Drug runners supply hi-tech guns to

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Subject: Drug runners supply hi-tech guns to N-E militants in India

Drug runners supply hi-tech guns, RDX to N-E militants

By CHARU SINGH
ASIAN AGE NEWSPAPER, AUGUST 7, 1999

New Delhi, Aug. 6: Narcotics smugglers in the North East (India) are
using their well-developed cross-border networks to supply high-grade
weapons and RDX plastic explosives to the militant groups of the region,
which they also help finance, senior police and government officials
warn.

The director-general of the Assam police, Mr. P.V. Sumant, said
?narcotics smuggling is being used on a considerable scale to finance
organized terrorism in the state.?

It is feared the Northeast is likely to be targeted by manufacturers of
the latest varieties of drugs like Ephedrine Hydrochloride and
Buprenorphine, which are being smuggled out to Burma and Bangladesh.
This has been proved by three significant seizures made by the
directorate of revenue intelligence in the Northeast recently.

The narco trade is conducted via a series of conduits spread across
South East Asia. According to local NGOs, the combination that operates
in the Northeast comprises the insurgent groups, the Guwahati-based coal
mafia, drug traders and sometimes pimps.

The Northeast is the perfect transit route for such activity: remote,
fragmented, violence-prone and possessing a very porous international
border.

Two prominent routes have been in use for conducting the narco-trade:
Guwahati-Shillong-Silchar and then on to Bangladesh; and the other is
the Burma-Manipur-Nagaland-Shillong-Guwahati-Mumbai route.

Increasing globalization is also changing the parameters of the narco
trade in the Northeast, as insurgents as well as the conduits are going
hi-tech. Mr. Rajiv Mehta, DIG, Shillong, stresses that ?of late the axis
in the narco trade has shifted from the land route to the air route.
Insurgent bodies have become modernised and are taking full advantage of
the privatisation of airlines.?

Today, drugs are being transported by air from Burma to Manipur,
Nagaland, Shillon and then Mumbai, and on to the Gulf.

Due to this, it has become increasingly difficult to monitor drug
trafficking, and ?it is happening on a much larger scale than before,?
he says.

Vinaysheel Oberoi, a UNDP official now running a number of development
schemes in the Northeast, suggests a novel solution.

?A lasting solution is only possible through the community system, which
is still intact in the Northeastern States. Unless you involve them
there is no answer. Governments cutting across the Northeast are too
ill-equipped to deal with something of such transnational dimensions.?