From the remote mountains of Wa State, the yaba trade reveals a powerful nexus of insurgency, shadow economies, and regional insecurity.

​“Whoever controls the Indian Ocean will dominate Asia, the destiny of the world will be decided on its waters.” The great American geostrategic thinker who outlined the geostrategic future and predicted the conflicts that the United States will face in the centuries to come was not far off, rather on point, when he remarked the above about the Indian Ocean in the late 1800s. ​The recent escalation and rising tensions between the United States and Iran involves one of the four most important gateways to the Indian Ocean and oil trade in general. Two gateways, if you count the presence of the Iranian proxies in the Yemeni Civil War. A point to note here is that according to the data of the US EIA, the top four chokepoints imperative for energy stability of the world are the gateways to the Indian Ocean, in order of the volume of oil that...