Narcotics and Narcoterrorism Add to India’s National Security Woes in Western Himalayas

Indian security personnel stand guard near the clock tower at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Aug. 15, 2024, on the country's Independence Day. While Kashmir was already a hotbed of narcotics, in recent years, the adjoining region of Jammu has witnessed an exponential rise in narcoterrorism. Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images

After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reelected in June, his coalition government faced an immediate rise in terrorism incidents in some otherwise sleepy areas of Jammu in the western Himalayas.

While the spike in attacks is new, the region was already battling other regional security concerns, particularly increasing narcotics and cross-border narcoterrorism.

The latter, particularly narcoterrorism in Jammu, doesn’t often make it into the international news circuits. But according to experts, it’s a stark reminder of the unveiling geopolitical theater in South Asia between India and Pakistan, wherein the former accuses the latter of sponsoring and supporting terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, including the many recent attacks where several people including soldiers lost their lives.

Ayjaz Wani, a fellow in the strategic studies program at the Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai, told the Epoch Times that the old ecosystem of terrorism has been dismantled in Jammu and Kashmir since 2019 and a new narcotics-sustained terrorism model has started to take root in the region.

“Before 2019, the [terrorism] network was developed on the basis of religious leanings, on the basis of separatism. Organizations like JeI [Jamaat-e-Islami], separatists were giving logistic and financial support to terrorists and militants,” said Wani, the author of multiple research papers on narcoterrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

In February, the Indian government’s ban on Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir as an “Unlawful Association” was extended for an additional five years. Wani said that after the dismantling of the old system, the terrorists are now using narcotics dealers as on-the-ground workers.

“Now after 2020, there was a new trend, because a lot of money and resources were involved in drug peddling—they [started] to use drugs to get new logistic support from drug peddlers and drug addicts. Also terrorism needs finances which also came from drugs,” Wani.

S.D. Pradhan, India’s former deputy national security adviser, told The Epoch Times that narcoterrorism has a widespread impact because terrorist organizations generate funds for their activities, which have political objectives.

“This dimension has significant geopolitical implications as the intersection of terrorism and drug trafficking can destabilize regions, nations, foster corruption, and challenge state sovereignty and can undermine efforts of regimes to contain crimes, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, and terrorism [or] insurgency,” Pradhan said.

Jammu, which was a relatively peaceful region, has seen a sudden spike in terrorist-related incidents in the past few months. However, according to multiple news reports, it has seen a rapid rise in narcotics-related incidents since 2019.

Experts said the rise of narcotics preceding a spike in terrorism could be linked to an enhanced network of on-the-ground addicted workers and drug dealers. But the situation is complex, and there could be other contributing factors.

Indian security personnel walk through thick grass during a search operation for terrorists in Diyalachak, near Hiranagar village in the Kathua district, some 70 km from Jammu city on Sept. 28, 2013. In recent months, this stretch of the border has become very active with several reported incidents of infiltration, cross-border tunnels being unearthed, and narcotics and arms being dropped through drones. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Complex Geopolitics

According to Pradhan, narcoterrorism significantly enhances the complexity of the situation, because while terrorist outfits usually have geographical limits, drug trafficking transcends national borders through a complex web of criminals and arms smugglers. Its impact is thus wider and more severe in intensity than either narcotics or terrorism alone and has the resources to make inroads into peaceful regions like no other threat.

“The drug smuggling not only generates funds but creates drug lords, who, to facilitate their operations, start manipulating the political system to have a favorable regime. They try to destabilize regimes that are not favorable to them,” he said, claiming that adversarial foreign governments also work with these drug lords to try to overthrow a regime that is not in their interest.

“Thus, narcoterrorism becomes an important tool in geopolitical changes, though due to the very nature of such clandestine operations, evidence remains sketchy,” he said.

Terrorists attacked and killed seven people working on a tunnel infrastructure project between Kashmir and Ladakh in Ganderbal on Oct. 20. A Pakistan-based terrorist group called the Resistance Front took responsibility for the attack. It’s considered an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a group banned by India and designated as a foreign terrorist group by the United States. The LeT is also listed by the United Nations as being associated with Al-Qaida and is sanctioned under the Al-Qaida sanction list.

Michelle Macander wrote in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that LeT maintains a complex relationship with its host country.

“While Pakistan has banned the group and its parent organizations, there is ample evidence that the state has used the group as a proxy against India since the mid-1990s,” she wrote.

