In the summer of 1969, the PKA-led KPA guerrillas launched a series of offensives in the mountains of Shan State. The Communist Party of Burma (CPM) took China's Yunnan border as its rear and set up its headquarters in Bansang, on the other side of the river in Mengke Village, Meng'a County. Their military district headquarters is also located there, and there are about two thousand armed men.
The Burmese Communist Party used flexible guerrilla tactics, and when the Burmese army came to attack them, they retreated to the border forests, and as soon as the Burmese army left, they desperately developed southward, expanding their domination and developing revolutionary base areas. In early summer, the Burmese Communist forces quickly occupied more than a dozen mountain villages in Khun Sa Shan State.
In October, when Khun Sa was worried about this incident, Senior General Sanyou, Burmese Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff of the Three Armed Forces, flew from Yangon to Lashio to convene the commander of the Northwest Burmese Military Region and the commanders of their respective guards to discuss the operational plan against the Burmese Communist guerrillas. At the meeting, Khun Sha said eloquently: "The guerrillas of the Communist Party of Burma use guerrilla tactics, and if we attack with heavy troops, they will retreat to the Sino-Burmese border and maneuver with us in the primeval forests in the lofty mountains and mountains, and it will be difficult to achieve the goal of encirclement and suppression. ”
"That's right, it's true," asked Admiral Yamano with interest, "if there's any good advice, just say it." ”
Khun Sha got up and walked to the wall, pointed to the map, and said, "I can lead this Self-Defense Force back to the Sino-Burmese border and cut off the retreat of the Burmese Communist guerrillas." The other encirclement and suppression troops were divided into two routes, all the way to the Thai-Burmese border, pressing from east to west; All the way to the main force of the Burmese Communist guerrilla base area. The three groups of men and horses marched step by step, fought steadily, coordinated with each other, and finally encircled and annihilated the communist bandits in the mountainous area. ”
Admiral Yamotomo nodded in appreciation. After listening to Kun Sha's battle plan, he asked: "The communist bandits are armed with more than 2,000 people, and there are quite a few heavy machine guns and artillery, can your self-defense forces resist it?" ”
Khun Sha leaned back in his chair and said confidently: "Please rest assured general, I will show that the weapons and combat capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces are by no means under the Burmese Communist guerrillas." ”
"This is a battle plan worth considering," General Yasanyu looked at everyone for a while, and finally said, "Everyone go back first and wait for the battle order." ”
Kunsha returned to the base camp and convened the upper echelons of officers to confer. He briefed his subordinates on the meeting, and they unanimously agreed with Kun Sha's suggestion, believing that if General Shanyou really adopted Kun Sha's method, it would be an opportunity to expand his territory.
Soon after, Khun Sha received an order to penetrate deep into the Sino-Burmese border and fight against the Burmese Communist guerrillas.
Khun Sha immediately gathered the self-defense forces stationed in various cottages, organized an expeditionary force of 2,500 men and marched to the Sino-Burmese border, and engaged the Burmese communist guerrillas at Yaojia Dazhai in the Dongshan area of the Salween River.
This was a life-and-death battle to encircle and suppress the Burmese Communist guerrillas. The self-defense forces of Khun Sha surrounded the guerrillas. Kun Sha sent a brigade to stand behind the guerrillas and block the back road. On the frontal position, two heavy machine guns and six light machine guns, spitting tongues of fire, fired fiercely at the partisans. Under the attack of powerful firepower, the guerrillas had no choice but to retreat to the cottage and defend it.
Just as Kun Sha was about to give the order to charge, a burst of mortar shells flew over, several of which landed on the heavy machine gun position, and two heavy machine guns were blown apart, followed by another burst of artillery fire, which blew away several more of Kun Sha's machine guns. The Burmese communist guerrillas took the opportunity to attack first, and Khun Sa was forced to retreat to a hill to block the attack.
