One of the most remote corners of Indochina and Asia as a whole - the mountainous regions at the junction of the borders of Burma, Thailand and Laos - in the second half of the twentieth century received world fame under the name "Golden Triangle". This name is associated with the fact that the lands on which the opium poppy has been cultivated for centuries, since the 1950s, have become the center of the world export of raw opium for the production of heroin.
When the "triangle" was not yet "golden", it was a rather closed mountainous region, which was considered backward even by the standards of other provinces of Burma or Laos, not to mention Thailand. Dozens of various ethnic groups and tribes lived here, speaking the Tibeto-Burmese, Thai and Mon-Khmer languages. The Shans were and remain one of the largest ethnic groups in the region.
The Shans are a Thai-speaking people, akin to the neighboring Lao people, but to a greater extent retaining the features of an archaic Thai culture. Today Shans live in Burma (where they make up 9% of the population), China, Thailand, Laos. It is clear that, being the largest and most numerous ethnic group, the Shans largely set the political climate of the region. Until the British colonization of Burma, they retained the real independence of their mountain principalities, although formally they were considered vassals of the Burmese crown.
The British, who used in Burma, as well as in India, a variety of methods of government, which varied depending on the historical and cultural characteristics of the peoples they subjugated, preserved the feudal fragmentation of the Shan society. All 33 principalities located in the Shan mountains continued their semi-independent existence; the British administration preferred not to interfere in their internal affairs.
The proclamation of Burma's independence was met with clear disapproval by the Shan aristocracy. The princes felt the danger to the world order preserved for centuries and demanded that the Burmese authorities grant independence to the Shan Federation. Naturally, the central authorities refused this to the Shan leaders, after which they moved on to the active phase of the confrontation. In 1952, the Burmese armed forces that invaded the Shan state met with opposition from not only the Shan feudal lords, but also from other tribes and ethnic groups inhabiting the region.
Perhaps, in the Shan mountains, the resistance of the Burmese army turned out to be the most fierce. This was due to the fact that over the post-war years, the region turned from an ordinary agrarian backwater into a somewhat difficult territory, where the opium poppy became the main agricultural crop. Locals have grown it for centuries and used it for medicinal purposes, but it was only in the twentieth century that it began to be exported outside the region in incredible quantities. This was facilitated by the invasion of the Shan Mountains by the remnants of the Chinese Kuomintang army, which was defeated in the southern provinces of the PRC of Yunnan and Sichuan by the Maoist People's Liberation Army of China.
The Kuomintang from the 93rd division, which retreated to Burma and Thailand, immediately realized how this mountainous region could feed them. Fortunately, the consumption of opium was familiar to them from their life in China. A tax was imposed on local peasants - raw opium, which was then exported to Bangkok and sold through the channels of the Chinese "triad" abroad. The war in Vietnam, which spread to neighboring Laos, was the beginning of an active presence in the region of the United States of America. Puzzled by the question of destabilizing the situation in potentially "red" Indochina, the American special services drew attention to the drug trade as the most important source of receiving colossal funds. Some of these funds went to support the numerous rebel armies in Burma and Thailand, but the bulk of the money went to the CIA-controlled structures.
It was with the help of the US CIA that regular air traffic was organized between the fragments of the Kuomintang army that retreated to Burma (and by the mid-1950s they numbered up to 12 thousand soldiers and officers) and the island of Taiwan, where the Kuomintang managed to gain a foothold in power. But if in Taiwan the Kuomintang managed to create a capable state, which soon became one of the so-called. "Asian tigers" and still demonstrates a high level of economic and technological development, then in Burma and Thailand the Kuomintang were rapidly criminalized and turned into drug traffickers.
Taking advantage of the inaccessibility of the Shan Mountains and allied relations with the leaders of the Shan and other tribal formations, who, as we know, had already fought with the Burmese government, the Kuomintang created a unique zone on the territory of the Golden Triangle that was not under the control of either the Burmese, Thai or Lao authorities. The drug trade became the only basis of its economy and the financial well-being of local leaders.
For several decades, US and Thai authorities have de facto patronized the production and export of heroin from the Golden Triangle. After all, the Kuomintang, who played one of the key roles in the drug trade, were viewed by the CIA as a counterweight to red China and, in general, to the influence of communism in the region. Therefore, for obvious reasons, Thailand, on whose territory, in Meisalong, the headquarters of the Kuomintang division were based, turned a blind eye to the presence of illegal armed groups in the country and to their activities, which also contradicted the law.
On the other hand, Burma, whose territorial integrity was first of all encroached upon by the Kuomintang and the Shan rebels associated with them, repeatedly tried to take control of the Shan mountains. Ultimately, there was no other way but to allow the units of the People's Liberation Army of China to enter the country and drive the Kuomintang units across the Burmese border - to neighboring Thailand. The Thai leadership has come to terms with the presence of the Kuomintang. Moreover, they provided real assistance in the fight against partisans from the Communist Party of Thailand, who also operated in areas bordering Burma.
