along the Mekong north of that city. In August 1967 one Time-Life correspondent cabled New York this description of these refineries:
"The opium refineries along the Mekong mentioned in Vanderwicken's take [earlier cable] are manned almost entirely by pharmacists imported by the syndicate from Bangkok and Hong Kong. They live moderately good lives (their security is insured by Laotian troops in some locations) and are paid far above what they would receive working in pharmacies in their home cities. Most apparently take on the job by way of building a stake and few are believed to get involved personally in the trade. Except, of course, to reduce the raw opium to morphine." (325)
At the same time another Time-Life correspondent reported that "the kingpin of the Laotian opium trade is General Ouane.... He is reputed to own one of Laos' two major opium refineries, near Houei Sai, and five smaller refineries scattered along the Mekong. (326)
As the demand for no. 4 heroin among G.I's in South Vietnam grew, skilled Chinese chemists were brought in from Hong Kong to add the dangerous ether-precipitation process and upgrade production capability. After the five smaller laboratories along the Mekong were consolidated into a single operation, General Ouane's refinery at Ban Houei Tap, just north of Ban Houei Sai, became the largest, most efficient heroin laboratory in the tri-border area and its trade-mark, the Double U-0 Globe brand, soon became infamous. (327) According to a CIA report leaked to the press in June 1971, it was capable of processing a hundred kilos of raw opium per day. (328) Under the supervision of a skilled chemist, this output would yield ten kilos of no. 4 heroin per day and exceed the combined production of all fourteen opium refineries in Tachilek, Burma. Although belated American gestures forced the chemists to abandon the building in Ban Houei Tap in July 1971, it reportedly moved to a more clandestine location. The refinery operating under Maj. Chao La's protection north of Nam Keung was also forced to move in July, but it, too, has probably relocated in a more discreet area. (329)
Moreover, Ban Houci Sai opium merchants have become the major suppliers of morphine base and raw opium for heroin laboratories in Vientiane and Long Tieng. As the massive bombing campaign and the refugee relocation program reduced the amount of Meo opium available for heroin in northeastern Laos, Gen. Vang Pao's officers were forced to turn to northwestern Laos for supplies of Burmese opium in order to keep the Long Tieng laboratory running at full capacity. (330) In addition, there are reliable reports that Gen. Ouane Rattikone has been supplying the raw materials for a heroin laboratory operating in the Vientiane region managed by a Sino-Vietnamese entrepreneur, Huu Tim Heng. (331)
Despite the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, Laotian prospects for continuing success in the international heroin traffic appear to be excellent. Although most American narcotics officials hope that the Golden Triangle's flourishing heroin laboratories will be abandoned and become covered over with dense jungle once the G.I's have left Vietnam, there is every indication that Laotian drug merchants are opening direct pipelines to the United States. In 1971, two important shipments of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin, which Saigon police say is manufactured in the Ban Houei Sai area, were seized in the United States:
1. On April 5 a package containing 7.7 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin was seized in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. It had been sent through the military postal service from Bangkok, Thailand.
2. On November 11, a Filipino diplomat attached to his nation's embassy in Vientiane and a Chinese merchant from Bangkok were arrested in New York City with 15.5 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin shortly after they arrived from Laos.
While these seizures established the fact that Laotian heroin was reaching the United States, they were otherwise unexceptional cases. However, the seizure of Prince Sopsaisana's sixty kilos in Paris provided ominous evidence of connections between Laotian heroin manufacturers, Corsican gangsters in Vientiane, Corsican syndicates in France, and American heroin distributors. American narcotics officials are convinced that Corsican syndicates in France and Latin America are the most important suppliers of heroin for American distributors. But, hopelessly addicted to the myth of Turkey's importance, they have never investigated the links between Corsican syndicates in France and Corsican-French gangsters in Vientiane. This has been a costly oversight. For, in fact, Vientiane's Corsican gangsters are the connection between Laos's heroin laboratories and heroin distributors in the United States.
When the Corsican charter airlines were forced out of business in 1965, most of the Corsican and French gangsters stayed in Vientiane waiting for something new to turn up. "Doing less well than previously," reported a Time-Life correspondent in September 1965, "are opium traders, mainly Corsican's who since the fall of grafting Phourni have found operations more difficult. Some opium exporters have even opened bistros in Vientiane to tide them over until the good bad old days return-if they ever [do]." (332) A few of the bosses managed to stay in the drug business by serving as contact men, other Corsican's found jobs working for the Americans, and some just hung around.
