Myanmar produces more jade than anywhere else on earth. The country holds the world's highest concentration of the stone -- sodium alumina silicate in its geological identity, but something closer to currency in its economic role. Myanmar's jade industry is estimated at more than 31 billion dollars annually, roughly half the country's GDP. Hpakant, in Kachin State, sits at the center of this industry, a remote mountain district where an estimated 300,000 miners work the earth. Chinese companies dominate the trade, often through untraceable shell companies established in partnership with Myanmar's military. The jade finances both the Tatmadaw, Myanmar's military junta, and the ethnic militias that oppose it. Foreigners are forbidden from entering Hpakant, but drug dealers and Chinese traders move freely. The mountains are being hollowed out to feed a market centered in China, where jade carries deep cultural significance and commands prices that make the human cost at Hpakant irrelevant to the supply chain.

Hpakant's 300,000 miners are not there by choice in any meaningful sense. Myanmar has been in an almost constant state of civil war since independence from Britain in 1948. The 2021 military coup overthrew the democratic system, and the continuous political upheaval has prevented the country from building infrastructure that serves ordinary citizens. In Hpakant, the Tatmadaw and the Kachin Independence Army each enforce their own taxes and corruption systems. The miners exist within an economic mechanism controlled by the military, militias, Chinese companies, and drug traffickers. Living conditions breed epidemics: drug use, prostitution, and unsafe housing have driven HIV and Hepatitis C rates upward. An estimated 72 percent of new HIV infections in the area trace to contaminated intravenous needles. Miners use heroin at night to relieve pain and fall asleep, and yaba -- methamphetamine -- during the day for the energy to keep digging. Myanmar is the world's second-largest producer of opium, and its jade mines are the epicenter of the drug crisis.

The environmental devastation at Hpakant is visible from the air: mountains sheared open, slopes of gray tailings cascading toward valleys that were once forested. The mining creates the conditions for its own disasters. Deforestation strips the hillsides. Tailings -- the waste rock and sediment from jade extraction -- accumulate in unstable heaps above rivers and lakes. When the monsoon rains come, or when the accumulated mass simply exceeds the angle of repose, the tailings slide. The 2020 disaster was studied using satellite imagery and found to be the direct result of poor planning and unregulated waste disposal. Landslides induce soil erosion on a massive scale, stripping topsoil and rendering agricultural land infertile. Water sources are contaminated. Aquatic life is killed. Air quality deteriorates, contributing to respiratory diseases and a rise in cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among the Hpakant community.

After the August 2023 disaster, the Tatmadaw's spokesperson told reporters that only ten people were missing or injured -- a figure contradicted by every other account. The Myanmar government does not conduct routine investigations into repeated landslides. It has no effective gemstone or mining regulations. It allows armed groups to operate within the extractive sectors. International pressure has produced some results: US and UK sanctions have targeted the state-owned enterprise overseeing all gemstone activities in Myanmar, preventing financial transactions and reducing some illegal mining operations. The Pat Jasan movement, a grassroots anti-drug organization in Kachin State, conducts raids that involve body searches, detentions, and property destruction -- vigilante enforcement where the state provides none. Medecins du Monde operates drop-in centers offering HIV counseling, testing, and clean needles. But as long as the Tatmadaw and ethnic militias keep journalists and investigators away from Hpakant, the cycle will continue: the monsoon will come, the tailings will slide, and more miners will die for stone.