Episode #408: “There is no way to tell the story of Myanmar and where it’s headed if you are leaving out the Wa,” says Patrick Winn, a veteran Southeast Asia reporter and author of Narcotopia. His book traces the wild story how Wa State, a mountainous enclave on the Chinese border, became defined by narcotics, and how it has become one of the key powers in the country today. 

A pivotal figure is Saw Lu, born in the mid-1940s, raised among Baptist missionaries, and convinced that literacy and Christianity could unify and “civilize” the Wa. Recruited by Burmese intelligence in his twenties, he was sent to Pang Wai, one of the largest Wa strongholds, as a teacher. Winning villagers’ trust, he then stumbled on a small CIA weapons cache. Through charisma and tactical skill, he transformed himself into a militia leader.  

Meanwhile, Kuomintang exiles who had fled China’s civil war turned to opium trafficking, industrializing heroin production along the Thai-Burma border. The CIA and Taiwanese intelligence viewed these warlords as useful anti-communist allies, even as their heroin flowed into South Vietnam and fueled American soldiers’ addictions. Saw Lu tolerated the opium trade, which he despised, to keep Wa villages united against Maoist influence. At one point, the U.S. even used him as a DEA asset, code-named “Superstar.” 

In the late 1960s, the Communist Party of Burma controlled much of Wa territory for twenty years, during which time Saw Lu faded into obscurity. But a mutiny of Wa soldiers eventually kicked out the Maoists and birthed the United Wa State Army (UWSA). With Chinese backing and drug profits as their main source of income, the UWSA grew into Myanmar’s most powerful non-state military. Saw Lu returned to the scene, and for a while his anti-drug zeal offered a different path to Wa leaders. He wanted to get significant U.S. investment in Wa State in exchange for helping it destroy the drug trade. In the end, however, the CIA undermined Saw Lu’s plans, and he was disgraced.   

Today, Wa State is a “narcostate,” effectively an unrecognized country, a state within a state, stable within its own borders yet destabilizing to Myanmar’s unity. “If you think it’s just some dark, out of the way place that doesn’t matter, please update your thinking on this,” Winn warns.