@prashanthamine
Mumbai: According to Emma Bjornehed, researcher and project coordinator at Uppsala University, Sweden, drug traffickers and producers want to exist within the state structure with minimum state intervention in the economy. In more sinister terms, their (drug traffickers) activities benefit greatly from societal disarray and minimal government control over land and population.
On one hand there is an ethnic separatist group with a Marxist-Leninist ideological foundation such as the Kurdish PKK (or Kurdistan Workers Party), on the other hand there is an essentially religiously-based group such as Al-Qaeda. Their objective, although vastly different in character, is to change society and the state, to a state-run economy or a society based on strict religious laws and codes.
Such groups want to rebuild the state in the image that fits their sense of the proper order and organisation. “In sharp contrast, drug traffickers and producers want to exist within the state structure with minimum state intervention in the economy. In more sinister terms, their (drug traffickers) activities benefit greatly from societal disarray and minimal government control over land and population”, says Bjornehed.
In August 1999, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) made a raid into Kyrgyzstan from their base in Tajikistan. According to reports, the IMU gained US$2 million in ransom for the 20 people whom they had taken hostages. Before the attacks, Kyrgyzstan had managed to supervise one of the main trafficking routes used in the 1990’s, the highway from Khorog in Tajikistan to Osh in Kyrgyzstan, along which the IMU bases are located in Tajikistan.
Experts do agree that the IMU is heavily involved in narcotic trafficking in the region and at one point in time controlled 70% of the Opiates entering Kyrgyzstan. Most of the attacks carried out by such groups are aimed at protecting their investment, thereby implying that insurgency had a primary economic objective, not political, motivation.
After the 9/11 terror attacks, the importance of policy cooperation was advocated by the United Nations (UN). The focus of the UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1373 was focussing on the link between narcotics and terrorism, the law enforcement efforts and intelligence gathering agencies began adopting a more developed framework for cooperation and the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror” became interlinked.
Bjornehed further argues that many of the routes used by the traffickers are also used by terrorists to transport people, equipment and weapons. Keeping in mind the cooperation of the criminal networks, information sharing between agencies can give leads related to drug trafficking, terrorism or both.
Much of todays counter narco-terrorism efforts are concentrated in the Central Asian region because of its proximity to the Golden Crescent, and the perceived location of several terrorist organisations in the region. In the aftermath of 9/11 terror attacks in the US, Colombia received much aid from the US. The 9/11 terror attacks also changed the attitude towards war on drugs. The cooperation between the drug traffickers and terrorist organisations meant that the threat of narco-terrorism was presented as a global threat.
More than four decades of conflict in Afghanistan has given rise to a shattered economy and a disintegrated society. All the available indicators suggest a rise in incidence of depression and other mental illnesses. Residents of a deprived nation have increasingly been turning to heroin which is available in abundance and as a means of escape from gloom and despair.
The three decade-long (1979-1989) war with the Soviet Union had resulted in the destruction of the nation’s subsistence agriculture. Besides paying taxes to regional warlords, it left farmers with no other choice but to plant opium. It is a crop that requires little water and gives high returns.
The profits obtained from the sale of opium were used to fund among other things, the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation. The opium trade, though not reliable, has been a lucrative enterprise for Afghan farmers.
Much of the profits earned by the farmers fell into the hands of warlords and Taliban militia, funding terrorist activities. As opium trade funded terrorism in Afghanistan, at the same time it weakened the integrity of civic administration, further fuelling the illicit opium trade.
The situation in neighbouring Pakistan has been no better or different either. In 1979, the Zia-ul-Haq government implemented the Hudood Ordinances, banning a set of what were deemed to be non-Islamic practices, among them being production and use of intoxicating substances. Ironically, the same year, Pakistan produced its record opium crop of 800 tonnes.
The stresses of internal and external displacement of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran has shown to facilitate drug addiction and sex trade, putting them at risk for blood-borne and sexually transmitted infections.
Injecting heroin, through the sharing of contaminated needles, is also a major risk factor for blood-borne infections, such as HIV, hepatitis B virus, (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV).
In Pakistan though, in what is seen as a sign of brotherhood, it is a common practice amongst 92% of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID), especially in Quetta and Lahore, to practice “jerking”. Wherein it involves blood is drawn into the syringe and the drug/blood mixture is re-injected – a practice is also referred to as “booting” or “registering”. Some PWIDs also inject themselves with another’s blood in an effort to share the high or assuage the withdrawal symptoms – a practice referred to as “flashblood” or in Afghanistan is called as “Khoon Bozee”.
One thing is abundantly clear is that narcotics and terrorism have formed a heady and deadly mixture of narco-terrorism to the whole world. It has not only posed imminent danger to elected governments in terms of political and economic stability, and a threat to national security. Besides that, the spin-off deadly effects of drug prevalence have been societal disintegration, the kind of which has been on witness in Afghanistan.
In some countries the response from the governments and the political establishment to the threat posed by narco-terrorism has been far from satisfactory. More than employing any counter measures to curb narco-terrorism what we are increasingly finding is attempts being made to undermine those very measures and law enforcement agencies. This provides a fertile ground for narco-terror groups where there is societal disarray and minimal or virtual collapse of system of governance to survive and thrive.