After months of drinking and carousing in Vientiane's French bars, five down and-out Corsican gangsters decided to make one last, desperate bid for the fortunes that had been snatched out of their grasp. Led by a Corsican named Le Rouzic, who had reportedly owned a piece of a small charter airline, and his mechanic, Housset, the five men planned and executed the boldest crime in the history of modern Laos-the Great Unarmored Car Robbery. On the morning of March 15, 1966, two clerks from the Banque de I'Indochine loaded $420,000 cash and $260,000 in checks into an automobile, and headed to Wattay Airport to put the money aboard a Royal Air Lao flight for Bangkok. As soon as the bank car stopped at the airport, a jeep pulled up alongside and three of the Corsicans jumped out. Throwing handfuls of ground pepper into the clerks' faces, they fled with the money while their victims floundered about, sneezing and rubbing their eyes.
Laotian police showed a rather uncharacteristic efficiency in their handling of the case; in less than twenty-four hours they recovered almost all the money and arrested Le Rouzic, his mistress, and three of his accomplices. Acting on information supplied by Vientiane police, Thai police arrested Housset in Bangkok and found $3,940 hidden in his socks. (333) At a press conference following these arrests, the Laotian police colonel in charge of the investigation credited his astounding success to "honest citizens" and thanked the French community for "immediate cooperation." (334) Or, as one informed observer later explained, Vientiane's Corsican bosses informed on Le Rouzic and Housset in order to avoid a police crackdown on their involvement in the narcotics traffic.
Unlike these unsavory riffraff, most of Vientiane's Corsican-French bosses have respectable jobs and move in the best social circles. Roger Zoile, who owned one of the three largest Corsican charter airlines, is now president of Laos Air Charter. (335) During the 1950's and early 1960's, Zoile worked closely with the Paul Louis Levet syndicate, then smuggling morphine base from Southeast Asia to heroin laboratories in Germany, Italy, and France. Two other "Air Opium" pioneers still reside in Vientiane: Rene Enjabal, the former manager of "Babal Air Force," is now a pilot for one of Laos's many civil air lines, while Gerard Labenski, the former proprietor of the Snow Leopard Inn, "retired" to Laos in 1964 after serving four years in a Vietnamese prison for international narcotics smuggling. The co-managers of Vientiane's swingingest nightclub, The Spot, have a long history of involvement in the international drug traffic: Frangois Mittard headed one of the most powerful drug syndicates in Indochina until he was arrested for narcotics smuggling in 1960 and sentenced to five years in a Vietnamese prison; his co-manager, Michel Libert, was Paul Louis Levet's right hand man, and he served five years in a Thai prison after being arrested for drug smuggling in 1963. "My opium days are all in the past," Libert told a Thai undercover policeman in Vientiane some time after his release from prison. "Let me convince you. I'll work for you as an informer and help you make arrests to show you I'm honest." But the Thai policeman knew Libert too well to be taken in, and not wanting to become a pawn in some Corsican vendetta, refused the offer. (336) In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics has identified another Vientiane resident, Lars Bugatti, a former Nazi officer, as a drug trafficker with close ties to Corsican international syndicates. (337) All of these men have been linked to the clandestine Corsican narcotics networks that ring the globe. Through the efforts of these syndicates large quantities of Laotian heroin are finding their way to France and from there to the United States.
