All of them talked to me in turn and I answered each as best I could. None of us had a common language but that was no deterrent. We had a most wonderful conversation that wandered up one topic and down another using the unspoken vocabulary of world travelers. In fact, looking back now I can say that many of my favorite conversations on the road have taken place with people I could not talk to. Stories went back and forth, and though they might not have understood mine, each face across from me was a study in concentration.
The image of Mai, walking from her stove, wielding a platter piled high with fried donuts generated an image from my childhood that stormed my brain and conquered my attention. Perhaps it was simply her body language, or maybe just my inner need for a familiar connection in such a far-away land, but an old Norman Rockwell painting came to me in that moment. It was a mother bringing the Thanksgiving turkey to table where her anxious family awaited the feast, and suddenly, I was a six-year-old boy again watching my own mother approach. The image lasted only a second and I quickly returned to the present, but it was enough to remind me that those are the moments I travel for.
I have often had such moments on the road. They are the nuanced connections that spiritual anthropologists refer to as the collective consciousness of mankind, and they have gifted me with the realization that the flap of a butterfly wing in Africa can generate a wind in Asia. The miracle is to be present when it happens, and to recognize it. I have done both many times. Those were the thoughts that shot through my brain like bullets while I happily rode a tidal wave of good karma, joss, or whatever the reader may wish to call it, but there are few times in a traveler’s life when days are that good.
Mai, her family and I, talked deep into the afternoon. I ate the tasteless donuts and laughed with one and all at stories I could not understand. When the sun began to paint the hillsides purple, I rose to leave and she grasped both of my hands, holding them palms up, and spit into them. She closed her eyes and with her thumbs pressed into my open palms she began a soft guttural chant that the others joined. I accepted it as her blessing, and when she finished, she gave me a smile brighter than a sunrise and wrapped me in a hug that would make any bear proud. As she did this, the others stood in turn to embrace me with a sincerity most people reserve for family. If Mai intuited anything personal of me or where I came from during our visit, then that was her shaman’s power. What I took from all of them would fill volumes. They did not care who or what I was, they simply opened their hearts and home to a traveler.
A Cheshire cat smile of a moon rocked low in the evening sky as I walked down the hill toward the village, and in passing, I nodded to my government overseer who was slumped next to a wooden corral, looking quite wilted after spying on me through the long hot day. He would have to make up a story about me in order to make his report to his masters even slightly interesting. Perhaps he could tell them I was one of the wandering spirits of the mountains, a white demon. That at least, would seem credible there.
I laughed at the thought of offering him that idea but he would not have understood me.
Khun-Sa statue, “The Kingpin”
Kingpin
Sometimes spirits must linger where their corporeal bodies spent their time on Earth, unable to leave until coming to terms with past deeds.
In the steaming jungle mountains where Thailand, Burma, and Laos collide on a map, there is a complex of crumbling structures, overgrown with climbing vines and monitored by a praetorian guard of monkeys that loudly denounce visitors. It is not an ancient ruin like so many others in this land but a modern ruin in more ways than one. It is a monument to ruined lives and dreams. It is called Ban Hin Taek, “Village of Broken Stone,” and many spirits dwell there.
It is the former operating base of Khun-Sa, a peasant and illiterate thug who rose to become one of the most powerful and wealthiest men of his time. Born to a Shan hill tribe mother and Chinese father in British Burma in 1937, he was the self-proclaimed “King of the Golden Triangle.” In his day, he was more powerful then Pablo Escobar, more famous than “El Chapo” Guzman. Heroin was his trade.
An early monsoon ends with my arrival as the steam from a baking sun on wet foliage envelopes the ruin as though it were rising from a cloud. Upwards of 30,000 mercenaries once lived here in the employ of the world’s most notorious drug lord who, at the height of his power, was considered untouchable by three separate countries. In this onetime enclave of depravity, gorgeous bromeliads and orchids proliferate while monkeys throw balls of dung at my approach. Stunning red and purple parrots screech warnings from the trees. The ethereal beauty of the place stands at odds with its horrendous past, giving the moment a surreal feeling of it being a movie set.
