Discuss the United Wa State Army (USWA) and their role as organized criminals in the Golden Triangle

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Until 1989, the USWA served the Burmese Communist Party (BCP). After Beijing cut off aid to the BCP, the BCP went into the opium business. The BCP controlled much of the poppy-producing area and received opium as a form of tax and tribute from local farmers, which it then refined into heroin in its own laboratories.
In 1989, its ethnic rank-and-file Wa tribesmen—fierce warriors whose ancestors were headhunters—rebelled, and the BCP folded as an armed force. Most Wa political groups reached an accommodation with the Myanmar ruling junta, but one faction of the Wa reorganized as the United Wa State Army (UWSA). Headquartered on the border of China's Yunnan Province, the UWSA uses heroin and methamphetamine trafficking as a means of funding efforts against Burmese control. Nearly one million Wa straddle the border between Myanmar and China, and the UWSA operates freely along the China and Thailand borders, controlling much of the Shan State with a militia estimated to have about 18,000 members, well armed with ground-to-air missiles and modern communications equipment. Ironically, the Wa routinely executes anyone caught dealing drugs for local use. Since Khun Sa's surrender, the USWA has reigned supreme in drug production in Myanmar.
In 2000, Myanmar negotiated a truce with the Wa that gave them autonomy in their state, and the Wa reached an accommodation with China. In return for sophisticated weapons and expertise from China, the Wa moved their people, their army, and their drug laboratories into the Thai-Myanmar border area known as Doi Lang. The Chinese were concerned with their own drug problem and preferred the Wa to be a Thai rather than a Chinese problem.