The Prince Sopsaisana affair has provided us with a rare glimpse into the machinations of powerful Laotian politicians and French heroin syndicates. When the King of Laos announced Prince Sopsaisana's appointment as ambassador-designate to France on April 7, 1971, he set in motion a chain of events that led to Sopsaisana's downfall and the loss of $13.5 million of top-grade Laotian heroin. Confident that his diplomatic passport would protect him from the prying eyes of French customs Sopsaisana apparently decided to bankroll his stay in Paris by smuggling this cache of heroin into France. According to reliable diplomatic sources in Vientiane, Gen. Vang Pao entrusted Sopsaisana, his chief political adviser, with sixty kilos of pure no. 4 heroin from his laboratory at Long Tieng and a local French hotel manager and civic leader who is on intimate terms with many of the Lao elite found a connection in Paris. (338)
Before Sopsaisana's flight landed in Paris, however, a reliable Laotian source warned the French Embassy in Vientiane that the new ambassador would be carrying heroin in his luggage. After a discreet search by airport customs officials turned up the sixty kilos, the French Foreign Ministry asked the Laotian government to withdraw its arnbassador designate. Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna, repaying his political debts, tried to keep Sopsaisana in Paris, and it took the French weeks of intricate negotiations to secure his removal. When Sopsaisana returned to Vientiane in late June, he made a public statement claiming that his enemies had framed him by checking the heroin filled suitcase onto the flight without his knowledge. Privately, he accused Khamphan Panya, the assistant foreign minister, of being the villain in the plot. Sopsaisana's assertion that Khamphan framed him is utterly absurd, for Khamphan simply does not have $240,000 to throw away. However, until the ambitious Sopsaisana interfered, Khamphan had been assured the ambassadorship and had spent months preparing for his new assignment. He had even ordered the staff in Paris to have the Embassy refurbished and authorized a complete overhaul for the Mercedes limousine. (339)
Diplomatic sources in Vientiane report that he was outraged by Sopsaisana's appointment. And, only a few weeks after Sopsaisana returned in disgrace, the Laotian government announced that Khamphan Panya would be the new ambassador to France. (340)
If the heroin shipment had gotten through, the profits would have been enormous: the raw opium only cost Vang Pao about $30,000; Sopsaisana could sell the sixty kilos for $240,000 in Paris; Corsican smugglers could expect $1.5 million from American distributors; and street pushers in urban America would earn $13.5 million.
The important question for the United States, is, of course, how many similar shipments have gotten through undetected? Obviously if someone had not informed on Sopsaisana, his luggage would have been waved through French customs, the heroin delivered as planned to a Corsican syndicate, and Sopsaisana would be a respected member of Paris's diplomatic community. Another sixty kilos of "Marseille" heroin would have reached the United States and nobody would have been the wiser. But might have-been's did not happen, and suddenly here was more evidence of French gangsters in Vientiane finding ways to connect with Corsican syndicates in France. Unfortunately, the evidence was generally disregarded: the French government covered up the affair for diplomatic reasons, the international press generally ignored it, and the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics regarded it as a curiosity.
However, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics was not entirely to blame for its woeful ignorance about the logistics of the Laotian heroin trade. Throughout the 1950's and most of the 1960's, the bureau had concentrated its efforts in Europe and paid almost no attention to Southeast Asia, let alone Laos. However, as thousands of GI's serving in Vietnam became addicted to Laotian heroin, the bureau tried to adjust its priorities by sending a team of agents to Laos, but its investigations were blocked by the Laotian government, the State Department, and the CIA. (341) Although the Royal Laotian government had told the U.N. it was enforcing a "policy of absolute prohibition" of narcotics, it was in fact one of the few governments in the world with no laws against the growing, processing, and smoking of opium. Laos had become something of a free port for opium; convenient opium dens are found on every city block and the location of opium refineries is a matter of public knowledge. Laos's leading citizens control the opium traffic and protect it like a strategic national industry. Under these circumstances, the Laotian government could hardly be expected to welcome the Bureau of Narcotics with open arms.
