Introduction
Along the Thailand-Myanmar border, remnants of China’s lost army persist, transforming into tourist attractions where visitors sample Yunnanese cuisine and traditional Chinese tea.
Ban Rak Thai, locally known as Mae Aw, exemplifies one of the numerous villages where descendants of the Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) forces established settlements in the 1960s.
Forced out of Shan State of Myanmar – also known as Burma – after several failed attempts to stage attacks against Communist China, these communities represent a complex geopolitical legacy.
“Between 1950 and 1952, the Kuomintang army in Burma’s Shan States tried no fewer than seven times to invade Yunnan but was repeatedly driven back across the border. The Burmese Army then entered the Shan States to rid the country of its uninvited guests, and that in turn led to an unprecedented militarization of the Shan States,” wrote Chiang Mai-based Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner in his book, “The Wa of Myanmar and China’s Quest for Global Dominance,” published in 2021.
“But the areas east of the Salween River were too remote to be affected by the buildup. There, the Kuomintang reigned supreme through alliances it had established with local warlords, most of them from Kokang and the eastern Shan States, but some of whom were also Wa,” Lintner added.
One of the few cash crops in the Wa Hills and other mountainous areas where the KMT had established bases was opium, which they used to finance their campaign against the communists.
By 1961, the combined forces between Burma and the People’s Liberation Army began to push back against the KMT. A turning point came in January 1968 when the China-trained Communist Party of Burma (CPB) militias crossed the border from Yunnan into Shan State and went straight to the KMT bases.
Eventually, it was time for the KMT to move. Some were evacuated to Taiwan while others crossed into Thailand to form communities like the one here in Ban Rak Thai, a 90-minute drive north of Mae Hong Son provincial seat.
The Thai government convinced the KMT leaders as well as the hill tribes in the region to kick the opium habit in exchange for tea and other cash crops. Thai citizenship was gradually given first as a reward to those fighting against the Communist Party of Thailand and gradually to KMT descendants.
Warlords and Militia Leaders
With the KMT gone, it did not mean Shan State was at peace. New warlords and militia groups would emerge in the Myanmar sector of the Golden Triangle to continue with the opium and heroin business, sending it halfway around the world to streets of New York.
One such person was Chang Shi-fu, who, incidentally, started as a young government village militia to fight the CPB.
Born in 1933 to a Chinese father and a Shan mother in northern Shan State, Shi-fu rose from a young government militia to become the head of his own outfit. He was convicted of high treason in 1973 by the Burmese government and released the following year after his supporter kidnapped two Soviet doctors and ransomed them for his freedom. His release was brokered by a Thai Army general.
From 1974 onward, Shi-fu directed his fight against the Burmese Government, proclaiming himself a Shan nationalist, and adopted the name Khun Sa, or “Prince Prosperous”, in the Shan/Tai language.
Another figure was Wei Hsueh-kang, an ethnic Chinese who fled Yunnan after the Communist victory and relocated to northern Shan State to do business with the local soapha, or chaofah in Thai, which means “lord of the sky”, a royal title used by the hereditary Tai rulers in mainland Southeast Asia.
Wei and his two brothers would relocate to an area near Thailand’s border, where they joined Khun Sa and his outfit. A fallout with Khun Sa forced him out of the Shan circle. They then reconnected with his old network in Shan State and later linked this newly formed alliance with the powerful United Wa State Army (UWSA) when it was established in 1989. Afterwards, they gained access to the vast poppy field in the Wa Hills where raw opium could be refined into heroin.
In 1993, the United States indicted Wei with heroin trafficking and offered a US$2 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Three years earlier, in March 1990, Khun Sa was indicted by the United States for the same crime, with the same amount of bounty placed on his head.
By mid-1990, relentless assault on Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army (MTA) by its arch-rival the UWSA and the Burmese government troops forced him to surrender in exchange for amnesty.
