FIRST ENCOUNTER
It's been said there are two ways to enter Wa lands: fight your way in or get invited.1 Since my last fight was in middle school (I lost), I'd have to invite myself. If only I knew how to start the conversation.
The United Wa State Army (UWSA) has many trappings of government: a central committee and departments of finance, health, and education, but it does not have a press bureau that actively courts international media. The UWSA would rather starve journalists of contact, particularly Westerners, assuming anything we write will further the same old "narco-tribe" narrative. Google UWSA and you'll see why. The acronym conjures thirdhand stories about meth labs and child soldiers inside what the BBC calls "one of the most secretive places on earth."
Over the years, I'd requested permission to visit Wa State through various interlocutors. Sometimes I'd get a curt no. Usually I was ignored. But in 2019 my stubbornness generated a twinkle of hope. My emails to a senior UWSA officer-an envoy of sorts-received a reply written by the envoy's assistant in Google Translate-assisted English. First he asked for scans of my passport, which I sent reluctantly. Then he told me to come to their office later in the week-a de facto UWSA embassy, located in a Burmese city called Lashio, roughly fifty miles west of Wa territory.
The assistant did not provide a street address or a date or time. I tried to nail down the particulars, but his follow-ups made little sense.
Good morning, Patrick, thanks to received your concerning.
Yours, Wa State
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
Screw it, I thought. An invite's an invite. I bought a ticket from Bangkok to Lashio and started packing. In my luggage: envelopes full of pristine $100 bills (always good to have in Burma) and a box of chocolates for the envoy. My wife was skeptical-"Is this a date?"-but the chocolates, I explained, were treats for his children, a gesture that might skirt the Kingpin Act, a piece of US legislation that can put anyone conducting "dealings" with the UWSA in prison for ten years.
Then I scrambled to line up a translator, ideally a Wa person in Lashio who could articulate my long-shot request: to enter the UWSA's territory and interview its leaders. I contacted a local travel agency, usually a good source of people who are bilingual and outgoing. Over email, they put me in touch with a "high-character Wa guy around 40 years old with a history of working for the Wa government." Perfect.
The interpreter introduced himself in an email-I'll call him Jacob-and wrote that he looked forward to meeting me at Lashio's airport. I told him not to bother. I could make my way to the hotel just fine on my own. But he wouldn't have it. Jacob was waiting outside the arrival hall, among the taxi touts and ladies with thanaka, tree-bark paste, painted on their cheeks. He was scanning for a pale face coming out of baggage claim. When I emerged, he jostled forth, flip-flops squeaking on the tile floor-a stranger coming straight at me with a handshake. His free hand relieved me of my luggage.
"Oh, Jacob? I can carry that."
"No, Mr. Patrick. Let me do it. It is a pleasure to make fellowship with you."
Bespectacled, his onyx hair gelled into a schoolboy part, Jacob wore a clean sweater and gray jogging pants in lieu of the usual sarong, worn by men and women alike in Burma. We walked toward his car, parked beyond a security booth manned by officers with shotguns. My wheeled suitcase rattled behind him.
"Your first time in Lashio," Jacob said. I took it as a question.
"Yes, though I can't count how many times I've been to-"
I stopped myself from saying either Burma or Myanmar. A person's preference between these names indicates their politics, and I did not want to reveal much about myself, not just yet.
"-this country."
I detected a stagger in Jacob's walk, more pronounced as he wheeled my luggage. Most Wa males have served in the UWSA-each household must hand over at least one son for a few years, sometimes at the tender age of twelve-and I wondered if he'd been injured while soldiering.
"Did police bother you inside the airport?" he said.
"Not really." When I came off the plane, two vacant-eyed Burmese cops waved me aside and took camera-phone snaps of my face. Nothing atypical. I was relieved they didn't ask the purpose of my visit.
"I don't think police will be a problem on your visit," said Jacob, sliding my suitcase into the trunk of his old Japanese hatchback. "Don't worry. We will take care of you here."
