Myanmar’s strongest ethnic armed group slams ‘drug empire’ label by US

Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed group, accused by the United States of running a narco-empire that has flooded Asia with illegal drugs, has rejected the allegation, saying Washington has blacklisted its leaders for political reasons.

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) boasts some 30,000 soldiers who control a secretive, China-dominated statelet the size of Belgium in the remote hills on Myanmar’s eastern border.

After decades of isolation, leaders of the self-proclaimed Wa State invited a small group of foreign journalists to visit its territory – a first step in a tentative opening up to the outside world prompted by Aung San Suu Kyi’s dramatic victory in a historic general election in Myanmar last year.

Reaching an accord with the Wa and other armed group’s is one of the biggest challenges faced by Myanmar’s first democratically-elected government in decades, as it grapples with the interlocking issues of ending years of ethnic wars and tackling drug production in its lawless border areas.

“After the civilian government took office, we come down to the capital more often and we try to demonstrate what we have achieved,” said the Wa territory foreign affairs minister, Zhao Guo An, in a rare interview in the region’s capital Panghsan.