Khun Sa immediately organized a death squad of fifty people and ordered them: "You only have one mission, to find the location of the Burmese Communist mortars and blow them up for me." ”
The death squad searched and marched from behind the mountain to Dazhai, followed the direction of the gunfire, drilled around the jungle, and finally found seven mortars of the Burmese Communist Party in front of a forest behind Dazhai. The death squad pounced, and the carbine fired in a burst of rapid bursts, and more than 20 Burmese Communist gunners were beaten to death and fled.
The death squads were preparing to retreat to their positions with captured mortars, and the Burmese Communist Party sent a company of troops to rush up.
As soon as one of the daredevils shouted badly, he was killed by a volley of bullets. Under the fierce attack of the Burmese communist guerrillas, most of the death squads were killed and wounded, and the rest fled into the woods.
Khun Sa repelled several frontal attacks by the Burmese communist guerrillas, consolidated the position, and organized the Self-Defense Forces to form a fan to encircle Dazhai again.
The battle was not as easy as Kun Sha imagined.
Khun Sha fought with the guerrillas on the hillside, temporarily blocking the guerrillas' breakthrough. Suddenly, guerrilla reinforcements appeared on the northern road, and they rushed from behind Kun Sha, and were flanked on both sides, and the position on the north side of Kun Sha was suddenly in chaos, with heavy casualties.
Kun Sha quickly mobilized more than a dozen light machine guns, occupying the favorable terrain on both sides, but the two armies had already begun hand-to-hand combat, the entire hillside was filled with gunsmoke, the sound of fighting, screams, and gunshots were mixed together, and Kun Sha could not launch a large-scale blockade.
At this time, the guerrillas in the stockade launched a large-scale breakthrough. They rendezvoused with reinforcements, broke through the encirclement of Kunsha, and quickly moved to another Miao family village, which was another base of the guerrillas.
Khun Sa originally wanted to use the method of surprise attack to surround the main force of the Burmese communist guerrillas, block their retreat, and then encircle and annihilate them when reinforcements from all walks of life arrived. Unexpectedly, the guerrillas broke through, but Kunsha took advantage of the victory to recapture more than a dozen Yaojia cottages, which was also a big victory.
After a short rest, Khun Sha's troops resumed the pursuit of the guerrillas along the long border. More than ten days passed, and the main force of the Communist Party of Burma could not be found, and when Khun Sa was restless about this, intelligence officers sent news and reconnoitred the location of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Burma. So, Zhang Suquan formulated a new plan.
Khun Sa ordered two brigades of about 1,000 men to immediately advance to the central station of the Pansang Communist Party of Burma, avoiding the various outposts of the guerrillas as much as possible along the way, and penetrating directly into the heart of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Burma.
In the early morning of the third day, Kun Sha's two brigades arrived in a jungle on the hill south of Bansang. After a short rest, they immediately launched a surprise attack on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Burma on the west and south.
At this time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Burma had only one battalion of guard troops. In the morning, the officers and men of the headquarters were squatting in the courtyard to have breakfast, when suddenly a burst of mortar shells fell from the village, and then shouts of killing rang out from Nanshan and Xishan, and the houses in the village were on fire and smoke rose from the gunfire.
Under the sudden attack, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Burma was in chaos. The people took refuge in all directions, almost losing the ability to resist, and the chief of staff, who remained at the headquarters, waved his pistol, stopped several panicked officers of the guard battalion, and ordered the immediate organization of forces to defend the fortress. At the same time, he ordered the telegraph operator to send a telegram to the main force of the guerrillas, asking them to rush back immediately to relieve the Central Headquarters.
Kunsha's two brigades launched an attack on Bansang, and the men and horses rushed to the entrance of the village and immediately took the initiative to retreat. In accordance with the order of the chief of staff Zhang Suquan, they built fortifications at the main junction of the stockade and did not attack again.
In addition, the main force of the guerrillas received a telegram from the central authorities and hurried to the direction of Bansang for reinforcements.
