Targeting the Northern Hub

Myanmar resistance forces are pushing the line with the latest drone attack against a civilian aircraft that was about to take off for Mandalay from Kachin State’s Myitkyina Airport. On 20 February 2026, a suicide drone struck a Myanmar National Airlines (MNA) ATR-72-600 aircraft, causing damage to its nose, fuselage and tail.

As expected, nobody claimed responsibility, given the likelihood of blowback from the international community—much of which is cheering for the rebels, not the military-backed Myanmar government. The latter recently concluded a general election that is neither accepted nor endorsed by much of the world, including ASEAN Member States (AMS).

According to one theory, the drone was targeting the adjacent Northern Command headquarters but was shot down by airport security, causing it to crash into the passenger plane. The military headquarters share the same border fence with the airport.

Nevertheless, it was too close for comfort by any measure. The attack marked a significant step up in escalation, given that rebel forces have generally left civilian targets – much less commercial passenger aircraft – alone.

Myitkyina Airport serves as a critical air transport hub for the northern Kachin State, facilitating the movement of people and goods to major cities like Yangon and Mandalay. Attacks on such infrastructure are intended to undermine governance and disrupt regional stability.

While the airport remained operational, 2025 saw resistance forces successfully using FPV drones against other high-value military targets in the region. For example, in May 2025, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) used a drone to down a military Mi-17 transport helicopter in nearby Shwegu.

The 12 February 2026 FPV drone strike on the airport was intercepted, resulting in no damage to infrastructure, though it did cause flight cancellations.

Resistance forces in the region had already been using similar drone technology in other operations, such as the 8 February strike that destroyed a radar station at the nearby Nant Paung Air Base.

The lack of direct hits on Kachin airport in 2025 suggests that the more recent attacks in February 2026 – including the FPV drone strike on 12 February – represent a “significant escalation” in the resistance’s ability to penetrate the capital’s high-security airspace.

This highlights a shift toward precision-guided, low-cost technology that is difficult for traditional security to detect.

The Rise of the “Autonomous” PDF

Attacking a heavily fortified site guarded by approximately 20 junta troops at every entrance and protected by Air Defence Operation Commands requires a level of coordination.

The Myanmar government immediately accused the KIA and the People’s Defence Force (PDF), the latter of which is officially the armed wing of the National Unity Government (NUG), formed in response to the 2021 military coup.

But over the years, the term PDF has become a catch-all for newly emerged militia groups taking up arms against the junta. Not all PDF units fall under the NUG’s command and control.

A report released in May 2025 states that while the “Integrated” and the “Allied” PDFs are part of the NUG’s formalised military structure, the “Autonomous” and “Localized” PDFs operate without direct oversight from the NUG. These last two categories each have their own networks and generate their own funding through donations as well as small-scale business activities.

For the long-standing resistance forces such as the KIA and the NUG, both of whom seek global support against the military-backed government of Myanmar, civility and international norms must be respected. But when it comes to the actions of autonomous and localised PDFs, these long-standing organisations enjoy plausible deniability.

As Myanmar reaches a new threshold, such as the recently concluded general election, fighting on the ground will have to be understood in a post-election context. While the 20 February attack was widely seen as an escalation, no one can predict where this leads.

The “Lone Wolf” Threat to Chinese Interests

Some in the resistance community are not ruling out attacks on the Chinese pipeline that runs from the Rakhine State to Kunming in Yunnan province. While China has an agreement with the Myanmar government and long-standing ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) such as the Arakan Army (AA) to provide protection for the pipeline, independently organised PDF units who do not report to any long-standing groups could become that “lone wolf” behind such an attack.

In May last year, the PDFs’ highly coordinated offensive – Operation 9/A Nyar Myae – overran four Mandalay townships, forcing government troops to abandon a key off-take station for the Chinese gas and oil pipelines.

Approximately 50 government troops were killed during this one-day coordinated offensive targeting 12 government positions in the Mandalay region. The operation involved around 12 distinct resistance groups operating within the region. In response, government forces launched several days of intermittent clashes and conducted retaliatory airstrikes.