While the Laotian government's hostility toward the bureau is understandable, the reticence shown by the CIA and the U.S. Embassy requires some explanation. According to U.S. narcotics agents serving in Southeast Asia, the bureau encountered a good deal of resistance from the CIA and the Embassy when it first decided to open an office in Vientiane. The Embassy claimed that American narcotics agents had no right to operate in Vientiane, since Laos had no drug laws of its own. The Embassy said that investigative work by the bureau would represent a violation of Laotian sovereignty, and refused to cooperate. (342) The U.S. Embassy was well aware that prominent Laotian leaders ran the traffic and feared that pressure on them to get out of the narcotics business might somehow damage the war effort. In December 1970- thousands of GI's in Vietnam were becoming addicted to heroin processed in laboratories protected by the Royal Laotian Army-the U.S. Ambassador to Laos, G. McMurtrie Godley III, told an American writer, "I believe the Royal Laotian Government takes its responsibility seriously to prohibit international opium traffic." (343)
When President Nixon issued his declaration of war on the international heroin traffic in mid 1971, the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane was finally forced to take action. Instead of trying to break up drug syndicates and purge the government leaders involved, however, the Embassy introduced legal reforms and urged a police crackdown on opium addicts. A new opium law, which was submitted to government ministries for consideration on June 8, went into effect on November 15. As a result of the new law, U.S. narcotics agents were allowed to open an office in early November-two full years after GI's started using Laotian heroin in Vietnam and six months after the first large seizures were made in the United States. Only a few days after their arrival, U.S. agents received a tip that a Filipino diplomat and Chinese businessman were going to smuggle heroin directly into the United States. (344) U.S. agents boarded the plane with them in Vientiane, flew halfway around the world, and arrested them with 15.5 kilos of no. 4 heroin in New York City, Even though these men were carrying a large quantity of heroin, they were still only messenger boys for the powerful Laotian drug merchants. But so far political expediency has been the order of the day, and the U.S. Embassy has made absolutely no effort to go after the men at the top. (345)
In the long run, the American anti-narcotics campaign may do more harm than good. Most of the American effort seems to be aimed at closing Vientiane's hundreds of wide-open opium dens and making life difficult for the average Laotian drug user (most of whom are opium smokers). The Americans are pressuring the Laotian police into launching a massive crackdown on opium smoking, and there is evidence that the campaign is getting underway. Since little money is being made available for detoxification centers or outpatient clinics, most of Vientiane's opium smokers will be forced to become heroin users. In a September 1971 interview, Gen. Ouane Rattikone expressed grave doubts about the wisdom of the American anti-opium. campaign:
Now they want to outlaw opium smoking. But if they outlaw opium, everyone in Vientiane will turn to heroin. Opium is not bad, but heroin is made with acid, which kills a man. In Thailand Marshal Sarit outlawed opium [1958-1959], and now everybody takes heroin in Thailand. Very bad. (346)
Although General Ouane's viewpoint may be influenced by his own interests, he is essentially correct.
In Hong Kong, Iran, and Thailand repressive anti opium. campaigns have driven the population to heroin and magnified the seriousness of the drug problem in all three nations. Vientiane's brand of no. 3 heroin seems to be particularly high in acid content, and has already produced some horribly debilitated zombie-addicts. One Laotian heroin pusher thinks that Vientiane's brand of no. 3 can kill a healthy man in less than a year. It would indeed be ironic if America's anti-drug campaign drove Laos's opium smokers to a heroin death while it left the manufacturers and international traffickers untouched.
NEXT
Conclusion
notes
211. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
212. Ibid.
213. Interview with Rev. Paul Lewis, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 7, 1971; interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
214. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
215. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
216. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
217. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang KhoUg District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
218. Adrian Cowell, "Report on a Five Month Journey in the State of Kengtung with the Shan National Army," typescript (1965).
219. Ibid.; For Eastern Economic Review, July 24, 1971, p. 40; interview with Adrian Cowell, London, England, March 9, 1971.
220. Cowell, "Report on a Five Month Journey in the State of Kengtung"; Far Eastern Economic Review, July 24, 1971, p. 40.
221. Cowell, "Report on a Five Month Journey in the State of Kengtune."
222. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chianamai, Thailand, September 14, 1971. (This story was confirmed by several former members of the SNA, leaders of other Shan armies, and residents of the Huei Krai area.)
223. Out of the seven hundred tons of raw opium produced in northeastern Burma, approximately five hundred tons are exported to Laos and Thailand. A maximum of 15 percent of the opium harvest is consumed by hill tribe addicts before it leaves the village (Gordon Young, The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, The Siam Society, Monograph no. 1 [Bangkok, 19621, p. 90). In addition, an estimated sixtyfive tons are smuggled into Burma's major cities for local consumption (interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971).
224. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
225. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
226. The New York Times, February 17, 1961, p. 4; ibid., February 18, 1961, p. 1.
227. Dommen, Conflict in Laos, p. 193; according to President Kennedy's Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern affairs, Roger Hilsman, Kennedy pressured Taiwan to withdraw the KNIT forces from Burma in order to improve relations with mainland China. However, Taiwan insisted that the evacuation be voluntary and so "a few bands of irregulars continued to roam the wilds (Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation,pp. 304- 305).
228. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
229. Paul T. Cohen, "Hill Trading in the Mountain Ranges of Northern Thailand" (1968). 230. Ibid., pp. 2-3.
231. Ibid., pp. I 1- 14.
232. Young, The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, p. 83. 233. F. W. Mote, "The Rural 'Haw' (Yurmanese Chinese) of Northern Thailand," p. 489.
234. Ministry of the Interior, Department of Public Welfare, "Report on the SocioEconomic Survey of the Hill Tribes in Northern Thailand," mimeographed (Bangkok, September 1962), p. 23.
235. Ibid., p. 37.
236. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971; The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1.
237. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
238. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
239. The Weekend Telegraph (London), March 10, 1967, p. 25.
240. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971; interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971; interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
241. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1; interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
242. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1; interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
243. Interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
244. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
245. Interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
246. Ibid.; The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2.
247. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2; interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
248. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
249. Ibid.
250. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1.
251. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
252. In May 1965, for example, The New York Times reported that General Ma was operating in a mountainous area of western Yunnan about twenty miles across the border from Ving Ngun and said that unmarked aircraft were making regular supply drops to his troops (The New York Times, May 18, 1965, p. I).
253. Interview with U Ba Thein, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 11, 1971.
254. The Weekend Telegraph (London), March 10, 1967, pp. 27-28. In September 1966 four hundred of General Tuan's best troops left their barren wooden barracks on top of Mae Salong mountain, saluted the gaudy, twenty-foot-high portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that decorates the parade ground and marched off into the jungle. After plunging across the Burma-China border into western Yunnan Province, General Tuan's troops fled back across the border, leaving eighty casualties behind (The New York Times, September 9, 1966, p. 3; The Weekend Telegraph, March 10, 1967, p. 27).
255. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
256. "Opium War-Take Three," dispatch from McCulloch, Hong Kong, filing from Saigon, to Time World, New York (August 22, 1967), p. 10.
257. Jeffrey Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand" (1971), p. 26.
258. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
259. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971; "Opium War Add," dispatch from McCulloch, Hong Kong, filing from Saigon, to Time World (August 23, 1967), p. 2.
260. "Opium War-Take Two," dispatch from Vanderwicken, Hong Kong, filing from Saigon, to Time World, New York (August 22, 1967), p. 4.
261. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1
262. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 27; interview with Lawrence Peet, Chiangrai, Thailand, August 9, 1971. (Lawrence Peet is a missionary who was working in Lahu villages near the caravan trail at the time of the Opium War.)
263. Interview with the principal of Ban Khwan public school, Ban Khwan, Laos, August 9, 1971.
264. Ibid.; interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
265. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 27.
266. Interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
267. Ibid.
268. "Opium War-Take Two," dispatch from Vanderwicken, p. 5.
269. Interview with Gen. Quane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
270. The New York Times, August 11, 1971, p. 1.
271. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 28.
272. "Opium War-Take Two," dispatch from Vanderwicken, pp. 4, 6; The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 19, 1972.
273. The New York Times, AuPust 11, 197 1, p. 1.
274. Interview with the principal of Ban Khwan Public School, Ban Khwan, Laos, August 9, 1971.
275. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," p. 28; Mote, "The Rural 'Haw' (Yunnanese Chinese) of Northern Thailand," pp. 488, 492-493.
276. Report of the United Nations Survey Team on the Economic and Social Needs of the OpiumProducing Areas in Thailand, p. 64.
277. Race, "China and the War in Northern Thailand," pp. 21-23.
278. Ibid.
279. Ibid., pp. 29-3 1; the insurgency in northern Thailand is regarded as the "most serious" military problem now facing the Thai government. (A Staff Report, U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia: January 1972, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1972, p. 14.)
280. Alfred W. McCoy, "Subcontracting Counterinsurgency: Academics in Thailand, 1954-1970," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, December 1970, pp. 64-67.
281. The Weekend Telegraph, p. 27.
282. According to a 1961 report by Gordon Young, 50 percent of the Meo, 20 percent of the Lahu, 75 percent of the Lisu, and 25 percent of the Akha tribesmen in northern Thailand have some fluency in Yunnanese. In contrast, only 5 percent of the Meo, 10 percent of the Lahu, 50 percent of the Lisu, and 25 percent of the Akha speak Thai or Laotian (Young, The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, p. 92).
283. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
284. Interview with General Krirksin, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
285. Interview with Col. Chen Mo-su, Chiang Khong District, Thailand, September 10, 1971.
286. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2; NBC Chronolog, April 28, 1972.
287. "Opium War-Take Three," dispatch from McCulloch, pp. 1-2.
288. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Cb~angmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
289. Interview with Hsai Kiao, ChiaNrai, Thailand, September 13, 1971.
290. Interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
291. Inter-view with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
292. The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee was a coalition of the rightwing Shan rebel groups formed mainly to provide effective joint action against the Burmese Communist party. This quotation from one of their communiqués conveys the group's conservative character and its anti-Communist first principles: "In the areas bordering Communist China in the Kachin and Northern Shan States particularly, armed bands trained and armed by the Communist Chinese composed mostly of China born Kachins and Shans are now very active.... The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee (SUPC) believes unity within the Union of Burma is definitely attainable and there is no reason why unity based on anti-communism, a belief in Parliamentary democracy and free economy, and last but not least, a unity based on the principles of Federalism cannot be achieved..." (The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee, "Communiqué No. 5," mimeographed [Shan State, March 14, 1968], pp. 12).
293. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971.
294. Communiqu6 from the Central Executive Committee, Shan State Progress Party, September 1971, pp. 1-2.
295. The Shan State Army admits to having transported the following quantities of raw opium from the northern Shan States to northern Thailand: 160 kilos in 1964, 290 kilos in 1965, 960 kilos in 1966, 1,600 kilos in 1967, nothing in 1968, and 80 kilos in 1969 (interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971).
296. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
297. Far Eastern Economic Review, 1968 Yearbook (14ong Kong), p. 123; Far Eastern Economic Review, 1971 Yearbook (Hong Kong), p. 108.
298. In September 1971, for example, the authors were invited to visit a Shan rebel camp near Huci Krai. However, on the morning of the visit (September 13) the authors received the following note: "Sorry to inform you that your trip with us to Mae Sai is not approved by the Thai authorities. Because it is near the Burmese border and it might be possible for the Burmese to know it. "It is better to stay within the regulations since the host, the Thais, is giving us a warm and friendly reception. [signed] Hsai Kiao"
299. Far Eastern Economic Review, May 1, 1971, pp. 47-49; ibid., April 17,1971,pp.19-20.
300. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971; interview with Jao Nhu, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
301. Interview with Hsai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, September 12, 1971; interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
302. Interview with Psai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, September 12, 1971.
303. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2.
304. Far Eastern Economic Review, December 12, 1970, p. 22; ibid., April 17, 1971, p. 20.
305. Newsweek, March 22, 1971, p. 42,1 interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
306. The New York Times, January 3, 1971, p. 9; ibid., January 31, 1971, p. 3.
307. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
308. It was not possible for U Nu to ally with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which controls much of Kachin State. Its leaders are Bantist Christians who resented U Nu's establishment of Buddhism as a state religion. The head of the KIA is a Baptist Christian named Zau Seng. He founded the Kachin Independence Army with his brothers in 1957, and with the exception of brief negotiations with Ne Win in 1963, he has been fighting ever since. When he is in Thailand trading in opium and buying arms, his brothers, Zau Dan and Zau Tu direct military operations in Kachin State. Unlike the Shans, Zau Seng is the undisputed leader of the conservative Kachins, and his troops control most of Kachin State. Relations between Zau Seng and the Kachin Communist leader, Naw Seng, are reportedly quite hostile.
309. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
310. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
311. Interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
312. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 14, 1971.
313. Interview with Hsai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, Sentember 13, 1971; interview with Brig. Gen. Tommy Clift, Bangkok, Thailand, September 21, 1971.
314. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
315. Interview with Hsai Kiao, Chiangrai, Thailand, September 13, 1971.
316. It appears that the Young family is revered mainly by the Black Lahu of northern Kengtung State and western Yunnan. The original prophecy of the White God was made by a Black Lahu, and the Youngs had a remarkable conversion rate among them. In contrast, the Red Lahu have generally remained animist and regard the "Man God" as their living deity. The "Man God" has his headquarters west of Mong Hsat and is influential among the Red Lahu of southern Kengtung State. The terms "red" and "black" derive from the fact that different Lahu subgroups wear different-colored clothes. On the other hand, the term "Red" Meo is a political term used to designate Communist Meo insurgents. Many Red Lahu tribesmen have now become afraid that their ethnolinguistic designation may be misinterpreted as a political label. Red Lahu tribesmen in northern Thailand usually claim to be Black Lahu when questioned by anthropologists. Thus, when the "Man God's" son spoke, he said that the Red Lahu were not Communists as many people thought and would willingly join their brother Lahu in the struggle against Ne Win (interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971).