Zhang Suquan had already arranged secret agents in the direction leading to Bansang, and soon detected the whereabouts of the main force of the guerrillas returning to the division headquarters, and set up an ambush in a mountain col not far north of Bansang. When the guerrillas hurried past the mountain pass, Kun Sha suddenly attacked from both sides, and the guerrillas had no intention of fighting for a long time, leaving behind hundreds of corpses and continuing to move closer to Bansang. At this time, the two brigades besieging Bansang had already received a telegram from Kun Sha, and except for a small number of men who were left to hold their positions to prevent the enemy in the village from breaking through, the rest of them stopped the vanguard of the guerrillas head-on. The two armies fought in a mountain gorge several kilometers long.
The two armies fought in the dark. After the sun set, they retreated to their temporary positions.
The next morning, reinforcements sent by General Sanyou arrived to launch a general attack on the guerrillas in cooperation with the Self-Defense Forces of Kunsha. With the exception of a few who fled, most of the fighters of the guerrillas were killed in this battle.
The Self-Defense Forces of Khun Sa attacked the Burmese Communist guerrillas and inflicted heavy losses on the guerrillas. Khun Sha was therefore highly appreciated by the government, and all parties concerned sent a telegram of congratulations to Kun Sa. At the beginning of October 1969, the Burmese Minister of National Defense, General Sanyou, flew from Yangon to Lashio, where he met with Khun Sa, praised him, and encouraged him to stand with the government, saying that the Burmese Communist Party was not only the current enemy of the government, but also the great enemy of the major cottages in Khun Sa Shan State.
In addition to expressing his approval of General Shanyou's remarks that he would further cooperate with the government forces in eliminating the Burmese Communist elements in the future, he also ruthlessly expressed his views on the Burmese government and bureaucrats at all levels for not taking good care of the masses, that some policies are not conducive to the peaceful life of the masses, that the government needs to improve relations with the masses, calm the people's minds, and give more benefits to the mountain people.
Although Admiral Yamotomo's face turned grim, he didn't show any annoyance. He smiled generously and digressed the subject and asked what Khun Sha had on his good views on the complete elimination of the Burmese Communist Party.
He said that the Burmese communist guerrillas were nothing more than imitating the guerrilla tactics of the early Chinese communist army, creating base areas in remote cottages, developing armed forces, and then invading relatively large cities and towns; he believed that the armed forces of all nationalities should strengthen unity, actively cooperate with each other in combat, unite around the government army, form an encirclement trend against the Burmese communist guerrillas, and deal with the common enemy together.
General Shanyou nodded his head incessantly when he heard this, and at the same time, he couldn't help but be taken aback. This Khun Sa has not received any good education, how can he have such political and military talents in this deep mountain and old forest, this person is too terrible, and letting it develop is the real terrible aftermath of the Burmese government.
Upon his return to Yangon, General Sanyu began to investigate the background situation in Khun Sa. There are many theories about Khun Sha, and those who have come into contact with him have told him that Khun Sha is not loyal to the government at all, and that he has built an independent kingdom on his own terms, and his subordinates also believe that Khun Sha has the possibility of secretly rebelling and overthrowing the government.
While the Shanyu was pondering what measures to take against Khun Sha, the intelligence chief reported that a Shan exile, Luo Xinghan, had asked for an audience, who was well aware of Khun Sha's situation and was loyal to the government.
Shanyou agreed to meet Luo Xinghan.
Since the destruction of the entire army in the First World War, Luo Xinghan fled to Yangon alone, pretending to be a poor "exile", and secretly looking for an opportunity to make a comeback in the Golden Triangle. He had been involved in opium trafficking in the Golden Triangle for many years, and had amassed a large amount of wealth, not to mention in the Golden Triangle, but even in Yangon. Luo Xinghan used the money in his hand to move around Yangon, bribing important government officials at any cost, creating public opinion that Khun Sha was disloyal to the government and had ambitions to rebel, and wanted to use the power of the government to defeat Khun Sha. This time, through the relationship of the intelligence director, he met directly with General Yamanu.