However, the expulsion of the Kuomintang troops from Burma did not mean either the end of the Shan armed resistance, nor, of course, the refusal of the local population to cultivate the opium poppy. The drug trade in the region was taken under control by militants from the Mon-Tai Army, which was led by the famous Khun Sa. This Shan adventurer of Chinese origin bore the name Zhang Shifu by birth and lived a long enough life for people of this kind - 74 years, having passed away safely in 2007 in his own mansion in Yangon. The world media, inclined to demonize such figures, he was often called almost the leader of the drug mafia on a planetary scale, although, of course, despite a certain influence in this area of activity, he did not even fully control the collection of raw opium in the Shan province.
The departure from the political scene of Khun Sa was accompanied by the disintegration of the Mon-Tai Army created by him, from which the Army of the Shan State - South (led by the successor Khun Sa Yod Suk), the Army of the Shan State - the Northern and smaller groups emerged. Also on the territory of the state are the National Army of the Shan State, the Eastern Army of the Shan and the armed formations of other ethnic communities - lahu, pa-o, va. Twice - in 1994 and in 2005. - the Shan leaders proclaimed the independence of the Federation of the Shan States, but the efforts of the Burmese military led to the fact that today only a small part of the most inaccessible areas of the Shan mountains is under the control of several rebel armies.
Seventy-three-year-old Yod Suk is a professional military man who served in counter-insurgency units throughout his youth, and in 1991 was among Khun Sa's deputies, today he bears the title of Chairman of the Shan State Congress and is the most authoritative politician of the Shan community, with which the official Burmese authorities are negotiating …
The constant military opponents of the Shan units are the Wa rebels. The rivalry between the rebel armies is explained, firstly, by the VA's claims to their own statehood within a part of the Shan state, secondly, by competition for the fields of opium poppy and the market for the sale of raw opium, and, thirdly, by ideological considerations: if the Shans have long maintained contacts with the Kuomintang, then for a long time they remained the main support of the Burmese communists.
The Va Mon Khmer people live in the extreme northeast of Shan State - high mountains, in which the opium poppy is a key agricultural crop. For centuries, the Was cultivated the opium poppy and also had the headhunting practice of many tribes in the region. It is precisely as drug manufacturers and "bounty hunters" that VA, with the light hand of the American and European press, became famous on a global scale. Although, in the end, these people are only victims of the political and economic interests of the major world powers, special services and mafia syndicates, superimposed on their traditional culture and way of life.
After the defeat in Central and Lower Burma, it was here that the units of the Communist Party retreated, which enlisted the support of the VA - a backward and discriminated ethnic group, in addition to everything closely connected with China due to its proximity to the Burmese-Chinese border. Chinese volunteers and intelligence agents were transported across the border to the Wa region, and weapons were supplied to communist detachments. It is clear that the successors of the Marx-Lenin-Mao cause in the Shan Mountains also did not disdain drug trafficking.
After the political regime in China weakened revolutionary rhetoric and, accordingly, support for the Maoist movements in Southeast Asia, the Burmese communists suffered a crisis. One of the biggest losses was the breakaway from the Communist Party of the people of the Wa tribe, once loyal to it, led by Bao Yuxiang, who formed their own United Army of the Wa State and declared independence from both Burma and the Shan state. Fortunately, the ten thousandth number of armed units of the United Army of the State of Wa allows maintaining control over the territory of this mountainous hard-to-reach region.
The United States of America has included the United Army of the State of Wa in the list of organizations involved in the drug trade. This is understandable - one and the same activity may remain "unnoticed" as in the case of the Kuomintang members allied to the United States, or be subject to universal censure, as in the case of the Wa army. The latter is explained by the fact that after the weakening of the Communist Party of Burma, it was the United Army of the Wa State that became the key conductor of Chinese influence in the region.
The unrecognized state of Wa today is virtually independent of Burma. It has a population of about 200,000, with a very strong Chinese influence in the Wa region. People watch TV programs from the PRC, Chinese is used. The yuan is widely used as the local currency.
According to media reports, to date, weapons for the United Army of the Wa State have been supplied from China. So, human rights organizations in 2012 and 2013. accused China of supplying the army with armored vehicles and helicopters armed with air-to-air missiles. Although official Beijing, of course, denied these accusations, it is quite possible to assume that the Celestial Empire is in no hurry to part with the rebels of the Shan Mountains, who are performing an important function of pressure on the government of Burma.
In an effort to put an end to the cultivation of opium poppy in the Wa region, the Burmese government, with the support of international organizations, is implementing programs in the regions where mountain peoples live, aimed at resettling mountain people in the valleys, displacing poppy fields with tea plantations, etc. Humanitarian aid in exchange for giving up the production of raw opium - this is now the official strategy of the world community in relations with the rebel movements of the Shan Mountains. It is another matter whether the latter are actually going, and not in words, to comply with the agreements reached. Here a lot depends both on the rebels themselves and on those forces that continue to use them in their own interests.
It is obvious that the peasants of the Shan mountains, due to their economic backwardness and historical traditions of farming, growing opium poppy, have become hostages of serious political games begun by the great powers back in the middle of the last century. The United States of America, trying to counter the communist expansion in Indochina with the rebel armies of national minorities and the Kuomintang, actually created the "Golden Triangle" as one of the centers of the world drug trade and provoked numerous bloody wars in the region, the victims of which were many thousands of civilians.