Khun Sa began life as Chang Chi-Fu, a teenage recruit with the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang army not long after the Second World War. During the Chinese civil war, the Kuomintang, under Generalissimo Chang Kai-Shek was defeated by Mao’s Tse Tung’s Communists and retreated to the island of Taiwan while splinter groups fled over the border into northern Thailand and Laos in the Shan state. It was in these mountains that Chang Chi-Fu assembled a rag-tag army of about 600 men and in return for arms and money from the Kuomintang, began to fight a guerilla war against Communists on both sides of the border.
I push open a creaking door and wave aside years of cobwebs to enter a former barracks where heavily graffitied walls speak of the eternal discontent of the common soldier. Here is scrawled a poem, there a lewd drawing, while rusting steel bunkbeds lay piled in a corner. Fading historic photos line the walls; shots of opium poppy fields and military men in ridiculously ornate uniforms, all rotting in the stifling humidity. Many photos of Khun-Sa, always posed just so, reveal a man who thought highly of himself. The room brings to mind my own army days. I can hear the men cursing, sharing stories of home, future dreams and girlfriends far away. Most soldiers fight for God or country but these men fought for narcotics, and who can fault them? Then, as now, it was the single economy of the land; the only way for many to make a living. The dull daily life of a common soldier, whatever his or her cause, seems unchanged since the first armies were formed.
Heroin poppies have driven the economy of these mountains since at least the early 19th century when the demand for morphine for wounded soldiers of the occupying British army was paramount. More than half of that production went into the illicit trade. Local hill tribes, the Akha, Hmong, and Lahu, grew the plants and harvested them for the highest bidder, be that a drug lord or military officer. The sheer quantity from the area was so vast and profits so immense as to spawn the name still in use today, “The Golden Triangle.” This illicit wealth did not trickle down. A handful of drug lords became rich while those at the bottom of the food chain remained trapped in lives of poverty and hard labor.
Walking between buildings, I pass a dew-filled spider web the size of a carpet, back lit by the sun that dazzles like woven diamonds. The spider, golden yellow and larger than my fist, dances across the web like a ballerina to grab a trapped fly as the never ending cycle of life and death plays out in this heavily animist region. People believe their ancestors inhabit their homes and so they make altars to honor them while placing fetishes over doorways to block evil spirits. Over all of this, the spirit of Khun-Sa presides as the ultimate parent figure, a constant in peoples’ lives. These mountains are closed to the outside world, forever a part of the distant past where a demagogue can be worshipped.
With no more wars to fight, the Kuomintang assimilated into local life, transitioning from soldiers into “tax collectors,” levying a charge on local drug smugglers for crossing their lands, surviving on the dream that their new enterprise would one day fund an invasion force to retake their ancestral homelands to the north. Chang Chi-Fu refused to pay this levy and began open hostilities against the Kuomintang. By 1963 he had expanded his personal army, changed his name to Khun-Sa (Prosperous Prince), and turned on the Burmese government, also taking control of vast mountain
areas while expanding the growth, harvesting, and processing of heroin poppies. Other minor thugs joined Khun-Sa under the protection of his personal militia and by 1967 he was challenging the Kuomintang for outright control of the area.
