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Kingpin

Neither group, however, had
counted on the involvement of the
kingpin of the area's opium trade:
the CIA-backed Royal Lao
Government Army and Air Force,
under the command of General
Ouane Rathikoune. Hearing of the
skirmish, the general pulled his
armed forces out of the Plain of
Jars in northeastern Laos where
they were supposed to be fighting
the Pathet Lao guerrillas, and
engaged two companies and his
entire air force in a battle of
extermination against both sides.

The result was nearly 30 KMT
and Burmese dead and a half-ton
windfall of opium for the Royal
Lao government.

In a moment of revealing
frankness shortly after the battle,
General Rathikoune far
from denying the role that opium
played, told several reporters that
the opium trades were "not bad
Laos." The trade provides cash
income for the Meo hill tribes, he
argued, who would otherwise be
penniless and therefore a threat to
Laos's political stability.