Indian border security is grappling with an unprecedented “drone menace” infiltrating the border with Pakistan, carrying consignments of opium and heroin believed to be coming from Afghanistan.
According to the Guardian, Indian border security intercepted 90 drones in Punjab in 2023, marking a record high, with the reported numbers increasing every month. “Most carried consignments of opium and heroin, likely to have come from Afghanistan, but some have dropped weapons, including pistols and Chinese-made assault rifles,” Indian border officials told the Guardian.
Smuggling between Pakistan and India has persisted for decades, utilizing methods ranging from camels and carrier pigeons to human traffickers and underground pipes for transporting drugs and other goods across the heavily guarded border. Yet, since the first drone sighting in Punjab in 2019, Indian border officials have stated that drones have become the primary means of trafficking drugs from Pakistan. They have intercepted five or six drones in some weeks this year.
In October, an official from India’s Punjab Police reported that they had busted a cross-border drug smuggling racket, resulting in the arrest of one person and the seizure of 12 kg of heroin believed to have been transported from Pakistan. Indian media reports indicate a notable surge in drug addiction, particularly heroin, in the districts of Sriganganagar and Hanumangarh in Rajasthan, which are situated near the border with Punjab.
For nearly two decades, Afghanistan was the largest producer and global supplier of heroin, claiming up to 80% of the global market shares. The products from the landlocked country reach consumers around the world through multiple traffic routes, including Central Asia, Iran, and Pakistan.
Efforts by the regional governments and international organizations to curb drug trafficking from Afghanistan mostly failed to produce any results. Experts believe that without taming market demands in the developed world, particularly Europe, production in places like Afghanistan will continue to remain high.
The Taliban who financed their insurgency against the former government of Afghanistan and its international allies by drug revenues promised to eradicate poppy cultivation after it returned to power in 2021. In April 2022, Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada issued a decree strictly prohibiting the cultivation of poppy, the primary source of opium used in the production of heroin. “Anyone violating the ban would have their field destroyed and be penalized according to Sharia law,” the decree said. Although the group had previously done so during its stint in power in the late 1990s, observers took the promise with caution, particularly given how intertwined the insurgent group had become with illicit economic activity, especially drug trafficking.
Nearly two years after the decree, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported a considerable reduction in drug cultivation as a result of the ban. “Opium cultivation fell across all parts of the country, from 233,000 hectares to just 10,800 hectares in 2023. The decrease has led to a corresponding 95 percent drop in the supply of opium, from 6,200 tons in 2022 to just 333 tons in 2023,” according to the UNODC.
However, critics argue that it will prove challenging, if not impossible, in the long run for the regime to eliminate an industry that provides not only a major source of revenue but also a livelihood to some of its key constituencies in the South, especially amid the extreme economic and humanitarian crisis since their takeover. The UN report also underscored an immediate humanitarian impact on vulnerable rural communities that depended on income from opium cultivation, resulting from a significant reduction in cultivation. “Farmers’ income from selling the 2023 opium harvest to traders fell by more than 92 per cent from an estimated US$1,360 million for the 2022 harvest to US$110 million in 2023,” it said.
To many’s surprise, the right-wing Indian government has developed a rather cordial relationship with the Taliban, a group considered by many a loyal proxy of New Delhi’s archrival, Pakistan–although relations between Kabul and Islamabad have unprecedented sourced in recent months over border security and refugee issues. While India considers drug smuggling an issue with Pakistan, it is unclear whether it will impact the relations with Kabul given the supplies originate in Afghanistan, especially should the spike continue.
