Warships of Coalition Maritime Forces (CMF), deployed in the Arabian Sea, often seize stateless dhows with small quantities of drugs stashed or hidden amongst their cargoes. The largest drug haul in CMF history, however, was clinched by Canadian warship HMCS Calgary on 23rd April this year, after it seized 2,835 lbs (1,286 kg) of heroin from a vessel in the Northern Arabian Sea. Less than 24 hours later, this very ship intercepted another vessel with 360 kg of methamphetamine. Since January this year CMF ships have carried out 14 successful narcotic interceptions in the Northern Arabian Sea.
In another incident, in December 2020, U.S. Navy’s guided-missile destroyer, USS Ralph Johnson, seized over 900 kilograms of narcotics. In yet another incident on 8th November 2020, the French Frigate Floréal seized more than $8 million worth of hashish from a suspicious vessel on the Arabian Sea’s “Hash Highway”. Ten days later, the ship captured 456 kilos of methamphetamine and 364 kilos of heroin from a suspicious vessel during a boarding in the Northern Indian Ocean. Thus, the CMF forces have, over a period of eight months, managed to carryout significant interceptions denting the drug trade with losses in millions of Dollars.
Is this phenomenon of drug seizures limited to the northern Arabian Sea’s “Hash Highway”?
No, not really, stateless dhows have also been detected in central IOR from where the narcotics are destined to SE Asian countries. It may be recalled that in April this year, an Indian Naval Ship had seized narcotics worth Rs 3000 crores from a suspicious dhow in central Arabian Sea.
On similar lines, in April last year, the Sri Lankan Navy had announced on their official twitter handle “Navy brought seized foreign vessel ashore along with 605kg of #CrystalMeth (Methamphetamine) and 579kg of #Ketamine (recreational drug). The nine crew members were found to be Pakistanis”.
So where do these drugs originate from and come to being at sea?
It is now a well-known fact that opium, from which majority of these drugs are derived, is produced in a region known as ‘Golden Crescent’ – overlapping three nations – Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. The narcotics transit along the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border where they should actually be countered by Pakistan’s notorious Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), but apparently this setup doesn’t appear to work efficiently, and these narcotics easily find their way to sea through the Makran coast. Recent photographs by an OSINT observer have depicted the very same boats used by drug smugglers anchored in close vicinity of a Pak Army outpost along the Makran Coast.
“In the Indian Ocean, such supposedly stateless dhows with drug cargoes comprise the marine transportation component of the well-oiled, state supported narcotics trade, run by Taliban-linked drug lords in cohort with Pakistani cartels amply supported by the Pak armed forces. During boarding operations by law enforcement agencies on the high seas, the crew of such vessels (mostly small dhows) has been found to be mostly Pakistani and occasionally of Iranian origin, with their identification deliberately obfuscated by absence of proper identity documents.”
Is Pakistan involved in facilitating the drug trade?
It is well known that Pakistan’s intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) midwifed the Afghanistan-based heroin trade during the long years of Taliban rule. In South Asia, no nation is spared the malignant impact of Pakistan’s enterprise of illicit narcotics export. Island nations such as Sri Lanka and Maldives are major destinations of drug cargoes originating from the Makran coast. In 2015, the UNODC published an exhaustive report titled “Afghan Opiate Trafficking through the Southern Route”, which remains an authoritative reference on Pakistan’s key role in facilitating production, transportation and marketing of narcotics products originating in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. A subsequent research funded by the European Union, published in 2018 “The heroin coast—A political economy along the eastern African seaboard”, conclusively nails Pakistan as the key protagonist in establishing an exhaustive supply chain of narcotics on the east coast of Africa.
But doesn’t Pakistan get some funding from the United States to curb the transit of drugs?
A significant part of Pakistan’s anti-narcotics funding comes from the US State Department’s counter-narcotics funding. This money amounted to $42 Million in 2019 alone. These are disbursed through the US Embassy in Islamabad. Pak tactics to garner this money are clearly perceptible. As the fund becomes due, a spurt in drug captures is reported mostly through joint ops with other Pakistani agencies/ forces (Pak Coast Guard, Pak Navy, PMSA, and the Frontier Corps). The captures where Pak Navy is involved are from fishing vessels/ dhows giving an impression of an operation at sea, though a finer reading reveals the vessel was in harbour as illustrated by the seizure in Pasni in October and at Port Qasim in November 2020.
All these drug seizures are in millions of Dollars – money that generally flows back into illicit arms, human trafficking, and other illegal activities. However, when it is state-sponsored the money could well be used by the state sponsoring the illicit trade for procurement of weapon systems. And so now the picture of how – a third world country that is on the brink of economic implosion, living on loans from the IMF, which is unable to guarantee the basic necessities of life to its people but is still procuring military equipment from some of the most advanced nations in the world, has gotten quite clear.