The Times of India reported that another terrorist group—People’s Anti-Fascist Front, an offshoot of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)—has said that the attack on workers in the Ganderbal district was meant to disrupt Indian military deployments and that the project was “against our military interests and those of our Chinese friends.”

For a decade, China blocked Masood Azhar, the founder and the leader of the JeM, from being declared a terrorist by the United Nations but changed its stance in 2019 because of U.S. pressure, according to Pradhan, who believes these developments showcase the worrisome dimension of the increasing nexus between terrorists and geopolitical adversaries—turning narcotics-funded terrorism into geopolitical warfare.

A map shows the Kathua, Samba, and Jammu districts' border between India and Pakistan. The white dotted line shows the border that runs parallel to the first range of the Shivaliks of the Western Himalayas (yellow line). A number of small rivers are visible crossing through first the Shivalik range and then going across the border into Pakistan. These not only make the border porous but also serve as inlets for infiltrators including terrorists and smugglers. Illustration by The Epoch Times

From Smugglers to Drones

Although narcoterrorism, or the nexus between drug syndicates and terrorists, is witnessing an upsurge in the region recently, narcotics have long existed across the larger stretch of the India–Pakistan border. However, with a greater militarization of the border and the influx of technology, narcoterrorism has become more sophisticated.

Shesh Paul Vaid, former director general of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview that an increase in terrorism-related incidents in the Jammu region doesn’t imply that cross-border narcotics are only coming through the Jammu stretch of the India–Pakistan border.

“There was a time when Pakistan used to send drugs through cross-border guides. There used to be smugglers living all around the international border and also along the [Line of Control]. I’m talking about 20 years back—there used to be drug smugglers, and they would be operating on both sides of the border, both Pakistan side and India side,” Vaid said.

He said these escorts would guide terrorists to infiltrate communities and also guide the smugglers bringing drugs, arms, and other illegal consignments.

Then, India built border fencing from 2002 to 2003 that brought down the infiltration to almost one-tenth of what it was earlier in Jammu and Kashmir, according to Vaid. However, he said it still continues to some extent, such as recent cases including infiltrators who crossed into India from Pakistan through underground tunnels.

Indian security forces unearthed a cross-border tunnel believed to be used by infiltrators and drug smugglers in the Samba sector of Jammu in January, according to Indian media reports. A more striking incident was reported in 2022 when a 150-meter-long cross-border tunnel was unearthed in the same sector. It was equipped with a 265-foot-long pipe for oxygen supply.

Indian security forces launched an extensive anti-tunnel drive in the Kathua and Samba sectors of the border in July this year after a terrorist attack killed five soldiers in the hilly regions of Kathua on July 8. Vaid said these incidents are proof of the changing modus operandi.

“Only tactics are changing. The ways are changing. The means are changing. I have been watching it for almost 35 years,” he said. “These are the times of technology. So you have drones now. Drones are being used by Pakistan to smuggle drugs and arms.”

The Epoch Times traveled through certain areas of Samba and Kathua on Sept. 16, and sources who requested to remain anonymous told The Epoch Times how the dry beds of cross-border rivers, which were the traditional routes before roads came to the region, are being reactivated by infiltrators and smugglers.

One particular cross-border river called Ujh enters Pakistan in the Samba sector in a place called Rajbagh. It originates in the Baderwah mountains of Jammu at 14,100 feet and travels an entire stretch of mountains and hills in the Kathua region before entering Pakistan at the plains of Rajbagh.

Incidentally, the regions in Ujh’s catchment in the mountains have been in the news over several terrorist attacks in the past few months, including the Sep. 28 attack in the village of Kog-Mandli, which lies in its catchment and is just a mile away from a main bridge crossing on Ujh in the region.

An anonymous source told The Epoch Times that security becomes more challenging after monsoons, when the floods recede, leaving gaps along the wrecked wired fencing.

“Samba has other such [ravines]. The region has much news about infiltrators [and] peddlers being shot dead while trying to illegally cross the border with heroin,” the source said, adding that the latest incident of the police catching heroin smuggled from across the Rajbagh-area border happened in May, according to interviews conducted in mid-September.

The narcotics mafia on the border has also been exploiting the pastoral nomadic tribe of Gurjars—who are otherwise known for their seasonal migrations across the greater length of the Himalayas in the region—for drug peddling. In summer, they migrate to higher altitude pastures with their pashmina goats or cattle, while in winter they come back to their homes in the plains of Kathua, Samba, or Jammu.