An old lady shuffles under a bent back across the courtyard, carrying a cloth-covered basket. She spits bloody red betel nut juice through rotting teeth and pads along as one saddled with arthritis. With a rusting skeleton key, she opens a massive padlock on a rotting door that I can put my fist through. I enter a square, unpainted, concrete room with a single window that has wooden shutters. Geckos scurry across the ceiling as I enter. It is the austere bedroom of the drug lord himself. There is a small bed, desk and chair, a few personal mementos hang on the wall; a sword, a hat, a walking stick. On a bureau sits a small wash basin under two aging photos, one of Sa in peasant dress, the other of him among his soldiers. There are two plaster busts of Sa next to a can of talcum powder and a plastic wastebasket sits on the floor. The permanence of the room, exactly as he left it, makes me feel that he might walk back in at any moment. It is the kind of room a monk might occupy but not the richest man of his time. Why would someone of unlimited wealth live like this? The old lady has brought food on a plate and a fresh bottle of water that she places in front of a photo of Khun-Sa. She removes the food already sitting there decaying in the heat and bows before the photo with hands clasped under her chin in classical Shan greeting. I realize this is a daily ritual for her. This is not just his former room, but a shrine to a man who has assumed almost deity like status since his death.
After a three-day battle, both Khun-Sa and the Kuomintang were both betrayed by a Laotian air force commander who carpet-bombed the battle sight and made off with most of the heroin, effectively ending Sa’s operation. In 1967, he was captured by the Burmese government and languished in prison until 1972 when he was released in a prisoner exchange. His henchmen had kidnapped government officials in order to secure his release. After that, he dropped out of sight, covertly rebuilding his personal army and re-establishing his drug connections. In 1976, he resumed full growing and smuggling operations. During this time, he became the local equivalent of Robin Hood, understanding that the mountain people would protect him if he treated him well.
The lady bows and moves to his bed to smooth a slight rumple in the covering as though caressing a sacred object. She bends to pick up a single leaf I have tracked in on my boots. Her master’s clothes still hang against the wall in plastic covers appearing neatly ironed. He did not live like this out of fear. Material comfort meant little to him. Like most of his kind, he was about power. He lived here because he was loved and protected by the people he took care of, the monster as benefactor, a story as old as humanity that has repeated itself elsewhere with the current Cali and Sinaloa cartels.
In 1976, under pressure from the U,S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Khun-Sa moved his operation to a new base inside Thailand in the village of Ban Hin Taek. He renamed his guerillas the Shan United Army and raided local military stations under cover of fighting for Shan autonomy but really to secure more weapons and munitions. Repeated assassination attempts by both the Thai and Burmese government failed, but forced him to move yet again, this time just over the border into Myanmar. None of this stopped or even ebbed the tidal flow of illicit drugs, which at the time were estimated by the DEA to be 70 percent of the entire heroin flowing into the United States.
Local villagers arrive, hearing through the jungle grapevine that a giant outsider from the West has come. They are diminutive people, rising barely to my belt buckle and the women openly laugh at my size. They are the color of saddle leather with the gnarled hands of laborers. These are the people who for at least two centuries have supplied both criminals and hospitals with heroin. They encircle me as both a curiosity and a celebrity. I am a rare distraction from a harsh life. After brief introductions, I follow them into an adjoining room and there before me, sits the man himself. Upon his death, a local artist was commissioned to create a full-sized statue of Khun-Sa. He is made from plaster but meticulously painted so that in low light he appears ready to rise from his chair. On a table before him there is an ashtray with a pack of his favorite cigarettes, one half smoked, and a fresh bottle of water. Behind him is a framed photo of him sitting jauntily on his favored horse, a pistol on his hip. He now sits forever like a Buddha on a throne, in the room where he once gave orders that ended lives.
Like those who followed in his footsteps such as “El Chapo” Guzman and Pablo Escobar, Khun-Sa insulated himself from the arm of the law by lavishing wealth beyond imagination on the local people. A pittance to him was a fortune to the peasants who worked in his poppy fields, but it was enough to win their allegiance and love. In effect, it provided him with a separate army, who directed officials in the opposite direction, warned of raids, and gave him countless hiding places if necessary in local villages. The uneducated people of these mountains probably had no real concept of where their product goes or what it does, either then or now. It was and is simply a way to make a living by doing the bidding of their kindly master.
