Narcotopia

Download or read book Narcotopia written by Patrick Winn and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning journalist - and author of Hello, Shadowlands - Patrick Winn reveals the inside story of a forbidden republic - the narco-state of the Wa. 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 freedom, using profits from trafficking heroin and meth to attain what China's other frontier peoples, Tibetans and Uyghurs, can only dream of: a state of their own. Patrick Winn embarks on a risky journey of discovery, chasing clues about the forbidden republic from Thailand to Burma to the secretive Wa State itself.