Word: shan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Southeast Asia's largest drug-trafficking organizations, according to the U.S. Justice Department, which in January indicted eight senior Wa officials in absentia on narcotics charges. By forcing its impoverished people to migrate, and through military action, the U.W.S.A. has greatly increased its influence over other parts of Shan state, particularly the area in which the S.S.A. now operates...
...That includes the Shan stronghold at Loi Tai Leng, where almost every resident is a victim of the Burmese military or a witness to its savagery. Wi Ling, 34, stands outside his newly rebuilt shack on one good leg and one bad. Two years ago he was living with his family near Taunggyi, the Shan state capital, when Burmese soldiers dragooned him and 14 other villagers as porters. Three were shot dead, while Wi Ling was forced at gunpoint into a suspected minefield. A month after he was conscripted, he stepped on a mine, which blew most of his left...
...Several kilometers away, from positions of relative safety, the Burmese army launched more than 3,000 heavy mortar rounds, Yawd Serk adds. These not only hit the S.S.A.?six Shan were killed and 31 injured, he says?but also caused U.W.S.A. casualties and sowed panic in its ranks. Today the Wa fortifications below seem deserted, but Yawd Serk's soldiers are taking no chances. Nearby, on grassy slopes recently littered with Wa corpses, they plant fields of punji stakes made from sharpened bamboo to prevent a repeat assault...
...S.S.A. The U.S. is offering a $2 million reward for information leading to Wei's capture. Yawd Serk denies old allegations that his own army is involved in the drug trade, and says the S.S.A. is funded by taxing goods such as logs and livestock and by donations from Shan exiles overseas. "Our door is open for anyone to come and see that we have nothing to do with [drugs]," Yawd Serk says. The junta's alliance with the U.W.S.A. makes a mockery of its supposed antinarcotics efforts, he says. "If the Burmese are serious about fighting drugs, then they...
...aspirations for nationhood, while Wa resentment grows at fighting and dying in the Burmese army's own battles. Whatever happens next in the violent and complex relations between Burma's ruling generals and its diverse ethnic groups, Colonel Yawd Serk is not expecting peace for his long-suffering Shan anytime soon. "If the Wa don't come for us," he says from his hilltop redoubt, "the Burmese will come for sure...