One by one the people file in, removing their sandals and bowing before the plaster image before them like pilgrims at a shrine. In single file, they circle the statue and beckon me to follow them outside. Several yards away there is a lif- sized statue of Khun-Sa on his horse, another plaster statue rapidly deteriorating in the sun and rain, reduced now to an almost comic representation. Two women approach the statue and lay fresh flowers at the horses’ feet. One small child hands me a bouquet to join in but I cannot bring myself to do such honor to this man. I hand the flowers to a tiny girl who places them with solemnity beyond her years.
In 1985, Khun-Sa merged his military force with the local regular Shan army that gave him effective control of the entire region of northern Laos, Thailand, and Burma. From 1976-1994 the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that 80 percent of all street heroin reaching the United States came from the fields controlled by Khun-Sa and it was 90 percent pure; finer than any other on the market. Combined task forces from four countries constantly combed the jungle in the hunt but he always eluded or bought off his pursuers.
In the shade of a flowering vine, I sit to listen as the people tell me their stories of Khun-Sa. The elders who knew him personally, speak with a reverence hard to comprehend. The almost childlike naiveté of these people allows me to see how they would remember him with such love. Meaning no disrespect, they remind me of a dog that gets kicked by its master and yet returns time and again with nothing but love and admiration proving also that high among their attributes is loyalty. They are simple people, without guile, agenda, or even dreams. For them, life is daily repetitive labor, and when you are born into that, dreams rarely have time to grow. By their actions, these people have turned the story of a man into myth and legend that will only grow larger with each telling.
In 1988, under international pressure, Khun-Sa offered to sell his entire annual crop to the United States and Australia together for a combined price of $50 million, which would effectively eliminate the street market for heroin in both countries, and indirectly amounted to a subsidy for not peddling his product on the open market. Australia turned down the offer saying it did not deal with criminals.
The children sing a song of Khun-Sa’s life. The entire day has seemed almost ceremonial and I wonder how often such obeisance is paid to this deceased legend. Was it staged just for me? I did not get that feeling. No one knew I was coming or when. I think I was simply an excuse for a spontaneous outpouring of affection or maybe just a day off from the drudgery of working in the field. Maybe they revere this man because he came from among them or maybe they just need something larger than themselves to get them through.
In 1989, Khun-sa offered yet again to sell his entire crop to the United States for $80 million and was indicted by a New York federal court. Following this, he offered to sell his crop in exchange for $210 million in Uni
ted Nations assistance, $265 million in foreign investments, and another $90 million for a crop eradication program that would also provide education and health care to the local hill people. This offer was also turned down. In an interview given that year, he claimed his personal army to be 31,000 strong, but fearing extradition under his New York indictment, Khun-Sa fled to Yangon where he surrendered to Burmese authorities but was never arrested.
What is this common historic thread that connects such powerful criminals? Most were born into poverty and yet blessed with superior intelligence and survival instincts. There is a drive to succeed at all costs, to leave the past behind and raise oneself up regardless of how it is done. But power seems to feed itself, growing unchecked until the actions overwhelm and consume the doer. In the end no one gets out alive and the saddest part is the people who unknowingly enable all of it.
The United States offered a $2 million reward for Khun-Sa’s arrest but the Burmese government refused to prosecute him and he lived out his days in a comfortable estate fueled by his ill-gotten investments. He died in 2007 and the cause was attributed to diabetes and high blood pressure. His burial site is unknown. He left behind eight children, several of whom are successful business people in Yangon, Burma.
Today, it is locally believed that the Kuomintang still control the heroin trade but it has never reached the levels it enjoyed under Khun-Sa. Afghanistan now produces the bulk of the world’s heroin and the DEA estimates that only 30 percent of American consumption comes from the triangle.
One by one the people fade back into the jungle and the old caretaker locks the rooms behind us. I sit with my driver for several minutes taking in all that I have learned. The lush mountains towering above me seem so serene and peaceful. Even the monkeys have stopped their chatter. Suddenly I smell the sweet burn of a heroin-laced cigarette. “To Khun-Sa” my driver says before taking a long drag. “Move over,” I say, before taking the wheel.
Baboons for Lunch Page 14