Beijing’s Heavy Hand: Relinquishing the Gains

By late 2025, Myanmar troops retook most positions; Chinese intervention played a key role in the resistance surrendering territory.

During the campaign to recover previously lost territories, there was no evidence indicating that the PDFs were utilising the pipeline as collateral. This demonstrates a shared recognition by both resistance forces and government troops of the strategic significance of the Chinese pipeline. Furthermore, any direct intervention by China could result in adverse consequences for all parties involved.

Beyond the PDFs in Mandalay, approximately 245km east, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) was compelled to return Lashio, which is the junta’s main defensive position in northern Shan State.

About the same time, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) was pressured to relinquish recently secured territories, including Mogok, a world-famous ruby mining centre, back to the junta.

The return of Nawnghkio, Kyaukme and Hsipaw allowed Myanmar to reopen the critical trade highway between Mandalay and the Chinese border. These handovers were made possible through China-mediated negotiations in October 2025, during which Beijing abandoned any pretence of acting as an impartial mediator.

The resistance forces’ setbacks at the hands of China were a stark reminder that nothing comes easy in Myanmar’s rugged conflict zones, where EAOs, PDFs and regime forces all play for keeps. The PDFs likely felt jaded after retreating from the Mandalay positions they had seized in May 2025. They were also frustrated with the TNLA, which had ordered them to do so. Hard feelings aside, one thing the resistance can agree on is that they cannot withstand Chinese pressure.

But has China crossed the line—no one in the resistance forces would say. There is little choice but to absorb the blow, regroup and continue fighting even if the playing field is an uneven one.

So why seize territory only to return it to the junta under Chinese influence? Groups like the MNDAA, the TNLA and the PDFs may not be willing to confront China directly about their objection. These groups understand fully the diplomatic and strategic costs if they choose to upset China. But the autonomous PDFs operate under no such constraint. For them, it becomes a matter of timing and opportunity, not principle.

Resistance forces in Myanmar have shown their objections in actions such as attacks on Chinese interest in Myanmar following the 2021 coup. Chinese-owned factories in Yangon’s industrial zones were burnt, as protesters accused Beijing of backing the coup. Frustration exists, indeed; the question is whether and through whom it finds an outlet.

A woman wakes at dawn to the whine of drones. A trader abandons a shop whose customers have vanished. A riverbank swells with families turned back at an international gate.

These are not isolated scenes; they form a pattern drawn across Southeast Asia. They are also the everyday reality in Myanmar, where conditions have worsened dramatically since the military coup in 2021.

Forced migration in and from Myanmar is not a humanitarian footnote. It is a political metric; the most visible indicator of who holds power, who loses it and how external actors shape the battlefield in the ongoing civil war.

Discussions around China’s role in Myanmar tend to be framed in familiar terms: strategic corridors, major investments, influence over the junta and ethnic armed organisations (EAOs). Those are necessary frames but insufficient. They describe the machinery of power without tracing its human consequences. If displacement is moved to the centre of analysis, a more accurate map emerges; a map shaped not only by frontline violence but also by Beijing’s quiet signalling, its silences and its calculations.

Border Politics as Geopolitical Messaging

China’s pu

This dynamic is most evident along the China-Myanmar frontier. Every major escalation in northern Shan or Kachin generates two immediate questions: will civilians run, and will China let them in? Beijing’s border behaviour, sometimes permissive, other times abruptly restrictive, acts as a form of geopolitical messaging. Allowing crossings can stabilise local conflict dynamics; tightening the border can discipline armed actors or register political displeasure.

The result: displacement patterns that align not only with violence on the ground but also with shifts in China’s interest, leading to waves of forced returns or surges of escape depending on the border posture.

