The Hunt for Khun Sa

Who better to review a book about the hunt for Khun Sa than one of the men who was there, published in SHAN Drug Watch.

The Hunt for Khun Sa: Drug
Lord of the Golden Triangle,
Ron Felber, Trine Day LLC,
www.trineday.com (2011)
The price is a bit steep for
people like myself, 795 baht
($ 26.5). But I bought it right
away when I found it among
the book shelves at one of
Bangkok’s Asia Books
stores.
It took me about 8 hours to
finish its 240 pages, together
with Foreword and Index.
Hardly a page-turner, one
might say.
It gives you an idea of how
the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA), particularly
its Group 41 that had
launched an operation codenamed
Tiger Trap against
Khun Sa, worked.
The subject of the book however
isn’t so much Khun Sa
but the United States government
that “publicly states one
policy but through its agencies
promotes the opposite
for geopolitical reasons.”
It is also critical of the War
on Drugs, first declared by
President Nixon on 17 June
1971. It “compromises our
Constitution, leaving our valiantly
secured rights degraded.”
It also “has been unsuccessful
by any social
measure.”
One example given was Lu
Hsu-Shui aka Vichien
Wachirakaphan of Bangkok,
known as one of the “King of
Kings”, according to The Underground
Empire by James
Mills. The DEA had ample
evidence to take him. But in
the end its Operation Durian
against Lu was shut down by
the CIA “to allow the Confidential
Informant’s use in a
high-level, sensitive national
security operation.” The Confidential
Informant concerned was Lu, known by Bangkok¡¯s
China town as Lok Sui.
Altogether, I'm glad to have
read it. But I'm also disappointed.
I have nothing against a
person's opinions. But Mr
Felber will agree a writer has
the duty to get his facts right.
Unfortunately, The Hunt for
Khun Sa's writer has many
of his facts wrong.
Here are some of the most
obvious ones:
. The writer maintains the
Thai attack on Ban
Hintaek, Khun Sa's former
base, took place on 11 September
1983 (P.7). The correct
date is 21 January 1981.
He also said Khun Sa was in
Ban Hintaek, now renamed
Ban Therd Thai, at that time.
In fact, he had already moved
across the border, following
issuance of wanted posters
with a price on his head by
Bangkok.
The battle would not have
taken place, according to
Therd Thai sources, had it
not been for the fact that
Khun Sa¡¯s chief of staff
Falang aka Hpalang aka
Zhang Suqian was still
stranded there. Khun Sa
therefore had to launch a
counterattack to rescue him.
❑ The writer also says
Khun Sa rode a Burmese
military jeep. (P.38) He
did not have one. What he
had were Toyota 4-wheel
drives.
❑ According to P.145, the
war against the Wa was
clearly taking place near his
headquarters Homong. In
fact, the battlefield was located
at least 100 miles east
of it, as the crow flies. It would
have taken at least a week for
his reinforcements to get
there, if they were lucky
enough to escape ambushes
by the Burma Army.
It also says Maj Kan Yawt
(also written Gunyawd) was
his second in command. In
fact, Kan Yawt was a brigade
commander at the time of his
mutiny in 1995 which broke
the back of Khun Sa's mighty
Mong Tai Army (MTA). The
second in command then
was Kan-jet (also written
Gunjade).
. P.147 says Khun Sa said
he hated the Wa. That
was one sentence he would
never have spoken, either
privately or publicly. There
were many Wa fighters in the
MTA, some of whom were
even his bodyguards and
personal attendants. (It was
the same with the United Wa
State Army against which he
was fighting. There were
Shan fighters among them
too.)
Of course, these mistakes
could not have been made if
he had taken a few hours to
talk with me when he came
to Chiangmai.
He used quotes from my
writing twice and also included
some quotes by Khun
Sa which I had documented,
after improving on my pidgin
English. But why he didn't
even bother to acknowledge
me as the source will remain
a mystery, at least for the
present.
Maybe it’s a sort of indirect
warning to me that if people
like me who know Khun Sa
better don’t write about him,
they cannot blame others for
writing the wrong things.
So, Mr Felber, keep on writing
until some Shans get so
angry they get hold of a
laptop and start writing their
own memoirs. Which will be
for the good of themselves
and also readers like us.