317. Ibid.
318. Tinker, The Union of Burma, pp. 38, 395.
319. Ibid., pp. 40-41.
320. Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram 2, no. 3 (March-April 1971), 6.
321. The Burmese Communist party's (BCP) reasons for abolishing the opium trade are very pragmatic: 1. Since the BCP is a political enemy of the Burmese government, the KMT, and the Shan rebels, it would be impossible for it to send an opium caravan into Thailand even if it wanted to. 2. Continuing the exploitative opium tax would alienate the BCP from the people. 3. Since Shan rebels and government militia are only interested in occupying opiumproducing territories, opium eradication weakens their desire to retake lost territory (interview with Jimmy Yang, Chiangmai, Thailand, August 12, 1971).
322. Interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
323. Interview with residents of Chiang Saen, Thailand, August 1971.
324. Interview with officers in the Royal Laotian Air Force, Vientiane, Laos, JulyAugust 1971.
325. "Opium War Add," dispatch from McCulloch, p. 2.
326. "Opium War-Take 2," dispatch from Vanderwicken, p. 6.
327. According to a U.S. narcotics analyst, General Ouane's control over the opium traffic in the Ban Houei Sai region was further improved in 1968 when Colonel Khampay, a loyal Ouane follower, was appointed regional commander. Colonel Khampay reportedly devoted most of his military resources to protecting the Ban Houei Tap refinery and moving supplies back and forth between Ban Houei Sai and the refinery (interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, New Haven, Connecticut, May 3, 1972); The Evening, Star, Washington, D.C., June 19, 1972.
328. The New York Times, June 6, 1971, p. 2.
329. Interview with William Young, Chiangmai, Thailand, September 8, 1971.
330. The attack on Long Tieng in early 1972 has inevitably created problems for narcotics dealings among Vang Pao's troops. It is entirely possible that they are no longer in the heroin business, but it will require time before we know whether they have reopened their laboratory somewhere else.
331. Interview with Elliot K. Chan, Vientiane, Laos, August 15, 1971.
332. Cabled dispatch from Shaw, Vientiane (Hong Kong Bureau), to Time, Inc., received September 16-17, 1965.
333. Lao Presse (Vientiane: Ministry of Information, #56/66), March 16, 1966.
334. Lao Presse (Vientiane: Ministry of Information, #58/66), March 18, 1966.
335. Direction du Protocole, Ministre des Affaires ttrang6res, "Liste des Personality Lao," mimeographed (Rovaume du Laos: n.d.), p.155.
336. Interview with a Thai police official, Bangkok, Thailand, September 1971.
337. Interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, New Haven, Conn., May 3 - 1972.
338. Interview with Western dir)lomatic official, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971; interview with Third World diplomatic official, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971 (this account of the incident has been corroborat(- .d by reports received by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [Interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, New Haven, Connecticut, November 18, 19711) -, interview with a Laotian political observer, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971.
339. Interview with a Laotian political observer, Vientiane, Laos, August 1971.
340. Lao Presse (Vientiane: Ministry of Information, #1566/71), September 6, 1971.
341. Interview with an agent, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Southeast Asia, September 1971.
342. Ibid.
343. Hamilton-Paterson, The Greedy War, p. 194.
344. Far Eastern Economic Review, December 4, 1971, pp. 40-41.
345. In its July 19, 1971, issue, Newsweek magazine hinted that the United States had used its "other means of persuasion" to force Gen. Ouane Rattikone into retirement. This suggestion is based only on the imagination of Newsweek's New York editorial staff. According to the Vientiane press corps, Newsweek cabled its Vientiane correspondent for confirmation of this story and he replied that Ouane's retirement had been planned for over a year (which it was). Reliable diplomatic sources in Vientiane found Newsweek's suggestion absurd and General Ouane himself flatly denied that there had been any pressure on him to retire (Newsweek, July 19, 1971, pp. 23-24).
346. Interview with Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.
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