Where the waters meet: This aerial photo shows a giant Buddha statue at a Golden Triangle viewpoint in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province, with Thailand on the left, Myanmar in the centre and Laos on the right. — AFP
A sprawling new mine is gouged into the lush rolling hills of northeast Myanmar, where civil war has weakened the government’s already feeble writ and pollution levels are rising downstream in Thailand.
The complex is one of around a dozen extraction operations that have sprung up in Shan state since around 2022, in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), one of conflict-wracked Myanmar’s largest and best-equipped ethnic armed groups.
