Tham Ngop: Unravelling history

After driving north for two hours on Highway 107 from Chiang Mai, and then another hour along Highway 1340, which borders Burma on the left—one of the northernmost roads in Thailand—you will eventually come across a small mountainous village called Tham Ngop. 

It is located 16 km south of Doi Angkhang, a famous mountain for Thais who want to enjoy the winter. A dozen or so shops are set up at the entrance to the village, offering wild cherries and honey, waiting for tourists. However, very few tourists stop in this village, except perhaps for those in urgent need of a toilet while traveling to and from Doi Angkhang.

Tham Ngop, home to 600 people in 100 households scattered across 1,000 meters in the mountains, looks like an ordinary village at first glance, with nothing special to note. 

“There are no jobs here, so the young people have all gone to Chiang Mai or Bangkok. Now, we only have old people who live off picking wild greens and berries,” said 38-year-old Amei. The atmosphere in the village feels desolate. “We don’t know much about our ancestors, except that they came from Yunnan, China, and fought against the communists. Those old soldiers are almost all gone now.”

Not only Amei, but almost no one in the village is aware of its secretive past. Tham Ngop was once a key player in international politics, a stage for a secret war that involved the US, Taiwan, Burma, Laos, and Thailand. 

It is rare for a history from 40 years ago to be so meticulously covered up. The reason? Tham Ngop was the hideout of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Third Army, commonly referred to as the Lost Army or the Forgotten Army.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, instead of accepting the Communist Party's demand for a popular coalition government, attacked communist-controlled areas in June 1946. 

Mao Zedong counterattacked with the support of the people, and after capturing Beijing in January 1949, he proceeded to take major Kuomintang strongholds, including Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Shanghai. Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949.

Chiang Kai-shek, having lost Guangzhou by October 14, fled to Taiwan in December 1949 and established the government of the Republic of China. 

The remnants of the Kuomintang army, including the 8th Army, 26th Army, and 93rd Division, led by General Li Mi, were pushed back by the People’s Liberation Army and fled across the Yunnan border into Burma in late December. This marked the birth of the remnants of Chiang Kai-shek’s army.

The protagonist of Tham Ngop’s story is Li Wen-huan, who crossed the Burmese border from Yunnan in 1951 with 500 armed men from his Mabang gang. They joined the remnants of the Kuomintang, receiving support from the US as part of the Cold War effort to counter communist expansion in Southeast Asia.

The CIA secretly deployed agents to reorganise and support the Kuomintang remnants. General Li Mi, who had established his headquarters in Burma, formed the “Yunnan Anti-Communist Salvation Army” and attracted local ethnic minorities to bolster his forces, which swelled to nearly 10,000 troops by April 1951.

In June 1951, Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, alarmed by the incursions of the Kuomintang remnants, issued an order to attack. General Li Mi, who was forced out, moved his headquarters to Mong Sat on the Thai border.

At this point, Li Wen-huan and the remnants of the Kuomintang began ramping up opium production with the help of local ethnic groups, including the Lahu and Akha, to fund their military operations. The CIA secretly transported the opium from Mong Sat to Chiang Mai and then to Bangkok using Air America. 

Under the protection of General Phao Siyanond, the police chief who controlled Thai politics, the opium spread to Hong Kong, the United States, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The annual opium production along the Burmese border, which had been 30 tons in 1950, increased to 300-600 tons in the mid-1950s when the Kuomintang remnants became involved.

In 1953 and 1954, Burma strongly condemned the US government’s secret support for the Kuomintang remnants at the UN. The US, fearing that Burma was aligning with China, decided to withdraw support. Between 1953 and 1954, 5,770 Kuomintang remnants and 880 associated persons were repatriated to Taiwan. 

On May 30, 1954, General Li Mi declared the disbandment of the Yunnan Anti-Communist Salvation Army, although many remnants remained in the region, reorganized into five armies.

In 1955, about 600 remnants returned secretly to the Burma-Laos border, and by 1958, Chinese refugees from the Great Leap Forward joined the remnants. The remnants regained strength, and by the early 1960s, they were deployed as mercenaries in the US-led Secret War against Laos during the Vietnam War.

Tham Ngop, which had once been the headquarters of the 3rd Army, quietly influenced modern Asian history. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the remnants of the Kuomintang, including Li Wen-huan, played a dual role in both the international anti-communist movement and the international drug trade.

Today, the remnants of Tham Ngop, including Lee Wen-huan, have disappeared, and only a few elderly people remain, with their memories fading. Third-generation residents of Tham Ngop no longer know their grandfather’s history. Today, about 60,000 descendants of the Kuomintang remnants live in 60 villages, including Tham Ngop, along the Thai-Burma and Thai-Laos borders.

If you're interested in history, you can catch a glimpse of its traces in Tham Ngop. The gate, bearing the eerie inscription “Preparing for battle with determination to kill the enemy,” still stands. The parade ground of the 3rd Army is now a hotel and restaurant, owned by the daughter of General Li Wen-huan.

The house where General Li lived and worked is now a shabby museum, waiting for visitors. Another site worth seeing is Ban Mai Nong Bua, built by General Li Wen-huan, 12km down the mountain from Tham Ngop. The splendid General Li Wen-huan Memorial Hall in the center of the village contrasts sharply with the dilapidated Long Min Zhi Za on the hillside, a neglected corner where a few old remnants live out their final days, yearning for their homeland.

If you can feel the traces of history in this remote mountain village, you are already a valuable member of international civil society.