It sounds like the basis of an ill-conceived TV program: a rogue state embedded within the jungles of Southeast Asia and whose primary business (controlled by a bombastic dictator) is drug-running. Yet, in Myanmar, just such a place exists, and it isn’t a Hollywood set or fictional fief. Wa State, a remote region, sits along the high Burman-Chinese-Thai borders, a commanding position from which it smuggles illicit substances around the Indochinese Peninsula. Wa is fiercely independent, highly militarized, and (for those in power) an extraordinary source of wealth. It is also a case study in the deft navigation of great power politics.
The first recorded contact between the West and the ethnic Wa people came in 1893, when a British colonial bigwig, George Scott, set off into the Burmese mountains to survey the lands and peoples which his empire claimed. “They are an extremely well-behaved, industrious, and estimable race,” wrote Scott upon meeting the Wa, “were it not for the one foible of cutting strangers’ heads off.” The latter part of this sentence sounds like a delusion. Yet, Scott recorded the practice of headhunting carefully. Such beheadings (which are thought to ward off disease and famine) continued deep into the 1970s. Though the Wa no longer sever heads, they undoubtedly remain “estimable,” and have retained the ferocious reputation which Scott recorded.
Wa State has a population of perhaps one million people. Yet, it has raised a formidable standing army larger than that of Sweden — 30,000 troops armed with surface-to-air missiles, helicopters, artillery-pieces, and armored vehicles. Wa manufactures automatic weapons for sale on the international black market, and smuggles weapons from Thailand and Cambodia, while China has supplied much of the high-end technology. Wa State has assembled the requisite manpower for its military by requiring that every household send at minimum one to two male members for armed service in the United Wa State Army (UWSA), depending on the size of a family. UWSA troops are paid $0.25 US per day in exchange for their loyalty. Primarily, the UWSA guards the more than 40 manufacturing facilities which constitute Wa’s primary source of income — drugs.
Wa State is among the world’s largest producers of methamphetamines and raw opium. Trade in these deadliest of commodities (for which the Wa have 250,000 customers in Thailand alone) nets the UWSA $550 million US per year. In the past two decades, the Wa have also expanded beyond drugs – having established their micronation as a global hub for trafficking in poached animals and established offices where as many as 100,000 telephone scammers conduct business. Wa is a criminal organization first, and a state second.
It is in some ways surprising that a mini-nation so thoroughly entangled in the world of international crime has eluded international attention for so long. But the Wa nation has cunningly framed itself as an ethnic minority seeking independence, rather than a criminal cartel whose only true pursuit is profit. Wa foreign policy has centered around appeasing major powers, i.e. China and the U.S., the Burmese government, which nominally controls their territory, and the Southeast Asian nations which suffer most from its crimes.
The formal diplomatic history of Wa State began in the 1940s, when the Wa became embroiled in the Chinese civil war. Forces of the retreating Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalists who opposed Mao and would go on to establish Taiwan) set up fortified positions in the hills of Wa State in preparation for a counterattack against the CCP-controlled mainland that would never materialize. The Chinese Communists were far from blind, however, to the presence of KMT forces, and began to wage a campaign against the nationalists from across the Chinese border. The primary tactic employed by the Chinese communists was simple: they would arm ethnic minorities, including the Wa, who in return would oppose the KMT and be allowed to exercise sovereignty over their territory.
When KMT forces finally retreated from Burma, the Wa found themselves closely aligned with the Burmese Communist Party, and its Chinese cousin. In the 1960s, the Burmese Communists were pushed out of that nation’s center and into Wa territory. Pangsang, which is the capital of Wa State, became the Communist base of operations. Although some Wa guerillas joined forces with the BCP, their power was diluted not only by Burmese communists, but also by the Chinese intellectuals who comprised its upper crust. By the end of 1988, the Burmese socialist government had toppled. Wa took advantage of the resultant chaos to evict Communist forces and establish its independence under the snappy aegis of “Shan State Special Region No. 2.” Although Wa remained a nominal part of Burma, the Burmese state was (and remains) too weak to exert any genuine authority over the Wa region.
Remarkably, despite the defenestration of BCP leadership in Wa, the Wa have remained close allies of China. After the 1988 student protests which ended in the loss of Communist control over Burma, the Wa framed themselves as a single-party socialist republic in the vein of Maoist China. Bao Youxiang, the Wa leader who retains control even today, proclaimed himself “Chairman Bao,” and established a Politburo. This ensured Chinese military support for the Wa – which in turn would solidify Wa independence from Burma proper. Yet Bao is not by conviction a radical socialist: he has a range of business holdings in Myanmar and the West that comfortably repudiate any assertion of genuine Marxist-Leninst praxis.
But coziness with China — and Wa’s increasing drug production — would also draw American attention. Starting in the 1990s, Wa State took dramatic steps to repair its relationship with the West. It began by seizing vast tracts of land along the Burmese-Thai border, and forcibly resettled some 80,000 opium farmers onto new farms that were ostensibly restricted to producing only food staples. In 2006, Wa State agreed to ban opium production. Yet even before the ban, its focus was already transitioning away from opium cultivation — and regardless of Chairman Bao’s promises, opium production never ceased entirely. Nevertheless, U.S. diplomats were largely satisfied with the agreement, and now look elsewhere for tussles over drug-running.
China has continued to associate with Wa, in spite of the aforementioned scams, wildlife-smuggling, and drug-running. It has also supplied paved roads and telecommunications. The result has been dangerous: a sovereign criminal cartel that is increasingly connected to the outside world. That being said, the Wa have leveraged diplomacy to completely evade the attention of the West — as well as the control of China, whom it threatens to flood with drugs and restive ethnic minorities. No other nation, official or imagined, can make such a claim. However unpleasant and criminal, the Wa have played both sides in foreign policy for seventy-five years. Look to them for lessons in great-power diplomacy.
