India’s Narco-terrorism takes off in the Indian Ocean
IN 2022, the US Navy’s guided-missile destroyer USS Nitze captured an estimated $20 million in illicit narcotics from a fishing vessel while patrolling in the Gulf of Aden (Red Sea). The fact that the interception took place on the notorious “Southern Route,” which was used by Indian drug gangs to ship massive amounts of heroin, opium, and other opioids to pre-planned landing sites off the coast of East Africa, is well-known.
While patrolling the north Indian Ocean, encompassing the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, ships of multinational navies acting under the auspices of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) have confiscated about US $900 million worth of illegal drugs. Anecdotal evidence has frequently shown that most boats caught in this kind of unlawful marine activity in the area have an Indian connection.
This is a big development, however, many states have kept mum publically naming India as the main driver of the heroin trade in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), despite the indisputable proof of enormous organized criminal activity emanating from the Makran coast. However, several tides that have risen and fallen over the unremarkable coves and shoreline have seen the unvarnished reality of the Indian Navy’s facilitation of the trafficking of heroin with an Afghan provenance. Experts, who have a greater understanding of the world of organized crime, now agree that India has become the region’s very own “Narco State,” cooperating with Afghan partners.
In the past three decades, organized crime groups supported by India that operate in Asia, Africa, and Europe have developed a sophisticated global network of drug distribution to supply the world’s expanding demand for heroin and its derivatives, such as crystal meth, by increasingly using maritime routes, also known as the “hash highways.” These routes support the nefarious link between the illegal drug trade and global terrorism, which is much eviler than the different opium derivatives.
Increasing evidence indicates clear connections between the drug trade and terror funding that travels back to India through “hawala” methods to support terrorist organizations’ operations. Ironically, India is one of the more experienced members of the US-led CMF, a group of “willing countries” established after the second Iraq War to safeguard maritime security in the Persian Gulf.
As ships of the Indian Navy operated under the coalition’s auspices, the CMF’s mission gradually expanded practically to the entire northern Indian Ocean, allegedly to combat maritime crimes, including drug trafficking and weapons smuggling. Even though hundreds of “dhows” and fishing boats sailed unimpeded off its coast with drug loads bound for remote areas in the Indian Ocean, India could pull off the effective façade of providing maritime security in the Gulf region.
Independent studies conducted by reliable international organizations have made India’s connection to global heroin trafficking more obvious. India is the primary geography of origin for the trafficking routes of Afghan heroin and opiates to Western and Central Europe, South Asia, the Middle East and Persian Gulf region, South East Asia and Oceania, according to the extensive and profusely illustrated UNODC report “Afghan opiate trafficking through the Southern Route”. In eastern and southern Africa, the Indian intelligence agency long-lasting tendrils that have supported the drug trade over many years are visible. Law enforcement officials have seized Indian dhows carrying drugs as far south as the coast of Mozambique.
India’s deep state has ostensibly been trying to replicate the success story in Africa, South Asia and even beyond East Asian mafiosos for the last 20 years. Recent investigations in India have shown that a drug lord with ties to the Indian Navy made ongoing efforts to establish an organized criminal network spanning Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and India. On a boat in the Arabian Sea, close to Vizhinjam Port (Kerala), in March 2021, nine alleged Sri Lankan-origin traffickers were carrying illicit weapons and drugs.
Six crew members of the Sri Lankan fishing boat ShenayaDuwa were arrested in November 2020 after 100 kilograms of heroin, 20 kg of synthetic substances, five guns and a satellite phone were found. According to reports, the pills were going to Australia and Southeast Asia. Many boats connected to India and drug mules in the Maldives have been intercepted. Security agencies have been intercepting drug boats from India with worrying frequency off the coast of India. The most recent incident occurred on December 26, 2022, when a combined operation resulted in the seizure of an Indian boat carrying narcotics and weapons worth 300 crores in Indian rupees.
The Indian “Deep State” is frantically attempting to maintain a parallel economy by producing narco money from the drug trade while New Delhi battles to revive its failing economy. While part of it is notoriously used to finance the military’s for-profit corporations that support elite lifestyles, astute observers cannot ignore the broader problem of funding terrorism which affects the whole area, especially South Asia.
The international community must deal firmly with the worldwide scourge of narcotics trafficking by Indian Navy-backed organized criminal groups operating in the Indian Ocean area, with increased monitoring at international venues like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The P-5 at the UN Security Council has to cooperate more to hold New Delhi accountable for the unquestionable plague of narco-terrorism coming from its borders. The international community must redirect its diplomatic efforts to wean India away from its risky dalliance with terrorism and drugs and towards domestic development goals.
—Research Scholar and Academic; PhD in Political Science at the University of Pisa, Italy.
Email: [email protected]
