Branded as Asia's most heavily-armed drug dealers, the China-backed ethnic Wa rebels have emerged as key players in Myanmar's peace process, a development seen as strengthening Beijing's influence over its violence-wracked neighbor, reports AFP.When Myanmar's new civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi convened the first round of peace talks with the country's myriad ethnic groups last year, the United Wa State Army's (UWSA) attendance was a side-show to the main action.
But as hundreds of delegates gathered in the capital this week for round two of the peace negotiations, all eyes were on the militia.
A scrum of media surrounded their five grinning representatives as they strode into the vast conference hall in Naypyidaw sporting traditional studded red blazers emblazoned with their symbol of a horned buffalo head.
With them were members of several ethnic groups who have rallied behind Myanmar's most heavily-armed militia after an explosion of violence in the country's northeast.
For years the group has kept a low profile in Myanmar's politics after a 1989 ceasefire deal granted them their own independent territory the size of Belgium on the Chinese border.
The secretive 'statelet' is like a little piece of China -- signs are written in Mandarin, people trade in the Chinese currency the yuan, and the casinos are filled with Chinese gamblers. From there the Wa are accused of running one of the world's largest drug-trafficking operations, pumping out millions of meth pills across Southeast Asia and increasingly into Bangladesh and India.