Infrastructure, Strategic Zones of Protection and Exposure

China’s infrastructure architecture in Myanmar – such as the oil and gas pipelines, the Kyaukphyu port and the Muse-Ruili trade zone – form a network of leverage rather than isolated investments. These nodes create differentiated zones of protection and exposure.

In areas critical to Beijing’s Belt-and-Road calculus, there tends to be a kind of “managed re

The recent displacement surges in places like Rakhine illustrate this clearly: China’s silence was not neutrality; it was permissive space.

Fragmented Regional Response: Why Displacement Remains a Crisis

Despite predictable patterns of forced migration tied to geopolitics, the regional response remains fragmented. ASEAN, via its Five-Point Consensus (5PC), remains structurally incapable of handling displacement at scale because it prioritises state sovereignty over cross-border humanitarian coordination.

The consequences of this fragmentation fall on individual states, which must improvise their responses rather than pursue a long-term strategy. For example, some countries allow temporary humanitarian corridors only to shut them with little notice. Others apply radically different approaches across their territories (often shaped by ethnic, political or security calculations). Many host secondary movements with newly displaced people routed via third countries without a unified legal framework linking domestic reception to regional displacement trends.

This policy fragmentation is not just inefficient. It is dangerous. The strategic choices of powerful external actors like China produce waves of movement. Southeast Asia’s inability to anticipate them creates cascading crises: overcrowded camps, expanding smuggling markets, fluctuating humanitarian access and political tensions among neighbouring states.

Displacement as a Strategic Diagnostic

The temporal dimension of displacement further complicates things. China’s engagement can generate brief, fragile pauses or rather windows in which families return, rebuild, or hide. But these are often replaced quickly by new surges when diplomatic restraint is withdrawn or armed actors attempt territorial gains.

Regional migration economies respond accordingly. When official borders close, smugglers expand routes and raise prices. When China allows temporary crossings, humanitarian organisations scramble to deliver aid amid shifting access rules. The business of escape grows more sophisticated in direct response to policy unpredictability. For many Burmese, paying a smuggler becomes the only consistent element in an inconsistent political landscape.

Crucially, none of this implies China is intentionally engineering displacement. Rather, displacement is a predictable externality of its strategic calculus, and predictable externalities demand structured responses. Treating forced migration as an unfortunate spillover invites only humanitarian triage

A Test for Regional Governance

If the junta’s planned elections proceed at the end of December amid regional ambivalence and weak accountability, Beijing’s leverage will harden. The military may intensify operations in areas where China exerts minimal restraining influence. EAOs will respond to shifting incentives. Civilians will move again, not because politics is uncertain, but because it is too clear.

The future of Southeast Asia’s displacement geography will be written by a combination of China’s calculations, Myanmar’s internal collapse, and the region’s willingness or refusal to respond collectively.

What is at stake is not simply the management of borders but the moral and strategic credibility of Southeast Asia itself. States that continue to treat migration as a peripheral risk are being overwhelmed by its con

Forced migration, then, is not collateral. It is a lens. It reveals which districts fall outside diplomatic concern, which borders are quietly opened, which routes smugglers exploit and which states absorb the consequences of decisions made far beyond their control. Every family pushed to a riverbank, every village emptied in a night, every makeshift camp beneath a shuttered border gate—these are not incidental tragedies. They are, line by line, the ledger of geopolitical choice.

Conclusion

To move forward, Southeast Asia must reframe displacement as a strategic diagnostic tool,

In Myanmar, population movements track political truths long before diplomats acknowledge them. When entire districts empty overnight, it is not because civilians misread the situation. But because they understood it sooner than the rest of us.

If regional governments analysed displacement flows with the same rigour they apply to trade flows, shipping lanes or military exercises, they would see emerging risks months in advance. Instead, states respond only when boats arrive

The years ahead will test whether the region can transcend habitual caution and reimagine migration governance as collective security. A coordinated framework could integrate climate-induced movement, labour mobility and refugee protection within a single regional architecture. Such a shift would not only mitigate humanitarian crises but also stabilise markets, reduce trafficking and foster regional trust. Th

Introduction

The collapse of the four crime families and other Kokang warlords in late 2023 reverberated throughout Myanmar, delivering an unmistakable warning to armed groups and criminal networks: that no one remains beyond reach – regardless of connections or perceived power – if they target Chinese citizens with scams.

