No tears for opium king

There are dry eyes across the region as news spreads of the death of Khun Sa, the most powerful heroin warlord the world has seen. That he was able to die quietly in relative obscurity last week in the former Myanmese capital Yangon, aged 74, is testimony to his striking ability to manoeuvre. Given his former dominance of a trade characterised by ruthlessness and betrayal, it is remarkable he did not die behind bars or at the hands of rivals' assassins.

His dominance was such that by the late 1980s and early 1990s, his opium refineries hidden in the steep valleys of the Golden Triangle were supplying as much as 60 per cent of the heroin reaching the US, according to US estimates.

In his book The Politics of Heroin, Alfred McCoy, of the University of Wisconsin, outlines an extraordinary business. 'Under Khun Sa's leadership, Burma's [Myanmar's] opium production soared from 550 to 2,500 tons during the 1980s - an extraordinary 500 per cent increase. 'By the end of the decade, Khun Sa controlled over 80 per cent of Burma's opium production and half the world's heroin supply - making him history's most powerful drug lord,' Professor McCoy wrote.

In the border markets of Vietnam, Laos and China, to inquire about Khun Sa was to ask about heroin, as his Class-A product made its way west across the region leaving a trail of addicts and associated social problems in its wake in cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok.

At the height of Khun Sa's reach, the purity of his supply spawned a new underground fashion for the drug in the west as young urban elites succumbed to the lure of 'China White', as Golden Triangle heroin became known in the hippest salons of London, New York and Amsterdam. High-profile addictions and deaths were not far behind, a toll that included actors and rock stars.

He may have sat at the core of a highly globalised supply chain that reached Fifth Avenue (New York City) but Khun Sa's life was rooted in the jungle borderlands of the Golden Triangle, the ethnically diverse and lawless area bordering Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.