Deprive the villains of their heroin

Several hundred tonnes of opium gets refined into heroin in secret, makeshift laboratories in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. It then finds its way to the West.

It’s estimated that a kilogram of Afghan heroin procured for roughly Rs 2 lakh can be converted into a million injectable doses, each selling for $ 50 in the US and more in Europe. There is no doubt that if the Taliban ban on opium cultivation had continued for another year, terrorism would have subsided considerably in Kashmir. It is drug money or dirty money that has primarily funded terrorism, not only in the Kashmir valley but in the rest of the world too.

It is pertinent that Pakistan’s arms race with India, particularly after the nuclear tests of 1998, has proved an economic disaster. In the 1990s, poverty in Pakistan nearly doubled in both urban and rural areas. In the last 5 years of the 20th century, per capita growth averaged just over 0.5 per cent as against India’s four per cent or even Bangladesh’s 3.4 per cent.

Per capita GDP growth in India was more than double Pakistan’s in the 1990s. In all previous decades, Pakistan’s per capita income and GDP growth were as good as, if not better than, India’s.

In short, Pakistan is in no position to offer financial support to terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, except with drug money. Pakistan is a trafficking country for heroin, morphine and hashish from Afghanistan.

An aerial survey of illicit poppy cultivation in Pakistan, undertaken in April 2002 by the Narcotics Assistance Section or NAS, estimated an area of 897 hectares, up from the 213 hectares in 2001. Of the 897 hectares, 622 hectares were in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

The drug proceeds are usually diverted to tax havens and then re-routed to West Asian and south-east Asian countries in the guise of business payments.

Part of the drug money thereafter finds its way to India through official bank channels, as export proceeds for over-priced goods or even plain garbage. The ‘‘exporters’’ are usually fly-by-night operators, fronts for terrorist groups in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere.

There is a misconception that terrorism draws sustenance from Islamic fundamentalism or some sort of patriotism. In reality, it is a business like any other, at the root of which is narcotics.

That Kashmir has turned into a haven for laundering drug money is amply demonstrated in the valley. Over the past decade, real estate prices have shot up. From shopping complexes to restaurants, there are many signs of prosperity.

Yet the state economy has indicated no real growth. In 1988, the year before insurgency broke out, 722,035 tourists visited the Valley. In 2002, just 27,356 tourists did. The fiscal deficit in 2002 stood at Rs. 9.4 billion, as against a Rs 574 million a decade ago.

Amid this general downslide, the apparent prosperity of Srinagar stands out. The key to the paradox is drug money.

Terrorism has to be fought on the economic front as much as the physical one. The Customs department, particularly its intelligence wings — Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and Central Economic Intelligence Bureau — have to be put to use.

Diplomatically India has to help draw up alternative livelihood schemes for Afghan farmers, so that poppy is replaced by some other crop. A concerted drive against narcotics and money laundering will kill terrorism.