'Opium Kings': A Tale With No Good Guys
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/tvopiumreview.html

...Noting that the Shan nationalists have no source of income but the poppy,
a perplexed Cowell says, "Kuhn Sa appears to be a revolutionary using
opium to support his army, but there's no way of proving he's not
playacting in order to control the world's largest source of heroin." U.S.
officials do not seem to be perplexed. In 1989 Kuhn Sa was indicted by
a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on charges of drug trafficking; Myanmar
has rejected American demands for his extradition for trial.

On a recent visit to Shan State, Cowell found that the poppy fields were
producing more than ever. He is sympathetic to the growers. The poppy
crop, he says, "is the Shan family's only insurance against starvation; the
white sap of the Yunan poppy bleeds in ever increasing quantities, driven
by ever increasing looting and brutality against these ever more desperate
people."

The "Frontline" report, which is enlivened with battlefield photography,
ends in 1996 with a deal involving Khun Sa, Lo Hsin Han and the
Burmese government. The Shan liberation movement has for now been
crushed; its former leaders are prospering as businessmen; villagers are
trying to scrape by; the heroin trade flourishes...

PROUCTION NOTES

"The Opium Kings" is a WGBH/"Frontline" and Carlton UK Television
production. Adrian Cowell, producer; Michael Kirk, senior producer.
The U.S. version is produced and edited by Dan McCabe and reported
by Joe Rosenbloom. "Frontline" is a production of a consortium of public
television stations: WGBH, Boston; WTVS, Detroit; WPBT, Miami;
WNET, New York, and KCTS, Seattle. Michael Sullivan, executive
producer for "Frontline"; David Fanning, senior executive producer for
"Frontline."

New York Times
May 20, 1997