Shaukat Javed, a trustee at the Jammu-based Gujarat Charitable Trust, told The Epoch Times on Sep. 17 that in the past five or six years, men and women from the tribe—which is still largely illiterate—have been increasingly exploited by the drug mafia, because they are unsuspecting and because drugs can be easily hidden in their traditional attire.

“A Gurjar girl who sells milk is unsuspecting of the peddlers. When she’s offered say 2000 rupees [$24] for delivering a tiny packet, she falls prey to the mafia and gets exploited. Another woman sees her making easy, extra money and unsuspectingly she also falls prey to it,” Javed said. “By the time they understand what’s happening, they are already embroiled in it and have no way to trace their way back.”

Gurjar pastoral nomads journeying with their animals as they walk in the hills on the outskirts of Doda in Jammu and Kashmir on May 21, 2011. STRDEL/AFP via Getty Images

Deep State Involvement

According to experts and various available reports, the narcotic supply chain that transverses through Jammu starts from Golden Crescent, or the principal source of narcotics in South Asia that’s located in the mountainous peripheries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and eastern Iran. Jammu is only a territorial conduit, because from here, the drugs enter into the international market through Punjab and Delhi.

“[The] government of India, through diplomatic channels, regularly takes up with the Government of Pakistan, matters related to cross-border narcotics smuggling from Pakistan over land and over sea. India has lodged protests with Pakistan to stop the recurrence of instances of cross-border trafficking of narcotics,” Kirti Vardhan Singh, minister of state in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, said in a comment to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, on Aug. 1.

Singh said India closely cooperates with the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on countering narcotics trafficking. However, narcotics continue across the border, with the supply chain becoming only more sophisticated by the day. Some experts allege this occurs because deep state actors in the Pakistan government are involved.

“Pakistan’s deep state is running the biggest drug cartel in the world,” alleged Vaid.

Wani highlights a report published in Pakistan’s leading newspaper, Dawn, about the alleged involvement of a “head of the anti-narcotics unit of Lahore police and his team” in cross-border drug trafficking using drones in the Pakistani city of Lahore that borders India’s Punjab. The issue came to the notice of Pakistan’s administration after a drone carrying 6 kilograms (13 pounds) of drugs worth millions of local currency crashed on the outskirts of the city.

The Pakistani report also said that the group was using unmanned aerial vehicles to smuggle huge quantities of methamphetamine from Lahore to India.

The Epoch Times traveled through the Kathua border region and spoke with law enforcement sources on Sept. 16 and 17 and learned about several ongoing cases of narcoterrorism in Jammu.

Sources said that last year, law enforcement seized 32 kilograms (70 pounds) of heroin from a handler in a car in the Ramban town of Jammu and Kashmir. The first handler from Kantar, Kashmir, had allegedly received it from a terrorist from Pakistan.

In another ongoing case involving an Hizbul Mujahideen (HeM) terrorist, police caught two peddlers in Vivekanand Junction of Jammu city in early 2019 with 260 grams of heroin and $14,268 (12 lakhs) of cash. HeM has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by India and the United States.

“The investigating agencies traced it eventually to a terrorist in Poonch from whom they retrieved 12 kilograms of more heroin,” the source said. Poonch is another sensitive region on the disputed border between India and Pakistan, more than 142 miles from Jammu city.

According to the report that the source quoted, the Poonch-based terrorist received the heroin from a Pakistan-residing HeM terrorist. Agencies nabbed three more accused in the case who were handling money in multiple bank accounts. The case involves 79 witnesses and is currently under investigation. It’s being dealt with by India’s Enforcement Directorate.

Wani told The Epoch Times that this heroin smuggling is the main funder of terrorism—citing an exponential increase in revenue as the narcotics travel from Afghanistan to Pakistan to the massive Indian market through Kashmir and Jammu. The most commonly used opioid in India is heroin, with 1.14 percent—or 16.3 million people—consuming it in 2019 as per government records.

“And most of the heroin is coming from the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, and this drug network is massive and very networked,” Wani said.

An IARC publication on opium consumption found that 80 percent of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan, while the countries in the Golden Crescent—Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—are also the world’s largest per capita consumers of raw or minimally processed opium. Heroin is derived from opium.

Drugs seized in Kashmir and Jammu usually originate in the Golden Crescent and are en route to Punjab, Delhi, or Mumbai. Their value exponentially rises as they travel from their origin to the Indian market through Kashmir and Jammu. According to Indian experts, terrorists operating in the region generate funding for their activities through this illegal supply chain. Illustration by The Epoch Times

Illegal Cultivation of Poppy Straw

While traveling through the Kathua region, The Epoch Times also came across the smuggling of poppy straw from Kashmir to Punjab through the Jammu territory. Poppy straw is the poppy husk left behind after the extraction of the seeds, and it’s considered a drug under India’s Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act from 1985.

