A gunshot rings out, followed by the burbling of a man. Everything goes quiet for few seconds and then a second shot is heard, followed by silence. A woman wails. "He is my husband, don't kill him, he is innocent.” This chilling audio clip circulating on social media in Bangladesh records the last moments of a civic official in Bangladesh, municipal ward councillor Ekramul Haque of Teknaf.
The woman who released the clip, his wife Ayesha Begum, claims that her husband was murdered by police in “cold blood” last week, a victim of the violence emanating from the war on drugs flowing across Myanmar, Bangladesh and India's northeastern States. At the centre of the operation is a pink methamphetamine-caffeine pill that goes by the name of Yaba.
A ruling party member, councillor Haque was a popular leader in the south eastern districts of Bangladesh. His death is explained by the Rapid Action Battalion [RAB] as an unfortunate consequence of a "gunfight" between the force and the drug peddlers. Yaba is widely available in Bangladesh.
As the month of Ramzan began, the Bangladesh government launched a sustained attack on drug cartels and drug lords, killing 120 suspected criminals in just two weeks.
On the Indian side, the Border Security Force has also responded. “With the operations going on in Bangladesh, we have sent an alert to our forces," said an official.
Yaba stands for the ‘madness drug’ in Thai, and originates from eastern Myanmar's Shan, Kachin and two other States and travels to southeast Bangladesh on the Laos-Thailand-Myanmar Golden Triangle. Large consignments enter India's Northeast, said an Indian intelligence official.
In Manipur, Yaba comes in via Moreh on the Myanmar-India border and the consignments move up through Tengnoupal, where an Indian Army base is located. "From the base I once witnessed, using binoculars, hundreds of carriers walking along the winding mountain roads. Their destination was Imphal and from there to Dimapur,” a senior intelligence official told The Hindu. Various stretches of this highway from Moreh to Imphal or Imphal to Dimapur are controlled by insurgent groups. In Dimapur, Yaba tablets cost about Rs. 500 each.
But there is no parallel crackdown on the Indian side. Thailand-based journalist Bertil Lintner says, “I don’t think Myanmar would want to upset India and thus maintains a strict control on Tamu/Moreh,” he said. The other argument is that Bangladesh is a far bigger market than the entire northeast of India.
Bangladesh crackdown
Yaba's impact in Bangladesh has been debilitating. Riaz [name changed], a 29 year old NGO worker, in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area said, “In about two years after I started having it, my life changed,” said Riaz. The drug cost the software engineer from Canada his job, then his wife left with both their children.
The pill heightens “sense of pleasure.” With Bangladesh’s economic emergence, Yaba has many takers in the affluent middle-upper classes.
“But then Yaba is spreading across the country, not just in affluent areas of Dhaka,” said Md. Jamal Uddin Ahmed, Director-General of the Department of Narcotics Control [DNC] of Bangladesh. In 2017, 4.60 crore Yaba tablets were seized in Bangladesh. This year in the first three months alone the figure is 2.60 crore. The drug entered Bangladesh over a decade ago when the producers came under severe pressure in Thailand.
“Two routes were opened. The first route, crossing the river Naf from northern Myanmar and the later one via the Bay of Bengal to Barishal or Khulna district,” the DNC chief said. There is a “possible” third route via India, he added.
Yaba traders
Mr. Lintner, who wrote a book on methamphetamines, ‘Merchants of Madness,’ thinks Pyi Thu Sit or a people’s militia in Myanmar is responsible for Yaba manufacture.
Some of the leaders of those militias have been Parliamentarians elected from military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. “There are hundreds of such militias, some small but some very big,” said Mr. Lintner. Mr. Ahmed, however, did not connect the militias with the Government or the Army. “There are influential people involved in the business and we have given a list of 49 groups in 2017 to the Myanmar government,” he added.
Human rights questions
While civil society acknowledges the need to eliminate the addiction in Bangladesh, several members also question the modus operandi of the RAB and the government, especially after the killing of councillor Teknaf. Musician Arup Rahee, refugee and migration expert C.R. Abrar and human rights activist Nur Khan Liton all express worry about the killings.
Professor Abrar said on phone that the “quick fix approach” to address the drug menace would not help.
“People may wonder whether they would have to pay a similar price for opposing the ruling party, if the political opposition becomes the target in an election year,” he said. Mr. Khan said that most of the people killed are just “small time peddlers,” not big syndicate operators.
“We fear such operations will continue on the basis of an arbitrary list prepared by the Home Ministry, in the name of crackdown on drug trade or recovery of illegal arms,” Mr. Khan said. A senior Minister in Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina’s Cabinet, Hasanul Haq Inu refuted the allegations.
“While a few of the Awami League leaders were targeted for their involvement [in the drug trade] the Opposition BNP was not touched. This is a war against drugs with no agenda or political vendetta," he said.
