The jagged mountains dividing China and Burma belong to the Wa an indigenous group who have
outwitted the CIA to create the world's mightiest narco-state controlling more territory than
Israel and with more troops than Sweden. Are they crime lords? Or visionaries? Wa State has
become a real nation with its own highways anthems schools and flags. Its leaders promise a
utopia using profits from trafficking heroin and meth to attain what China's other frontier
peoples Tibetans and Uighurs can only dream of: a state of their own. Patrick Winn (author of
Hello Shadowlands) embarks on a risky journey of discovery chasing clues about the forbidden
republic from Thailand to Burma to the secretive Wa State itself.
