In Northern Myanmar, a Rebel Stronghold on Alert - NYTimes.com

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By THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

MONG HPEN, Myanmar — Conquering armies of centuries past avoided this remote, mountainous area along the present-day border with China, a place once described by a British colonial official as “an unpenetrated enclave of savage hills.”

Inhabited by the Wa, an ethnic group once notorious for headhunting, neither the British colonial overlords nor the Burmese kings who preceded them saw much point in controlling the area.

But to Myanmar’s military government this rebel region is an irritating piece of unfinished business and an impediment to the long-cherished goal of national unity. Myanmar’s generals are demanding that the Wa disband their substantial army here and fully subjugate themselves to the central government, a call that has so far gone unheeded. Both sides are bracing for potential conflict.

The tensions here might be glossed over by outsiders as yet another arcane dispute in strife-ridden Myanmar between the government and a mistrustful minority, except that the Wa have a well-equipped army of at least 20,000 full-time soldiers — about twice the size of Ireland’s armed forces — and are considered by the United States government as hosts to one of the world’s largest illicit drug operations.

Conflict in the Wa-controlled areas, if it is not averted, could cause a ramping up of drug trafficking across Asia and beyond as the Wa government and other militias seek cash to buy weapons.

Northern Myanmar is very much a world apart, both lawless and heavily militarized, a medieval-style patchwork of obscure ethnic armies, borderland casinos, brothels and the walled compounds of drug lords.

Many rounds of negotiations between Myanmar’s generals and the ethnic groups arrayed like an arc across the northern reaches of the country have yielded nothing but delay for what many analysts believe is a likely showdown. Wa soldiers have been put on standby.

“We were told to be ready and to keep a careful watch,” said Ai Yee, a soldier from the Wa ethnic group who is based in Pangshang, the headquarters of the United Wa State Army. “We are on the lookout for anyone coming in — 24 hours a day.”

Mr. Ai spoke cautiously and reluctantly. Few outsiders visit the areas under Wa control, except Chinese businessmen, drug traffickers and the occasional official from the United Nations.

The Wa are the most heavily armed of about a dozen groups opposing calls by Myanmar’s military government to become border guards in time for the introduction of a new constitution next year. The generals who lead this country, formerly known as Burma, consider the constitution and the elections that will accompany it a milestone that will bring the national consolidation that has long eluded them.

Myanmar’s top two commanders, Senior Gen. Than Shwe and Vice Senior Gen.Maung Aye, now in their 70s, appear eager to finally bring the ethnic groups to heel.

But the ferocity of the Wa, their apparent lack of fear and their talent for silent, nighttime attacks remain embedded in the memories of the generals, who fought and lost many bloody battles against them in the decades after independence from Britain in 1948.

The potential scale of conflict is daunting. The Wa have a significant arsenal, including about 300 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, antitank weapons and ample assault rifles and ammunition, said Col. Peeranate Katetem of the Thai Army, who has spent a decade tracking the Wa.

Including reserve soldiers, Colonel Peeranate estimates the total troop strength of the Wa, who control two noncontiguous territories, at around 50,000 soldiers.

The Wa’s fearsome reputation comes partly from their harvest rituals involving the severed heads of rival tribe members, a practice that ceased sometime after World War II. Early foreign visitors, many of them missionaries, found “skull groves” in the jungles outside villages.

Today the mystique of the Wa persists. Young children in Myanmar are told to come home before dark lest they be grabbed by the Wa.

These are outdated images. Here in Mong Hpen, a stronghold of the United Wa State Army, Wa children play games at a downtown Internet cafe close to the market, which is dominated by Chinese merchants. There are reminders in Mong Hpen of what the Wa stand to lose if they capitulate to the demands of Myanmar’s rulers: Like many other ethnic groups, the Wa have their own schools, hospitals, electricity grid and phone services. The Internet here is fast and free of censorship by the Myanmar government.

The handful of foreign analysts who have studied the Wa, some of whom cannot be identified because of the sensitivity of their work with foreign militaries or law enforcement agencies, say the Wa are a disciplined and militaristic society. Those who do not fall into line are severely dealt with. Municipal work in Mong Hpen is partly carried out by chain gangs: prisoners in clanking leg irons hack away at the embankment of the main road near the local jail.

Older soldiers in Myanmar are inured to warfare. Fighting between the central government and Chinese-backed Communist forces, which included Wa soldiers, flared for decades until a series of cease-fire agreements beginning in 1989. All males in Wa territory are required to enter the army, and many, if not most, never leave, often pursuing dual careers as soldiers and farmers. Almost all households in the Wa and a neighboring allied fief known as Mong La include at least one man in uniform.

“We are not afraid to fight,” said Chai Saam, a soldier from the Shan ethnic group who has been in the Mong La army for 35 years and who fought frequently against the central government in the first half of his military career. “But we are afraid the air force will burn our villages.”

He added: “We are afraid they will steal treasure from our villages. We are afraid the Burmese soldiers will rape women.”