For years, these criminal syndicates operated scam centres and conducted illicit activities along the Sino-Myanmar border. Their control of the Kokang Border Guard Force (BGF) positioned them as allies of Myanmar’s powerful military junta.

Their fortunes reversed when China determined that the situation had become intolerable. Beijing gave the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BHA) – a coalition comprising the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) – an authorisation to dismantle these operations after Myanmar’s generals refused to act against their Kokang allies. The four families fled, seeking protection from the junta as their empire crumbled. With nothing to offer in exchange for sanctuary, Myanmar’s generals arrested them and extradited them to China. Many received death sentences, while others faced life imprisonment for their crimes.

The End of Tolerance

The downfall of the Kokang family and BGF resonated throughout Myanmar, including with the 7,000-strong Karen BGF led by Col Chit Thu, a powerful warlord controlling substantial territory along the Thai border.

Approximately a decade ago, Chinese criminal syndicates began relocating to Karen BGF territory, constructing compounds housing entertainment complexes, brothels, casinos and cyber scam centres generating billions of dollars annually. Chit Thu maintained publicly that he merely collected rent and bore no responsibility for his tenants’ activities.

However, witnessing the merciless dismantling of the Kokang and their BGF allies instilled apprehension in Chit Thu. Hoping to distance himself from the stigma of association with the Tatmadaw, Chit Thu announced in January 2024 that his organisation had withdrawn from the Tatmadaw’s chain of command. The rebranded Karen National Army (KNA) still gets referred to by media and locals as BGF, however. Despite his efforts, Chit Thu could not escape the tarnished reputation.

By 2025, international tolerance had reached its limit. The US Department of the Treasury sanctioned KNA as a transnational criminal organisation in May. In November, a smaller group operating under a ceasefire arrangement with the junta – the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) and its top four leaders – joined the sanctions list. The United States simultaneously launched a new Scam Center Strike Force targeting these cybercriminals. DKBA is a signatory to the government’s National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), a nationwide accord hastily assembled by the Thein Sein government in October 2015.

Earlier this year, Chinese Assistant Minister of Public Security Liu Zhongyi made two successive visits to the Thailand-Myanmar border, pressuring both countries to take action. Thailand complied by cutting utilities and internet access, only to see them replaced by generators, Starlink terminals and smuggled fuel. Ironically, these measures impacted local communities more severely than the criminal operations.

KNA and its criminal associates released approximately 7,000 people from the scam centres, allowing them to flee to Thailand for processing and return to their home countries. Chinese nationals comprised the largest group.

Th

Evacuations and Optics

Eight months later, in late October 2025, an assault on KK Park, one of the Chinese-run notorious compounds in the Myawaddy area, forced approximately 1,700 mostly foreign nationals to flee across the border to Thailand. They came from 21 different countries—most were Chinese nationals.

Four weeks later, in late November 2025, Myanmar soldiers, this time joined reluctantly by KNA troops, attacked the Shwe Kokko compound, forcing thousands to flee as troops demolished over 100 buildings in a desperate demonstration to the international community that Myanmar’s military government takes law and order seriously.

Not everyone is departing Myawaddy, however. Many scammers have chosen to remain, dispersing throughout Myawaddy Township to continue illicit operations from privately rented homes, dormitories and hotels, according to Mizzima News.

Both KK Park and Shwe Kokko sit within Myawaddy Township, the Myanmar border town adjacent to Thailand’s Mae Sot district. The two compounds occupy territory controlled by KNA.

The crackdowns have proven inconsistent. A Thai security officer said weeks before the October assault on KK Park, KNA had been relocating Chinese site managers and “bosses” from these scam compounds to a new location north of Mae Sot.

