Publishers Weekly
★ 11/27/2023
In this gripping history, NPR correspondent Winn (Hello, Shadowlands) follows the Wa people—a tribe situated along the Burma-China border and best known for head-hunting—over the last half-century as they established the United Wa State Army, an independent government in control of a 30,000-man fighting force and a colossal drug cartel that produced heroin and later switched to manufacturing methamphetamine. The book centers on several Wa figures, including Saw Lu, a Baptist who fought to unite and modernize his people (he led a successful campaign in the 1960s to get them to stop head-hunting) and to wean them off drug trafficking, all while serving as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; and his nemesis Wei Xuegang, the secretive criminal genius who turned the UWSA into the dominant cartel in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region. Stirring the pot is the feud between the DEA, which backed Saw Lu, and the CIA, which nurtured the drug trade and sabotaged Saw Lu’s efforts. Part gangster saga, part espionage thriller, and part liberation epic, Winn’s narrative alternates between rollicking adventure and harrowing violence conveyed in vivid, muscular prose. It’s a riveting portrait of how deeply the drug trade is embedded in Southeast Asia’s modernizing economies—and in America’s foreign policy. Photos. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
"Those who fail to read this forsake their chance to know the truth." —Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah
"An outstanding book, packed with history, humor, and adventure. Patrick Winn is the perfect guide to these highland outlaws and their incredible, defiant narco-state. This is the best reportage to come out of Southeast Asia in years." —Graeme Wood, author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State
"A riveting portrait of a little-known and often vilified people, a harrowing tale of Asia's epic, multi-billion dollar, drugs trade, and a unique perspective on our world today." —Thant Myint-U, author of The Hidden History of Burma
“Patrick has made a riveting read out of the largely overlooked - but critically important - Wa State... The history behind it, the masterminds pulling the strings, and the many CIA operations against them. It’s a fascinating and incredibly well-researched dive into Asia’s underworld and some of the greatest narcotics traffickers in the region. And above all, it’s beautifully crafted storytelling.” —Isobel Yeung, VICE
"Unputdownable... an authentic page-turner, revealing why the global drug problem remains unsolved."—Khuensai Jaiyen, ex-secretary to the drug lord Khun Sa
“Part gangster saga, part espionage thriller, and part liberation epic, Winn’s narrative alternates between rollicking adventure and harrowing violence conveyed in vivid, muscular prose.” —Publishers Weekly
“A penetrating look at the failure of the war on drugs at the drug trade’s ground zero… A valuable contribution to the literature on the international drug trade and its seemingly limitless power.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Narcotopia offers a rich analysis of narco-states.” —The Economist
“The DEA aspires to dismantle the Wa State, and Americans have rarely trodden upon its soil, but Winn decided to give it a go. What he discovered was a long history of U.S. meddling that amounts to one of the foolhardiest chapters in the war on drugs—a conflict hardly wanting for foolhardiness.”—Harper's
Kirkus Reviews
2023-11-02
A penetrating look at the failure of the war on drugs at the drug trade’s ground zero.
Because the war’s “primary battlefields are in Latin America and the United States’ own cities, most forget where it started: Southeast Asia.” So writes journalist Winn, reporting from the Golden Triangle of Myanmar (formerly Burma), where a de facto independent nation called the Wa State has emerged. The region was originally the site of a heroin epidemic that first swept through soldiers in Vietnam, then wound up in those very cities; the trade has evolved to include a veritable pharmacopeia, including the being the site for the largest seizure of drugs in the history of Asia: “55 million ya-ba pills and 1.5 metric tons of crystal meth, hidden in beer crates.” Ominously, while meth requires the chemical basis of a scarce substance called pseudoephedrine, Wa chemists have learned to make it from scratch, “new-age alchemy, turning lead into gold.” Winn follows generations of warlords, foot soldiers, and federal agents and informants, and by his account, the Wa State has flourished largely because of the American government’s missteps—and, in some instances, due to calculated assistance played out against a backdrop of geopolitics. One compelling player is an anti-drug crusader who later descended into heroin addiction, despairing under a regime whose kingpin was “a consummate capitalist” who had carved out minor satrapies for lesser narco-criminals. What is clear, Winn writes, is that the American government’s approach is ineffectual at least in part because officials seem not to understand that they are dealing with “a state that is wrapped around a meth cartel,” one that must be treated as a government on its own terms and that demands more nuanced diplomatic relations than it has been accorded to date.
A valuable contribution to the literature on the international drug trade and its seemingly limitless power.