After Khun Sa’s defeat, the Burmese Government told the UWSA to return to the Sino-Burma border in the north. They refused and instead mobilised more than 100,000 villagers from its Special Region 2 along the Sino-Burma border to newly built towns along the Thai border that stretches from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai and southward to the northern part of Mae Hong Son province. Special Region 2 is an autonomous area secured from the Myanmar Government in 1989 in exchange for an unwritten ceasefire agreement.
About 10,000 UWSA troops control this so-called UWSA southern command under the leadership of Wei and his brothers. Border outposts and camps along the border once under Khun Sa were immediately taken over by the UWSA. Wherever possible, the UWSA set up a volleyball court on hard-dirt plains – daily matches were supposed to bring them and the Thai troops closer together.
The turning point came one morning in February 1999 when authorities found nine Thai villagers from Chiang Mai’s Fang district beaten to death, with their hands tied behind their backs. Authorities said it was a drug deal gone bad. All fingers pointed to the UWSA.
Deteriorating Relationship
Closing the border leading to Wa’s towns built by Thai contractors was the next logical thing. Thai contractors were told to pull out. For the Thai troops along the border, it meant their daily volleyball game with the Wa soldiers had to come to an end.
Clashes between the two sides became frequent as drug caravans carrying Wa’s methamphetamines make their way into Thailand.
An all-out offensive occurred on 20 May 2002. The battles took place well within Myanmar’s territory and went on throughout the day. Artillery fire supported the advancing Thai soldiers carrying out search-and-destroy missions against the UWSA’s outposts several kilometers inside the Myanmar border.
Thai Army’s armored personnel carrier, along with soldiers from Special Forces, cavalry squadrons and artillery units had been seen taking up positions along the northern border in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son provinces for the past weeks to await instruction.
The mobilisation was called Surasri 143, supposedly a military training exercise. One elite unit was tasked with capturing Wei but could not find him as he had fled deeper into Myanmar.
When the dust settled, the UWSA began to build nine outposts that sit smack on the Thai fence. Three of these crossed into Thai territory, according to Google Map. Thai conservative media and right-wing press decided to play this up, calling on the government to take action against the UWSA, giving both the government and the Army that much more headache.
The Current Landscape
Today, no one in Thailand wants to turn back the clock to 2002. Thai troops and UWSA soldiers at the local level are talking to one another in a much calmer atmosphere; local troops described their conversations as friendly but Wa’s crystal meth and methamphetamines continue to find their way into Thai soil.
No one is turning a blind eye to the drug caravan as massive drug bust along the border demonstrated but the Thai government has retreated from politicising the drug issues, as it was not worth the cost.
Talking is better than shooting one another, said a Thai Army unit commander on the border.
For years, Thai Army in the region has wrecked their brain on how to get the UWSA to move the nine outposts, particularly the three that allegedly crossed into the Thai side, just a little bit back to avoid any possible confrontation. The UWSA has had presence there since the fall of Khun Sa in the late 1990s.
The Thai Army even asked Myanmar’s supreme commander, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing during his visit to Thailand in 2014, to intervene on Thailand’s behalf. Still, the UWSA refused to pull back.
Thai Army has held several face-to-face meetings with the local command, including with senior UWSA officials in Mong Hsat back in November 2024, but to no solution has been reached. Wa soldiers at the Thai border said they are not authorised to pull back without an order from Panghsang, their main headquarter located on the Sino-Burma border.
According to Thai Army sources, Panghsang has suggested the Thais take up any allegation of territorial dispute with the Myanmar Government. Interestingly, the UWSA treats territory under their command as a country within a country; this is despite Myanmar soldiers and officials being required to disarm and be escorted when entering the Wa territory.
Many critics, especially those on social media, appear to want the Thai Army to use force to push the UWSA back. Officials on the border said a military victory will not be difficult. However, no one wants to turn the clock back to the old days when clashes between the two sides were all too common.
The hard parts are obviously an all-out offensive and its aftermath. There are just too many tourist attractions and foreign visitors along the northern border; the stakes are just too high for Thailand, particularly the tourism industry, Thailand’s golden goose.