“They (KNA) were charging substantial sums of money and splitting it with Myanmar authorities,” said a Thai security officer monitoring the border situation. The attack against Shwe Kokko a month later followed the same pattern, with site managers and those who could afford it being evacuated before what was supposedly a surprise attack, the officer said.

Mizzima News, citing local sources, reported that Chinese nationals believed to be crime syndicate members were evacuated on the evening of 17 November 2025 by KNA troops, the night before the raid on the Shwe Kokko compound.

“They won’t let us go outside. All the doors are locked. There are no more Chinese inside, only us Myanmar people and some other foreigners. The building lights are off, and we’re not allowed to use phones. I think they freed the Chinese and are keeping us as hostages,” a 22-year-old Myanmar woman inside one of the buildings told Mizzima News.

Observers suggest Myanmar wants to demonstrate to the world that it takes crime seriously and that it regards the upcoming general election as significant. However, compelling Chit Thu’s KNA to destroy the source of his wealth, from which the government gets a cut, has not achieved the desired public relations outcome.

Speaking in Bangkok, Prof Yanghee Lee, former UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, called on ASEAN and the international community to adopt a more active role and principled engagement to bring about change in Myanmar.

“Unfortunately, Myanmar possesses abundant natural resources that other countries want. Once the election concludes, many countries will reach out and enter the country, which will be devastating news for the people of Myanmar. It will be on our watch that the people of Myanmar will be crushed even more,” Prof Lee said.

Shifting Alliances

Indeed, the fragile dynamics between DKBA, an NCA signatory, and Karen National Union (KNU), a major rebel outfit fighting the junta, erupted on 21 November when they clashed in a brief gunfight near Min Let Pan village, approximately 16km south of Myawaddy.

According to a DKBA liaison officer in Mae Sot, stray gunfire struck their position, triggering limited retaliation—standard operat

KNU, however, characterised the incident in a 25 November statement as a “coordinated attack”. A subsequent ground assessment uncovered an active scam compound in the area housing more than 2,000 foreign workers, predominantly Chinese.

According to a Thai intelligence officer on the border, DKBA had closed the Hpalu-Wawlay Road – strategically crucial as it has been the site of intense fighting between the Tatmadaw and resistance forces – as leverage to secure the return of the 230 captured fighters. Within a week, KNU returned all captured DKBA members and their weapons.

As the Tatmadaw intensified operations to retake the area around Min Let Pan, KNU warned on 2 December that it could no longer guarantee the safety of the 900 remaining foreign nationals refusing to evacuate a compound.

In their statement, KNU spokesman Padoh Saw Taw Nee called on China to pressure the Tatmadaw to halt heavy weapons fire and aerial bombardment, warning that lives hung in the balance.

In a statement dated 6 December, KNU accused the Tatmadaw of deliberately targeting unarmed civilians with mortar fire into the Shunda Park compound, noting that some rounds strayed across the border, forcing villagers on the Thai side to flee.

KNU suggested that some people trapped in the compound might be high-value criminals and urged the international community to intervene quickly.

KNU said 2,460 out of 2,665 persons had been transferred from Shunda Park to Thai authorities. Many had fled the compound independently, refusing to surrender to Thai authorities, possibly from fear of persecution back home. The borderlands remain a volatile mosaic of shifting alliances, criminal enterprises and desperate civilians—a testament to a decades-old conflict now deeply entangled with the global scourge of cyber-scamming.

Introduction

A 30-minute walk from the glamour and glittering of Ban Rak Thai village is a quiet border crossing that divides Thailand from a nameless checkpoint. It is manned by a lone soldier from the Wa National Army (WNA), a small outfit that came into being in 1973 under the leadership of Maha Sang, the son of Sao Maha, the saohpa of Vingngun, a region in Shan State just north of Panghsang.

They sided with the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang – KMT) against the China-backed Communist Party of Burma (CPB) back in the day. Like other warlords, Maha Sang survived the rugged Golden Triangle through deals and alliances with militia groups and their warlords.