Luo Xinghan analyzed the entire situation in Shan State to Senior General Shanyou, saying that the current Shan State area is actually in the hands of Khun Sha, and he has an armed force of more than 4,000 people, and most of the army has been strictly trained by professional Kuomintang soldiers and is very combative. The troops are equipped with advanced automatic weapons, and a group of cunning and unusual Chinese serve as senior advisers to him, and his strength has surpassed that of the Northwest Military Region of the Burmese government. With his ambition and strength, if his power is allowed to spread, sooner or later, he will break up, and the Shan State, with its eight million people, will not be owned by Burma.
In the end, Luo Xinghan said to General Shanyou with some anxiety: "The great Tusi of Shan State is not terrible, and the Communist Party of Burma is not difficult to deal with on the Thai-Burmese border. If Kunsha is not eliminated as soon as possible, there will be endless troubles. ”
After thinking about it repeatedly and weighing it for many days, General Shanyou finally decided to get rid of Kunsha. At a "meeting of the respective guards of Shan State and the Northwest Military Region to suppress the communists", an officer suggested that Khun Sha be arrested on the spot, but Shanyou shook his head and refused. It was easy to capture Kun Sha, but Kun Sha was very cunning, and he had made preparations before the meeting, and his armed force of several thousand people was not easy to deal with, so at that meeting, Shanyou was still very polite and respectful to Kun Sha.
But Shanyou secretly prepared to get rid of Kunsha. First of all, he transferred the former commander of the Northwest Military Region out of the Shan State region. Because this person has always had a close relationship with Kunsha, and his personal relationship is very deep. Shanyou sent Colonel Danding to take over the post of commander of the Northwest Military Region, and at the same time transferred two elite divisions from the central region to sneak from the jungle and approach the Self-Defense Force station in Kunsha, covertly forming a situation of outflanking.
Ten days later, Khun Sa suddenly received a telegram from Colonel Dan Din, commander of the newly appointed Northwest Burma Military Region, asking him to immediately rush to Taunggyi to attend an emergency military meeting. Kunsha was very happy to receive the telegram, and felt that it was another opportunity for him to show his talents.
He told Zhang Suquan about it. Zhang Suquan held the jade cigarette holder, was silent for a long time, and said: "This is a conspiracy, what is the urgent military intelligence research now?" Zhang Suquan suggested that Kun Sha not to participate, but Kun Sha insisted on going, blaming the chief of staff for making a fuss and being too careful.
Zhang Suquan said: "If you go to Taunggyi this time, you will lose your head if you don't get it, and without you Kunsha, the entire Self-Defense Forces will also be destroyed." ”
Kunsha didn't listen at all. He was ready to go to the meeting, and he specially asked for a generous gift for the newly appointed Colonel Danding, a friend whom he had not yet met.
Zhang Suquan was also helpless, knowing that he couldn't change Kunsha's decision, so he said: "I suggest that a military meeting be held before you leave the base camp, and I ask you to announce in public that after you leave, the command will be handed over to me." ”
"What do you mean by that?" Kunsha asked.
"Commander, if you are detained in Taunggyi, you must be calm and your heart must be calm. I will be prepared for anything in the army. You remember, as long as we keep the army, the government will not dare to kill you. I'll fight with my life to rescue you. No matter how long it takes, I, Zhang Suquan, will definitely bring the soldiers well and wait for you to come back. I will give you back so many brothers and families as they are. ”
"Listen to your tone, it seems that something unfortunate is about to happen."
"Be prepared."
Khun Sha agreed to Jang Suquan's suggestion and convened a meeting of officers before leaving, announcing that after he was ordered to go to Taunggyi to attend the government's emergency military meeting, the command of the Self-Defense Forces would be in the hands of Chief of Staff Jang Suquan, and those who violated the order would be dealt with by military law.
Khun Sa drove from Danyang to Lashio with four personal guards, and the next day, he flew from Lashio to Taggyi.
