SPECIAL REPORT
Kokang: The Backstory The site of fierce recent fighting, Shan State’s Kokang region has a complex history of feuding warlords and thriving drug production By BERTIL LINTNER
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he sudden outbreak of hostilities in northern Shan State’s remote Kokang region has taken many by surprise. Some have posted messages on social media sites saying that “those people” are not Myanmar citizens, and a government official even branded the hostilities a “Chinese invasion.” While it is true that 90 percent of Kokang’s inhabitants are ethnic Chinese and few can speak the Myanmar language, reality is not quite that simple. The area is definitively on Myanmar’s side of the border with China, and the ethnic Kokang are one of the “135 national races” officially recognized by the government. But how did they end up in Myanmar and who are they? The Kokang region was ceded to the British under the 1897 Beijing Convention, which may seem odd given its ethnic composition. But at that time, Yunnan was not fully controlled by the emperor in Beijing, and because of Kokang’s proximity to Hsenwi in Shan State, trade often traveled westwards rather than to the east. But British colonial rule hardly extended east of the Salween River. The British could, at best, be described as exercising indirect rule through the British-advised saohpa, or prince, of Hsenwi—west of the river—to whom the lesser ruler of Kokang—east of the river—paid tribute. Independent Myanmar’s government was even less successful than the
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British in bringing Kokang under centralized control. Almost the entire territory was taken over by Kuomintang (KMT) forces in the early 1950s, when the Chinese com-
munists forced the nationalists to flee across the border. Speaking the same Chinese dialect as the retreating KMT forces from Yunnan and, at least insofar as the local elite were concerned, sharing similar politics, many Kokang chieftains allied themselves with the Chinese nationalists. Economically, the area was extremely poor. High mountains and a scarcity of water made rice cultivation almost impossible, so the people had to depend on two cash crops, which were sold or exchanged for food: tea and opium. While tea had to be brought down to markets in Hsenwi and Lashio, opium could be sold locally. When war broke out in Shan State in the 1950s, opium became Kokang’s only viable cash crop. With its high morphine content, opium from Kokang was considered the best in the region.
People displaced from Laukkai, the capital of Kokang Special Region in Shan State March 2015