His ailing brother, Maha Ja, took over Khun Sa’s Hua Muang stronghold immediately after his surrender and assumed the role of the town’s mayor with his own militia that functioned more like his personal security details.

Following the death of Maha Sang in 2007, the WNA placed itself under the United Wa State Army (UWSA) command and control. The group was permitted to keep their flag and uniform, as Thai authorities along the border are much more comfortable dealing with the WNA.

There are just too many his

Thorny Relations

The UWSA and the Myanmar government established a ceasefire in 1989, but this was a far cry from a peace treaty. Thus, getting Myanmar to “talk sense” to get the UWSA to pull back – so that the Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra does not have to look weak and bad in the eyes of the critics – is still a pipe dream.

In fact, said sources on the border, the Myanmar junta wants Thailand to “teach the Wa a lesson.” Myanmar’s State Admin

A Thai think tank Center for Strategic Policy presented its report “Myanmar and Thailand: Strategic Pathways to Regional Peace and Stability” at a December 2024 seminar. Author Supalak Ganjanakhundee said Thailand should not rule out the idea of strengthening cooperation with the UWSA as well as other ethnic groups on cross-border management that could facilitate trade, movement of people and humanitarian responses.

The question is this: why does Thailand want to be seen courting the UWSA?

Like any other organisations, the UWSA wants acceptance and recognition. Having demonised the group over the years, presenting the Wa as a trusted partner of the Thai government will not be an easy sell. The two sides have had several rounds of face-to-face talks between unit commanders on the ground, but these were not negotiations, as the Thai side did not go there with anything to offer.

Ethnic armed organisations along the Thai border are similarly disturbed by the UWSA southward expansion. These include the Shan State Army-South, the Karen National Union, the Karenni National Progressive Party, the Karen National Army and the Kawtoolei Army. Wa flags have been planted at locations where the Three Brotherhood Alliance scored victory.

Chinese Presence

The UWSA is presenting itself as a “peacekeeping force” in places like Lashio, the largest town in northern Shan State that was captured by the Three Brotherhood Alliance in late June 2024. This current role and newly conquered territories left open the question of what exactly constitutes a Wa state.

Moreover, will this arrangement become permanent and serve as a link between the UWSA in the north on the Chinese border and its southern command on the Thai border?

The UWSA and Chinese officials have always insisted that their relationship is more nuanced and based on mutual interest and respect. Thai security planners, on the other hand, are concerned that the Thailand-Myanmar border could fall under China’s sphere of influence.

Beside the UW

In early 2024, dozens of Chinese police operated out of a resort that they had rented out for months. Royal Thai Police HQ in Bangkok instructed local officers to assist their Chinese counterparts to make their stay worthwhile.

Credit: Tha Lahu National Development Organisation/The Nation

But there was no sharing of intel. The Chinese police handled the investigation all by themselves, including their engagement with the Chinese crime syndicates behind the scam centres in and around the Myawaddy border town, adjacent to Mae Sot.

Things heated up in early February 2025 during the visit of Vice Minister Liu Zhongyi to Thailand. Pressured by China to do something, the government ordered a power cut to several towns on the Myanmar side of the border, including areas where the scam centres were operating.

Similar actions were taken two years ago, but the scam centres made up for it with powerful generators and a Starlink Internet connection.

Falling in Line

This time around, however, sensing that the Thais were serious, Colonel Chit Thu, leader of the 7,000-strong Karen National Army (KNA), the outfit that protects sizeable Chinese crime syndicates in his area, began to make moves. Starting with the press conference on 17 February 2025, he conveyed to Thai journalists that “We will take responsibility for clearing out the call centers in KK Park, Myawaddy, and Shwe Kokko and will send all foreign nationals to Myawaddy.”

