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 3
Some money from the tribe's business ventures trickled down, changing the landscape of the Wa hills. "In 1993 you could still meet guys carrying spears," recalls a Christian missionary who toured the region. Since then, a handful of larger Wa villages have morphed into towns, and with Chinese technical help a new road has been built to link them. Villagers who live along its winding route refer to it simply as "the road." There is no other one in the Wa hills with which to confuse it. And so, by logical necessity, all roads in the Wa hills lead to one place: Panghsang, population 15,000, the headquarters of the UWSA's empire and the lair of Chairman Bao.
"To get into any Wa village," an earlier visitor once wrote, "you must either fight or be invited." Getting an invitation to meet Asia's most powerful druglord was simpler than expected. A few calls to a Chinese mobile-phone number, a letter of intent delivered through a Wa emissary and then, suddenly, a message from Panghsang: Bao was willing to meet. After that came a great deal of waiting near the Burmese border for this rare audience.
There are worse places to kill time than the Ru Yi Commercial City development in Menglian, a Chinese town only an hour's drive from Panghsang. Locals say the lavish, Thai-designed complex is owned by Li Ziru, a Chinese-born former Red Guard who nowadays acts as Bao's right-hand man. The U.S. State Department claims Li is a leader in Burma's drug trade. He is clearly a very wealthy man. The Ru Yi complex boasts a four-star hotel, shops, a supermarket, karaoke bars and—in a country where gambling is still outlawed as one of the "Five Evils"—a busy casino. Evidently, Chinese officials are not squeamish about drug money fueling the breakneck development of Menglian and other towns in Yunnan. The Golden Phoenix Hotel in Simao is proudly described in a brochure as a joint venture between "the Wa Federation of Myanmar [Burma]" and Yunnan's Provincial Farming Bureau. And at the UWSA-owned Health and Happiness Hotel in Cangyuan, senior county officials slurp tea in the lobby while Wa prostitutes prowl the upper floors for clients.
The summons from Bao eventually comes. Getting to Panghsang involves a short drive to the border, an immigration check and a trip across the bridge spanning the turbid Namkha River. On the other side, flanked by forbidding mountain ridges, lies Panghsang. Ten years ago it was little more than a village with a rebel army base attached. Today it has hotels, shops, karaoke bars and a 24-hour casino. There is also a bowling alley where, say locals, a lane is permanently reserved for Bao.
In a conference room in one of the hotels, Bao makes his entrance orbited by two of his own cameramen, one of them packing a side arm, both recording the boss's meeting with the Western press. Bao, a squat man in his early 50s with a bulldog face, is also armed. He carries a small-caliber pistol clipped to the belt of his khaki pants, an ensemble jarringly set off by his footwear: a pair of battered, pink Chinese slippers. He listens to our questions with unnerving stillness, staring at us intently, then answers in rapid-fire Yunnanese patois, gesticulating wildly. "These drugs!" he cries, karate-chopping the air for emphasis, revealing the diamond-encrusted gold Rolex he wears on his wrist. "I detest them! You think drugs have been harmful to others? Let me tell you: they have been a much greater disaster for the Wa! Our people are stuck in such poverty they haven't even got clothes to put on their own backs."
Ask Bao who runs Burma's narcotics trade, and he grows intensely agitated. "It's all done by businessmen!" he fumes. "Businessmen operating outside the law are refining opium into heroin and manufacturing yaba." The Wa people—and, by extension, their leader—are simply "victims," he says. This is disingenuous, to say the least. Many of these unnamed businessmen are Bao's own field commanders. His brother, senior UWSA commander Bao Youhua, runs what an official with an international narcotics-monitoring agency calls "industrial-scale" cultivation of opium poppies in the Nam Lwi Valley southeast of Panghsang. Another notorious trafficker is the shadowy leader of the UWSA's southern command, Wei Xuegang. Half Wa and half Chinese, Wei was indicted in absentia on heroin-trafficking charges in 1993 by a New York federal court. The U.S. is offering a $2 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Wei is also named by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Thai army as the boss of the booming methamphetamine trade into Thailand, where a court has already sentenced him to death in absentia.
But Chairman Bao will not be drawn on this. He prefers to portray himself as a heroic enemy of the narcotics racket, a man dedicated to the banishment of opium from the Wa hills. "Our objective is to eliminate the cultivation of opium poppies by 2005, and I intend to achieve that," he declares. Only 40% of Wa farmers now cultivate opium, claims Bao, down from 60% in recent years. "We've also developed a range of substitute industries," he says, listing what he calls "decent, regular businesses"—rubber and tea plantations, gem and zinc mines, liquor distilleries and a brand of cigarettes called Golden Triangle. This is just a start, promises Bao. "If the international community is willing to support us," he offers, "we'll get this work done. But we need help." The international community has shown little inclination to trust the UWSA leader. But Bao cites what he believes is irrefutable proof of his good intent: the great Wa migration.
