Muse: Myanmar's militia-run, billion-dollar gateway to China

With tinted windows and their militia name emblazoned on the side of their Ford truck, "Pan Say" fighters cruise the sleazy streets of Muse, Myanmar's main gateway to China and awash with weapons and cash from casinos, drugs and sex.

Ten armed groups run the Shan State border town of Muse, which is separated by a shallow river from the gleaming towers of its Chinese counterpart, Ruili.

All are under the tutelage of the same patron: Myanmar's army.

China and Myanmar have an agreement not to station troops along their border.

Instead, Myanmar's army uses the militias as proxies in a long-running conflict between the central state and ethnic rebel groups who operate in the area, including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Taaung National Liberation Army (TNLA).

A fiendishly complicated, decades-old struggle for money, trade, resources and ethnic identity is playing out in Muse.

The Pan Say militia gave AFP a rare snapshot of the shifting alliances and rivalries which have defined Myanmar's frontier areas since its independence in 1948.

Each militia "looks after its own business ... and we look after ours", a senior Pan Say member told AFP as a batch of 30 fresh recruits dressed in fatigues trained in a compound.

They have joined one of Muse's largest militias, which boasts several hundred men, armed with M-16 rifles and Kalashnikovs.

Pan Say insists it is funded by its own jade mines, cigarette factories and karaoke bars, denying knowledge of narcotics or other illegal activities that prosper along the border.

Like other Muse militias, Pan Say accepted a deal in 2009 to come under the military's control in exchange for a degree of autonomy.

As a result, an uneasy truce exists between the militias, who have agreed not to engage in combat unless ordered by the military.

The fighters cast themselves as unconventional but necessary keepers of the peace, accusing the rebel groups they fight against of extortion and racketeering.

Experts are less generous in their definition.

The "wasps' nest of militias" are as much behind the town's illicit economy as the rebels, says independent analyst David Mathieson.

"They drive around toting machine guns, running casinos, peddling yaba (low-grade methamphetamine), all as subcontractors of local security for the Myanmar military."