“It is then the responsibility of the Myanmar police, as the Naypyidaw central government has sent officers to handle the cases. From the tripartite meeting, each country will

He added that he was disappointed that

A much smaller outfit, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), responded to Thailand’s request and set a 28 February 2025 deadline for all Chinese scam operators to leave Phayatongsu. This is a DKBA-controlled area (about 133 miles south of Myawaddy) opposite the Three Pagoda Pass of Thailand’s Kanchanaburi province.

On 13 February 2025, the DKBA sent 260 people of various nationalities over the border to Chong Kaeb subdistrict, 76 km south of Mae Sot. The group said another 400 of mostly Africans and South Asians were stranded with them, waiting to be sent to the Thai side of the border where they could link up with diplomats of their respective countries.

“It’s obvious that the DKBA wants to be seen as being helpful to Thailand as they depend so much on us for their survival,” said a Thai police officer with working relations with this Karen outfit.

The DKBA controlled an area opposite from the Chong Kaeb subdistrict where several casinos had been operating until Chinese scam centres moved

Introduction

Along the Thailand-Myanmar border, remnants of China’s lost army persist, transforming into tourist attractions where visitors sample Yunnanese cuisine and traditional Chinese tea.

Ban Rak Thai, locally known as Mae Aw, exemplifies one of the numerous villages where descendants of the Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) forces established settlements in the 1960s.

Forced out of Shan State of Myanmar – also known as Burma – after several failed attempts to stage attacks against Communist China, these communities represent a complex geopolitical legacy.

“Between 1950 and 1952, the Kuomintang army in Burma’s Shan States tried no fewer than seven tim

“But the areas east of the Salween River were too remote to be affected by the buildup. There, the Kuomintang reigned supreme through alliances it had established with local warlords, most of them from Kokang and the eastern Shan States, but some of whom were also Wa,” Lintner added.

One of the few cash crops in the Wa Hills and other mountainous areas where the KMT had established bases was opium, which they used to finance their campaign against the communists.

By 1961, the combined forces between Burma and the People’s Liberation Army began to push back against the KMT. A turning point came in January 1968 when the China-trained Communist Party of Burma (CPB) militias crossed the border from Yunnan into Shan State and went straight to the KMT bases.

Eventually, it was time for the KMT to move. Some were evacuated to Taiwan while others crossed into Thailand to form communities like the one here in Ban Rak Thai, a 90-minute drive north of Mae Hong Son provincial seat.

The Thai government convinced the KMT leaders as well as the hill tribes in the region to kick the opium habit in exchange for tea and other cash crops. Thai citizenship was gradually given first as a reward to those fighting against the Communist Party of Thailand and gradually to KMT descendants.

Warlords and Militia Leaders

With the KMT gone, it did not

One such person was Chang Shi-fu, who, incidentally, started as a young government village militia to fight the CPB.

Born in 1933 to a Chinese father and a Shan mother in northern Shan State, Shi-fu rose from a young government militia to become the head of his own outfit. He was convicted of high treason in 1973 by the Burmese government and released the following year after his supporter kidnapped two Soviet doctors and ransomed them for his freedom. His release was brokered by a Thai Army general.

From 1974 onward, Shi-fu directed his fight against the Burmese Government, proclaiming himself a Shan nationalist, and adopted the name Khun Sa, or “Prince Prosperous”, in the Shan/Tai language.

Another figure was Wei Hsueh-kang, an ethnic Chinese who fled Yunnan after the Communist victory and relocated to northern Shan State to do business with the local soapha, or chaofah in Thai, which means “lord of the sky”, a royal title used by the hereditary Tai rulers in mainland Southeast Asia.

Wei and his two brothers would relocate to an area near Thailand’s border, where they joined Khun Sa and his outfit. A fallout with Khun Sa forced him out of the Shan circle. They then reconnected with his old network in Shan State and later linked this newly formed alliance with the powerful United Wa State Army (UWSA) when it was established in 1989. Afterwards, they gained access to the vast poppy field in the Wa Hills where raw opium could be refined into heroin.

