---
title: "The female warlord who had CIA connections and opium routes"
date: 2017-07-28T20:54:49+06:00
draft: false
tags: ["asia", "crime","myanmar"]
author: "9x0rg"
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---


![Olive Yang](/images/mrs-olive-yang.jpg#center "Ms. Yang, center at front, with her soldiers, circa 1956. Credit Yang family")

*Ms. Yang, center at front, with her soldiers, circa 1956. Credit Yang family*

> Olive Yang was born to royalty in British colonial Burma, but rejected that life to become a cross-dressing warlord whose C.I.A.-supplied army established opium trade routes across the Golden Triangle. By the time of her death, last week at 90, she had led hundreds of men, endured prison and torture, generated gossip for her relationship with a film actress and, finally, helped forge a truce between ethnic rebels and the government.

Full story [by Gabrielle Paluch](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/asia/burmese-warlord-olive-yang.html) (NYT, July 21, 2017)


