"This is the north of Myanmar, where I grew up, welcome to my world, delicate little princess"
If you often brush short videos, then you must be no stranger to this passage, the stem originated from the network novel "Wings are difficult to fly", after this classic line exploded on the Internet, all the Internet celebrities competed to disguise, attracting a large number of naïve boys and girls, they began to have unlimited yearning for northern Myanmar, and even bluntly said that they must go to northern Myanmar to see in their lifetime.
But the real north of Myanmar is a place you can't go back to, what's going on? Let me tell you about the story of northern Myanmar.
The northern part of Myanmar is located at the junction of China's Yunnan Province and Myanmar, part of the Golden Triangle, the well-known Golden Triangle is the border between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, because of the shape of the triangle and named, here is full of drugs, fraud, obscenity and armed conflict, is a completely uncontrolled taboo place.
Almost 80% of the world's drugs come from here, and Wa State, Myanmar's second special district, is a traditional opium poppy-growing area.
According to historical records, as early as the period when Burma was colonized by the British, there were tobacco farmers in Wa Who made a living by growing poppies, and after the poppies bloomed, they collected large cigarette pastes from them and sold them to drug lords, who in turn extracted heroin from these cigarettes for huge profits.
Since the 1970s, various armed gangs have begun to divide the Golden Triangle region in order to compete for the production chain of tobacco paste, and since then, civil wars have continued in northern Myanmar.
More than a hundred years of opium poppy cultivation history, so that Wa State has attracted great attention from the international community, under pressure, heroin king Kun Sha surrendered, Wa state north and south unified into one, the government issued a number of documents, announced to the world wa state will achieve a comprehensive anti-drug ten years later.
However, in the face of the temptation of money and fame, it is simply more difficult to achieve comprehensive drug control in a short period of time than to ascend to the sky.
Even though the Wa government has made it clear that the cultivation of opium poppies is prohibited, there are still many hidden dens operating at high speed, they are called the no. 4 factory, scattered in all corners of Wa State, these drug traffickers are well aware that drug production can not see the light, so their vigilance is very high, in order not to be exposed, each den is equipped with personnel to stand guard, if they find a farmer herding cattle passing by here, they are afraid of the drug dens being exposed, they will shoot these innocent farmers directly, simply inhumane.
In 2004, a heroin processing site was reported, and Wa rulers sent Wa troops to apprehend drug dealers in order to show their determination to fight drugs.
The army divided a company of soldiers into two routes, and soon swept away the dens, and at that time captured a total of twenty drug-makers, who came from various nationalities and did not dare to resist in the face of the regular army.
In order not to be discovered, drug dealers usually disguise themselves as farmers, and like farmers, plant corn in the mountains every day, and when the corn grows to the height of a person, they begin to secretly make drugs.
When the army searched the dens, they were surprised to find that the men had buried all the chemicals in the ground and dug them up when they needed them.
In addition to this, there are rows of different types of firearms in the processing point, and it is said that in northern Myanmar, as long as people involved in drugs are basically in possession of guns and ammunition.
For the Wa government, the huge anti-drug pressure not only comes from within, but also from the external political environment, so since the issuance of the anti-drug order, the Wa state has set up many checkpoints, but all outsiders entering and leaving must be strictly scrutinized.
Despite this, wa state is still difficult to get rid of the source of drugs, first of all, this is an important drug channel in the Golden Triangle, whether the drug dealers caught by the police are from Thailand or Myanmar, they will unanimously claim to be from Wa State.
Secondly, the rulers here are themselves drug traffickers with drug lord hats, and it is more difficult for them to carry out the anti-drug task, and the last crucial reason is that the Wa government has never taken an effective measure, nor has it told the people what to live on after stopping poppy cultivation.
As the deadline for the anti-drug order draws closer and closer, the pressure on the rulers doubles, and the commander of the Wa State Special Administrative Region, Bao Youxiang, is even more guaranteed by the head.
He said that if after 2005, there were still poppies planted, he would cut off his own head.
To this end, Commander Bao Youxiang organized troops to go door to door to carry out poppy eradication work.
However, there is no transition period, the people of Wa State is difficult to accept, and the poppy is their only cash crop, there are 1 million acres of opium poppy land in the whole territory of Wa State, of which 270,000 people are engaged in opium poppy industry, once they can not exchange poison for food, the people will have a serious food shortage in a short period of time, they have been tobacco farmers for generations, there is no knowledge culture, in addition to the cultivation of opium poppy, there is no other skill to survive.
A big aunt saw her own poppy, which was dug up by the army one by one, and couldn't help but wipe her tears, she said: The family lives on this, before each planting, the tobacco farmers first collect the deposit, wait until the poppy harvest is then delivered to the drug lords, and now that the money is spent, the goods are gone, and they take what to pay off the debt.
Thinking that the financial road is broken and the government will not provide any subsidies, she feels very desperate, and even wants to die.
Achieving comprehensive anti-narcotics control throughout The Wa State is not an easy task.
Therefore, the rulers decided to adopt vertical management of the troops, and as long as more than 50 poppies were found in the area under management, the managers would be imprisoned.
This method did work, and soon a new den was discovered in the south of Wa State, in fact in the southern region, which had been banned from cultivation for many years, but suddenly it was reported that there were tobacco farmers who were still cultivating poppies in the area thirty kilometers away, so the troops led about fifty people and decided to make a pot on it.
The village is very remote, the troops climb the mountains and wade, and can only sleep in the primeval forest, pick wild fruits and wild vegetables to fill the hunger, and cut banana leaves at night to sleep on the ground.
After two days of trekking, the troops arrived at this hidden poisonous nest, where about five acres of poppies had been planted, and more than twenty centimeters had just grown, which looked no different from green vegetables, and soon the troops razed the place to the ground.
After the village was reported, the tobacco farmers fell into a situation of hunger and cold for a while, and adults and children squatted on the ground, grabbed the leftovers from the bowl with their bare hands, and began to devour them.
The adoption of this "one-size-fits-all" policy has indeed enabled the Wa government to complete the comprehensive anti-drug campaign on time.
In the spring of 2005, Wa rallied the people and the media to destroy drugs under the British Tower, announcing to the world that Wa state had officially become a drug-free region in the Golden Triangle.
However, the government did not have a clear answer to the economic resources of the people and the future of wa countries, saying that government officials and soldiers enjoyed equal remuneration, but only thirty yuan a day, they could not guarantee themselves, and the people's lives were even more unsafe.
Today's Wa State has been anti-drug for many years, but as a border area with three disregards, gambling, fraud, and new drugs have always existed, and Wa State is still in danger.