In 1993, the United States indicted Wei with heroin trafficking and of

By mid-1990, relentless assault on Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army (MTA) by its arch-rival the UWSA and the Burmese government troops forced him to surrender in exchange for amnesty.

After Khun Sa’s defeat, the Burmese Government told the UWSA to return to the Sino-Burma border in the north. They refused and instead mobilised more than 100,000 villagers from its Special Region 2 along the Sino-Burma border to newly built towns along the Thai border that stretches from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai and southward to the northern part of Mae Hong Son province. Special Region 2 is an autonomous area secured from the Myanmar Government in 1989 in exchange for an unwritten ceasefire agreement.

About 10,000 UWSA troops control this so-called UWSA southern command under the leadership of Wei and his brothers. Border outposts and camps along the border once under Khun Sa were immediately taken over by the UWSA. Wherever possible, the UWSA set up a volleyball court on hard-dirt plains – daily matches were supposed to bring them and the Thai troops closer together.

The turning point came one morning in February 1999 when authorities found nine Thai villagers from Chiang Mai’s Fang district beaten to death, with their hands tied behind their backs. Authorities said it was a drug deal gone bad. All fingers pointed to the UWSA.

Deteriorating Relationship

Closing the border leading to Wa’s towns built by Thai contractors was the next logical thing. Thai contractors were told to pull out. For the Thai troops along the border, it meant their daily volleyball game with the Wa soldiers had to come to an end.

Clashes between the two sides became frequent as drug caravans carrying Wa’s methamphetamines make their way into Thailand.

An all-out offensive occurred on 20 May 2002. The battles took place well within Myanmar’s territory and went on throughout the day. Artillery fire supported the advancing Thai soldiers carrying out search-and-destroy missions against the UWSA’s outposts several kilometers inside the Myanmar border.

Thai Army’s armored personnel carrier, along with soldiers from Special Forces, cavalry squadrons and artillery units had been seen taking up positions along the northern border in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son provinces for the past weeks to await instruction.

The mobilisation was called Surasri 143, supposedly a military training exercise. One elite unit was tasked with capturing Wei but could not find him as he had fled deeper into Myanmar.

When the dust settled, the UWSA began to build nine outposts that sit smack on the Thai fence. Three of these crossed into Thai territory, according to Google Map. Thai conservative media and right-wing press decided to play this up, calling on the government to take action against the UWSA, giving both the government and the Army that much more headache.

The Current Landscape

Today, no one in Thailand wants to turn back the clock to 2002. Thai troops and UWSA soldiers at the local level are talking to one another in a much calmer atmosphere; local troops described their conversations as friendly but Wa’s

No one is turning a blind eye to the drug caravan as massive drug bust along the border demonstrated but the Thai government has retreated from politicising the drug issues, as it was not worth the cost.

Talking is better than shooting one another, said a Thai Army unit commander on the border.

For years, Thai Army in the region has wrecked their brain on how to get the UWSA to move the nine outposts, particularly the three that allegedly crossed into the Thai side, just a little bit back to avoid any possible confrontation. The UWSA has had presence there since the fall of Khun Sa in the late 1990s.

The Thai Army even asked Myanmar’s supreme commander, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing during his visit to Thailand in 2014, to intervene on Thailand’s behalf. Still, the UWSA refused to pull bac

Thai Army has held several face-to-face meetings with the local command, including with senior UWSA officials in Mong Hsat back in November 2024, but to no solution has been reached. Wa soldiers at the Thai border said they are not authorised to pull back without an order from Panghsang, their main headquarter located on the Sino-Burma border.

According to Thai Army sources, Panghsang has suggested the

Many critics, especially those on social media, appear to want the Thai Army to use force to push the UWSA back. Officials on the border said a military victory will not be difficult. However, no one wants to turn the clock back to the old days when clashes between the two sides were all too common.

The hard parts are obviously an all-out offensive and its aftermath. There are just too many tourist attractions and foreign visitors along the northern border; the stakes are just too high for Thailand, particularly the tourism industry, Thailand’s golden goose.