Golden Triangle Kingpin Little Affected by Indictment : Thailand: The United States is vague about its plans to seize Khun Sa, but has ruled out large-scale military action.

The heroin business has rarely been better for Chang Chi-Fu, alias Khun Sa, who seems more concerned about the rival Wa tribe than a U.S. government indictment.

The United States has branded Chang the “Prince of Death” and the billion-dollar drug kingpin of the Golden Triangle.

It has charged him with importing or trying to import more than 3,500 pounds of heroin into New York between September, 1986, and February, 1988, and has threatened to “go after him if he can be located.”

Sources who were with Khun Sa when he learned of the indictment, announced March 15 in Washington, described the chain-smoking warlord as angry but not particularly worried.

He has not, for example, made noticeable changes in his operations, and there is no indication the flow of heroin from his area of control in Burma has decreased.

The United States did manage to arrest four members of his drug ring in Hong Kong on May 20. They are to be tried in New York on charges of smuggling 46 pounds of heroin into the United States on May 9.

One of them, Sai Yeung Ng, was described as a brother-in-law of Khun Sa. A federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn identified the others as Dun-Shun Yeung, Wirote Tankirdkit and Yu-Shing Lam.

A warrant is out in Thailand for the arrest of Sze-Wah Yeung, another defendant in the case.

The United States has been vague about its plans to seize Khun Sa, but has ruled out large-scale military action. Analysts note that the jungle and mountain terrain would make military operations difficult and costly.

Thai officials say there has been no substantial pressure on them from Washington to move against Khun Sa.

Burma is unlikely to cooperate, given Washington’s denunciation of the military junta that seized power after brutally crushing a pro-democracy uprising in 1988. Washington stopped its anti-narcotics aid program to Rangoon in protest.

Khun Sa now is engaged in one of the perennial conflicts of the Triangle, the rugged, largely lawless territory where the borders of Burma, Laos and Thailand converge.

This time, Khun Sa’s army is trying to stop the potentially powerful Wa tribe from muscling in on his territory.

The Wa, one of Burma’s multitude of ethnic minorities, broke away from the outlawed Burma Communist Party, which had emerged as a major narcotics producer and trafficker in the 1980s.

Khun Sa has general control of areas near the Thai frontier, which allows opium transported from deeper inside Burma to be processed into heroin at border refineries.

From these border refineries, the heroin is smuggled through Thailand to the United States, Australia, Western Europe and Asian points.

According to official U.S. estimates, the Triangle’s opium crop in the 1988-89 growing season amounted to 2,600 tons, about 85% of it from Burma. A similar amount is expected this year.

Washington has focused on the drug deluge from Latin America and the so-called Golden Crescent of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which had supplied much of the heroin to U.S. addicts.

At least 40% to 50% of heroin imported into the United States now originates in the Triangle, much of it bearing Khun Sa’s imprint.

Some knowledgeable observers speculate that the U.S. indictment was not so much a prelude to direct action against Khun Sa as a message to Thailand and Burma.

Melvyn Levitsky, the top State Department narcotics official, has criticized corruption in Thailand, which allows drugs to cross the country in vast quantities, and Burmese government connections with drug warlords.

Khun Sa, believed to have been born in 1932, emerged as a narcotics trader in the 1960s. He claims to be a freedom fighter for Burma’s Shan minority who must use narcotics to finance his rebellion.

On several occasions, he has offered to sell the opium crop to the United States, and keep it off the illicit market.

He has survived numerous battles and five years in prison. In 1982, he was driven out of his Thai stronghold, complete with swimming pool and posh quarters, and into Burma.

The Thais have a $19,000 reward on his head, but his links with Thailand remain.

He buys weapons on the Thai black market for his army of 4,000 to 10,000 men. His aides openly operate businesses in tungsten, jade and timber across northern Thailand, and he is known to have close ties to many provincial officials.

Thai narcotics sources acknowledge privately that corruption among police, army and government officials facilitates the trafficking.

Maj. Gen. Chavalit Yodmani, who heads the Office of the Narcotics Control Board, said the key to eradicating drugs in the Triangle is solving Burma’s ethnic minority problems.

“Khun Sa is just one person,” Chavalit said in an interview. “You can indict 20 Khun Sas, but another one will simply spring up to take their place.”