According to India’s Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, India is one of the few countries permitted to cultivate opium poppy for export. It’s also used for manufacturing alkaloids for pharmaceuticals. Though its illegal cultivation is not a main contributor to narcoterrorism in the region, experts said it involves money laundering.

Vaid said that it’s not a new phenomenon and has been grown internally in the Kashmir Valley for many decades, particularly in South Kashmir.

“In fact, there have been regular police raids on these people. I remember even 20 years back, we constituted a lot of teams. Policemen used to go and raid whenever and wherever information would come from. Sometimes you don’t get information. So they’re able to cultivate this and earn quick money,” Vaid said.

India is traditionally a significant consumer of opium, and it consumes 65 to 70 metric tons of opium annually, or 6 percent of the annual global consumption, according to a World Drug Report from the United Nations from 2010.

“Consequently, such a consumption level ... would require the illicit cultivation of some 1,500–2,000 hectares of opium poppy on Indian territory,” the report said.

Vaid said that despite the administration trying to curtail its illegal cultivation, the practice has continued because it’s grown in far-flung mountainous regions, where it goes largely undetected.

“Still, it’s a continuous problem and I wouldn’t say it has stopped. In many places, it’s detected—maybe 10 percent gets detected and 90 percent goes on,” Vaid said.

Giasul Haq, senior district magistrate of Bani, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 6 that poppy straw is cultivated in the higher altitudes of Kathua because the climate is suitable for it.

“It’s difficult for agencies to nab the illegal cultivators because of the inaccessibility of far-flung mountainous villages. The market is mainly in Punjab while the Bani region [in Jammu] mostly acts as the route,” Haq said.

Need for Reforms

Despite the issues of cross-border narcoterrorism that are geopolitical in nature, the experts told The Epoch Times that things become cumbersome internally because of the lack of reforms and lack of law enforcement infrastructure required to curtail the problem.

“The SOPs [standard operating procedures] are issued, yes, but then there are a lot of issues where field staff face problems like we do not have forensic lab facilities and you don’t get quick results. In such cases, you should have, if not in every sub-region, then at least in every district headquarters,” Vaid said.

The former leading police official said that the police in Jammu and Kashmir should be able to get immediate results on what kind of narcotics they have caught from the smugglers. However, it takes months to get a report.

“Sometimes it keeps lying there [in the evidence room] and [the culprit] gets it replaced by something else, by bribing the man who’s looking after the [evidence room]. Similarly, you don’t get legal backup while these cases are pursued,” Vaid said, adding that there are only two forensic science labs in the area, one each in Jammu and Kashmir.

Meanwhile, if the drugs get shuffled, things are changed, he said.

“You lose interest. [The} officer gets transferred. There are so many complications,” he said.

Vinay Khosla, the additional deputy commissioner of Billawar, who also administers the sensitive regions of Ramkot and Lohai Malhar where an attack recently took place, told The Epoch Times that the administration of the Kathua district has made it mandatory for pharmaceutical shops to be fitted with surveillance cameras to prevent the illegal sale of syringes and drugs, and proper billing and prescriptions have also been made compulsory.

“As part of its growing attention toward a drug-free society, the administration has started identifying ‘drug-free [areas].’ [Revenue officers] have directions to destroy instantly any poppy cultivation,” he said.

Vaid said the police force is the key to control narcoterrorism and that its training must be improved. He said special investigation training is needed for the policemen, particularly on drug cases. The training should enable police officials to investigate narcotics cases faster.

He also called for “summary trial” to be used for narcotics cases as is done for terrorism-linked cases. Summary trials are used for minor cases and are quick and simple legal proceedings to settle cases or disagreements without a jury.

“Drugs are as serious a problem as terrorism, or rather more serious. Through these drugs ... the Pakistan deep state is destroying the career of young people and is making use of them for terrorism—because once they become addicted, they will do whatever their master tells them to,” he said.

Pradhan called for international cooperation and joint operations for controlling narcoterrorism.

“More importantly, states supporting such activities should be penalized. The last one is difficult, but efforts for convergence on this issue can help in reducing such support. FATF [Financial Action Task Force] should be made more effective,” he said.

FATF is a global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, and Pradhan believes that it should be given the authority to independently investigate the money trail rather than depending on reports provided by the accused states.