Gandar Mount P.S.O

On 16 April 1977, Congressman Lester Wolf who was Chairman of the US House Select Committee on Narcotics, sent his emissary, Joseph Nellis to meet Khun Sa, dubbed by the US Narcotics Agency and the press as the Opium King. He promised to cooperate with the intercommunity to fight against narcotic drugs and submitted his six years plan. This was rejected by the Carter Administration on 18 July in the same year. His later diplomatic efforts also came to naught, on 21 January 1982 the Thai’s strong Border Patrol Police hired by the DEA, attacked his base in Ma Hin Tak. Since then altogether forty attacks have been launched against his army and all have failed to produce any concrete results to justify the subsequent losses brought about on both sides by these ventures.

Instead of attacking us, you should engage in teaching our people to substitute crops, build roads for them and buy their agricultural products. How can you expect the Shan people to stop opium without offering them assistance and restoration of their rights in return ?

The road to Shan Independence is through the opium issue because in the strategic calculations of the superpowers our Shan State is only a small country which is better ignored, except for its opium production. So we muust strive to keep it under control at all time. with the Idependence of the Shan State, the country which will be benefit the most will be Thailand. There was one Thai official who, while visiting me, spoke ill of the Laotions and the Vietnamese. I said: ”It’s not their fault. It’s the Amricans and Russians and yours. Your fault lies in depending too much on the Americans. If you have courage enough to stand on your own feet and take the lead, we can also become a power to be considered with in the world”, the Opium King stressed. (He welcomes the Ammerican who interview him in the jungle base of Ho Mong near the Thai border).