Even with their significant forces the Wa and other ethnic groups would be vastly outnumbered by the Myanmar Army, which has about 450,000 soldiers and advanced weaponry. The Wa have built a series of underground bunkers in Pangshang, according to Bertil Lintner, an expert on ethnic groups in Myanmar who is based in Thailand. But hiding might simply postpone defeat.

If they are attacked, the crucial question for all the ethnic groups in northern Myanmar is what stance China would take.

“I don’t think the Wa can sustain a prolonged campaign unless they get supplies from China — at the very least food and fuel,” Mr. Lintner said.

China has divided loyalties in Myanmar. In recent years it has supported Myanmar’s central government as a geostrategic ally, coveting the country’s reserves of oil and gas and access to the Indian Ocean. But China also has long-standing ties with all the armed ethnic groups along the border, and many ethnic Chinese live, work and have businesses inside Myanmar.

Almost all the ethnic groups — the Akha, Lahu, Kachin, Shan and Wa among them — straddle the border between Myanmar and China, and many travel across as if there were no border.

Beijing has reportedly sought assurances from Thein Sein, the Myanmar prime minister, that peace will prevail along the border. After a recent meeting of Asian leaders in Thailand, China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, quoted Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China as saying that Myanmar “could properly handle problems and safeguard peace and stability in the China-Myanmar border region.”

China has been especially concerned about the situation since attacks in August by the Myanmar military against the Kokang, a small ethnic Chinese group. That campaign, combined with another attack by government proxies against Karen rebels in June, seems to suggest that the Myanmar junta’s demands that ethnic groups yield to its control are not idle threats. The Kokang attack caused panic among wealthy ethnic Chinese families, and many fled the Wa region, according to the Shan Herald Agency for News, an online outlet devoted to news from northern Myanmar.

The northern reaches of Myanmar are playgrounds of vice for Chinese tourists and businessmen who stream across the border. The territory of Mong La is run by Lin Mingxian, a former Red Guard during China’s Cultural Revolution who today has a private army of about 3,000 men, separate from but allied with the Wa forces.

During daylight hours the town appears sleepy. But when night falls hundreds of prostitutes line up in orderly queues waiting for patrons who arrive in taxis. More entrepreneurial prostitutes hand out calling cards at outdoor restaurants. Hotels charge by the hour. Casinos in the nearby town of Mong Ma lure Chinese gamblers. At a morning market hawkers sell exotic animals from inland jungles — both live and skinned.

The steep hills in northern Myanmar are lined with rubber plantations that feed Chinese factories’ demand for latex. There is extreme poverty — thatch huts and farmers tending fields with buffalo — but also much unexplained wealth: modern, walled compounds and the frequent passage of Mitsubishi Pajeros and Toyota Prado Land Cruisers, vehicles that cost well upward of $100,000 in southern Myanmar because of onerous import duties. (Residents of rebel-held areas in northern Myanmar avoid the taxes because cars are imported through Laos or China and bear license plates issued either by the Wa or Mong La governments.)

United States and Thai counternarcotic officials believe that most of the Wa wealth comes from selling methamphetamine and heroin, both of which have been pouring across the border with Thailand in recent months in unusually large quantities as the Wa and other groups seek cash to buy weapons. The kingpin of the Wa drug operations is Wei Hsueh-kang, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. He is one of 19 Wa leaders sought by the American authorities. The United States is offering $2 million to anyone who helps arrest Mr. Wei, who was born in China but has held leadership positions in the Wa government over the past decade.

Given their isolation it seems unlikely that the Wa leadership will be arrested anytime soon. But American counternarcotics officials argue that the indictments have limited the leaders’ ability to travel and run businesses outside of their territory.

“We have shrunk their cage — immobilized them to some degree,” said Pamela Brown, an agent for the D.E.A. based in northern Thailand. “If at some point they travel into a country with whom the United States has an extradition treaty we are poised to extradite them.”

The situation in northern Myanmar presents a dilemma for the United States, which has made overtures toward Myanmar’s generals in recent months after having only very limited contact for the past two decades. The United States would like to see a crackdown on drug lords and their protectors. But military campaigns by the Myanmar government have frequently been accompanied by widespread atrocities, including the burning of villages, the use of child soldiers and rapes.

“We’re opposed to drug trafficking, but certainly we don’t want the military to go in and attack people and create human rights violations as they have in the past,” Scot Marciel, the State Department official charged with policy for Southeast Asia, said in Bangkok Thursday.

“It’s very complicated.”

To the outside world, especially countries in Asia struggling to cope with heroin and methamphetamine addictions, a critical question is how a conflict would affect the supply of illicit drugs.

Mr. Lintner is pessimistic. Even if Myanmar’s military prevails against the ethnic groups, drug trafficking will not be eradicated, he said. Much of the opium harvested today in Myanmar is grown in areas currently controlled, officially at least, by the central government, he said.

“Local militias would probably persist — and with them the drug trade,” he said. “These areas would remain lawless.”