As soon as they got out of the airport, Kun Sha and his party walked towards the reception, and they were suddenly bumped by someone on the way. Kun Sha was about to scold the other party for not having long eyes, but the man actually scolded first: "Don't leave quickly, you wait for death." ”
When Kun Sha looked at it, it turned out to be an important member of a certain ministry of the Burmese government. This person is an old friend of Kun Sha. He was about to say hello when the man gave him a mysterious look, then turned and hurried away.
Kun Sha was wondering what the man was hinting at, when Dan Ding, who had arrived earlier, greeted him, shaking hands with Kun Sha like an old friend, and behaving very enthusiastically. He accompanied Kunsha into the airport lounge, where he gave the new friend gold bars and dollar bills he had brought home. Colonel Danding waved his hand and asked his entourage to accept it, and then said to Kun Sha: "The accommodation has been arranged, you have a good rest first, and you will prepare for the meeting tomorrow." ”
A military jeep had been parked in front of the hall, and a squad of soldiers with guns stood around the car, and the officers opened the door for Khun Sha. Danding got into another car and walked in front, Kunsha walked in the middle, and behind was a military vehicle full of armed soldiers.
Kun Sha began to have a sense of foreboding, could it be that the chief of staff's estimate was right? But the tiger has fallen into the hunter's trap and has no choice but to bite the bullet and see what happens, and then improvise.
The next morning, Khun Sa walked into the door of the conference room building of the Northwest Military Region of Myanmar, where four guards were blocked and quickly taken away.
The atmosphere in the conference room was extremely tense, and the newly appointed Colonel Danding changed his enthusiasm at the airport yesterday, and did not seem to see Kun Sha walking into the conference room, his thin face was gloomy, and he did not speak for a long time.
Kunsha knew that the fateful moment had come. Instead, he was calm, nodded and smiled easily with his acquaintances, and found a place to sit down.
Looking at Kun Sha's wise and foolish demeanor, Colonel Danding's face relaxed. He secretly sighed that the order of the general of the mountain friend was indeed correct, and this person was not an ordinary idle person. He tried his best to keep his composure, and said to Kun Sha in an understated tone:
"Mr. Kunsha, I am on the orders of General Shanyou, please come and rest for a while."
Kun Sha suddenly became angry, and it was really a trap. He was originally a reckless person, but after years of tempering, coupled with Zhang Suquan's assistance in the past few years, his city government and ambitions have long been above those of ordinary bandits and drug dealers. At this time, he knew that if he wanted to have a seizure, he scolded Danding and Shanyou, and let out a breath, but it would be a bad thing, so that Danding could find an excuse to punish the crime.
After listening to Colonel Danding's words, Kun Sha did not show fear, nor did he slap the table and yell, only smiled faintly, with a disdainful mockery in his eyes, and asked in a witty tone: "Wow, I have worked hard for many years, and I am really tired, now I have time to take a good rest, this is a good thing, please Colonel tell General Shanyou, I thank Your Excellency for your care." ”
Dan Ding was taken aback, he didn't expect Kun Sha to be so calm.
"Then I've wronged you!" Dan Ding said.
"It doesn't matter, thirty years in Hedong, thirty years in Hexi. No one can say what will happen to the world in the future. ”
After Kunsha finished speaking, he stood up calmly. With a wave of his hand, several guards walked in and escorted Kun Sha out of the conference room.
Khun Sha was put in a jeep and driven straight to the airport, changing planes several times along the way. Because he has been blindfolded, he does not know what city he is in or where he is being held. A dark room of about 10 square meters, with only a locked thick iron door, no windows, and the ventilation holes are also curved, only the roof has a faint light. There is a single plank bed and a commode in the room. Kun Sha lay on the bed day and night, eating, drinking, and Lazar all in the dark room.
What Kun Sha thought about the most was, what was the current situation of his army? Is it annihilated, or is it safe and sound? Without him Kunsha, can Zhang Suquan control that group of fierce and arrogant cronies?
One thing is clear to Kunsha: the fate of his army determines his own fate.