JACOB TOLD ME my hotel was close to the airport distance-wise, "but we'll have to take the long way around." There was something in the way: Northeast Command Headquarters, a giant Burmese military base.
Lashio is an army town and has been since the British colonial days. It sits on a plateau with mountains hunkering on the horizon. As far back as Queen Victoria's time, British troops used it as a staging ground for raids into the peaks. They were hellbent on conquering native tribes.
This subjugation drive remains unfinished. When the Brits pulled out after World War II, ending more than a century of occupation, Burma became an independent country. Its military picked up where their colonizers left off, deploying brute force into the borderlands. The old colonial machinery creaks on-only now the generals are Buddhist and ethnically Burmese, the country's majority race, native to the balmy lowlands. Their mission is to dominate everyone inside the former colony's borders, especially the unruly mountain folk. They're not very good at it though.
Beyond Lashio, eastward in the direction of China, military rule weakens and the country shatters into pieces. It is an archipelago of rebellions-the scattered domains of hill-dwelling minorities: the Shan, Kachin, Kokang, and Lahu, to name a few of Burma's minorities, which number in the dozens. They intend to rule themselves, and most have their own mini-governments, complete with armed wings defending patches of homeland with rifles and rockets. Among these groups, the UWSA is the mightiest. Just as the Wa terrified the British in the 1800s, they terrify the Burmese military now.
Cruising past Northeast Command HQ, I took in a sprawling fortress secured behind spiky iron gates. Seeing Burmese platoons running drills on a dusty field, I wondered which indigenous group they'd attack next. "It's good you didn't need to fly here last month," Jacob told me. Apparently some guerrillas crept down from the hills, lobbed mortars at the army base, missed, and blew up the airport runway. "There were no flights for a while."
Jacob was full of questions. Was I married? Yes. Is your wife American? Thai-American and we live in Bangkok. In which American state did I grow up? Carolina. I omitted the "North" so he wouldn't mistake me for a northerner, but Jacob knew his US states, asking if I was from the Carolina that touches Tennessee. Impressive.
My turn. You work for that travel agency? No, I am well known in town, and they just connected us as a courtesy. Where do you work? I have various jobs, he said, failing to elaborate. Family? Yes, wife and kids. Languages? Wa, Burmese, English, some Chinese.
Are you friendly with the UWSA envoy? Yes, he said, the Wa community here is small. Jacob said he was finalizing a meeting for me inside the UWSA "embassy," a compound where the Wa conduct diplomacy with lowlanders.
"That's great. So wait. Are you in the UWSA too?" Jacob hesitated. After a long pause, he said no.
It was late afternoon. Lashio appeared typical of any second-tier Burmese city. Leafy creepers running up concrete walls. Metal rooftops splotched coffee-orange with rust. Sun-bleached billboards for instant coffee powder or jade necklaces. A patina of dust cast a sepia tint over the streetscape.
Jacob braked in front of my hotel. A sign out front depicted a handgun x-ed out: a "no weapons" pictogram. "Patrick, I have prepared a schedule," Jacob said as he retrieved my luggage from the car. "Tomorrow, I will greet you here at 8:15 a.m. We will eat breakfast from 8:20 to 8:45. Then we will arrive at the UWSA office at 9 a.m. for your meeting."
I'd only seen that degree of punctuality in Germans and military officers. Jacob was not German.
"That's very specific," I said teasingly. He did not smile.
"I like to be on time. Enjoy your rest and God bless."
THE NEXT MORNING, I took the stairs down to the lobby, declining the elevator over fears that a citywide power outage could trap me in that metal box and sabotage my precious appointment. I descended to find Jacob sitting on a sofa, his forehead crumpled in a pained expression.
"Oh, Patrick. I am very sorry. I just found out. Our meeting is canceled. The envoy was called urgently to Panghsang."
Wa State's capital, UWSA headquarters. Located on the China- Burma border, roughly one hundred miles and a zillion checkpoints away. Jacob stared down at his phone, holding it like a kid presenting a bad report card.
"When will...
