Burma: A Forgotten Land
With a thaw in relations between the ruling junta and the opposition, Burma is slowly opening up to the world
Asia's AIDS Crisis
The Chinese-Burmese border is the center of Asia's newest epidemic (September 30, 2002)
Chinese Junk
Over the past decade, China has become a major conduit for drugs from the Golden Triangle (May 20, 2002)
Soldiers of Fortune — page 2
Even in the old days, not every Wa chopped heads; 19th century Chinese merchants made the potentially lifesaving distinction between the nonhostile "tame Wa" and their bloodthirsty cousins, the "wild Wa." But all Wa cherished the de facto independence their hilltop seclusion granted them and were quick to trade on their unsavory image if threatened. A Wa chief once declared to approaching British troops, "We are a wild people, who eat rats and squirrels raw."
Undaunted, a British colonial administrator named George Scott launched the first expedition into wild Wa territory in 1893. Scott demolished many myths about the hill tribe. They were not, as outsiders had insisted, "habitual cannibals" with a predilection for roasted babies. Nor were they backward, he said. "They are an exceedingly well-behaved, industrious, and estimable race," wrote Scott, "were it not for the one foible of cutting strangers' heads off and neglecting ever to wash themselves."
Despite brutal military campaigns by Scott's men—one in retaliation for the decapitation of two British officers—the Wa were never brought fully under colonial control. But later, greater historical forces shattered Wa isolation forever and propelled their homeland into the international narcotics trade. The Wa had always grown poppies. Scott himself had marveled at the "enormous amount of opium" they produced even in the 1890s. But the retreat of China's nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) divisions into northeast Burma after the 1949 communist revolution kicked cultivation into high gear. The KMT persuaded farmers to grow more opium, transporting it on long mule caravans into northern Thailand. By the late 1960s, the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) had arrived. Bent on overthrowing the Rangoon government through its jungle bases along the Sino-Burmese border, the Beijing-backed CPB quickly formed pacts with Wa guerrilla bands. One was led by a pugnacious 21-year-old named Bao Youxiang.
Born to a chieftain in Kunma, a northern Wa village near Gawng Lang, Bao was the sixth of eight brothers and a natural-born fighter. He rose steadily through the CPB ranks, from battalion commander in Kunma to leader of a crack brigade operating near the Thai border. For Bao and thousands of fellow Wa tribesmen, the CPB provided modern weaponry, combat experience and—a first for a people historically made up of squabbling clans—a loose political unity. In return, the communists got a pool of tough tribal warriors to fight a bloody 20-year conflict against the Burmese government. The Wa proved fearless in battle and willing to accept appallingly high casualties. As one saying went, "The Wa are good at dying."
At rebelling, too. In 1989 a key brigade mutinied against the aging CPB leadership. On April 17 of that year—a date the Wa still celebrate as national day—Bao and other tribal commanders joined the rebellion. Burma's Communist Party split into several heavily armed factions, all of which signed cease-fire agreements with Rangoon. One of these factions, the United Wa State Army, would be dominated by Bao. The cease-fire was a turning point in Wa history. The embattled Burmese military, still reeling from the 1988 democracy uprising, had no desire to fight the heavily armed Wa militia. In return for keeping the peace, the UWSA was given full autonomy over what the regime termed "Special Region No. 2," which Bao christened "Wa state." The UWSA was also granted lucrative business concessions, including tacit permission to deal in the only valuable commodity it knew: narcotics.
By 1994 the wa state army was mass-producing yaba in addition to heroin. Unlike fields of poppies, the tiny pills are immune to bad weather and invisible to U.S. spy satellites. They are cheap to produce in makeshift chemical factories and easier to smuggle than heroin. Thailand proved a ready market: today, more Thais are addicted to yaba than to heroin. And so the UWSA prospered. To defend its enterprises, it acquired a formidable arsenal, largely provided by Chinese dealers in Yunnan. Today the UWSA's weaponry includes heavy machine guns and Chinese-built, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles.
With Burma's domestic economy teetering on collapse, the military regime needed Wa drug money and bribes. So Wa entrepreneurs were welcomed in cities such as Rangoon and Mandalay, where they set up trading companies and bought real estate. Today the UWSA reportedly controls such companies as the Myanmar May Flower Group and, through it, a large private bank. Inevitably the Wa leaders grabbed a hefty piece of the action for themselves. Bao's family, for example, reportedly owns Yangon Airways, one of the country's two domestic airlines.
