Moreh is also one of the main centres in the notorious drug trail of South-East Asia and the North-East and a major drug transit point in India. Depending upon whom we ask, the size of the drug economy in Manipur can be a few thousand crores, a few thousand lakhs or maybe even bigger than Google or Apple’s market cap! Insurgency in a region like the North-East requires huge amounts of money to operate. Drugs are, therefore, the most lucrative commodity that generates easy money without accountability. Since the transactions are always done through raw cash, no documentary evidence is left for initiating legal action against the criminals involved.

Narco-terrorism is the intersection of the illegal drug trade and terrorism, where drug trafficking organisations are engaged in terrorist activities to further their illegal activities and also intimidate Governments and common civilians. With regard to Manipur, not only is the drug economy one of the strongest here among all the North-Eastern states, but it has also played a big role in the ongoing turmoil in the state. The reality is there for all of us to see. Drugs are killing the state and its people every day, in more ways than one. Manipur is gripped in the vicious cycle of alcohol, drugs and narcotics. But it would be wrong to think that every Kuki farmer is involved in the drug business or only in poppy cultivation.

Objectively speaking, in the context of strife-torn Manipur, Kukis alone are not responsible for this multi-billion dollar business. Moreover, if poppy cultivation takes place in the hills of Manipur, do the drugs not pass through the Valley? The drug lords of all communities are extremely strong and powerful people with solid financial backing. In fact, not just Moreh or Manipur, but from the valleys of Assam to the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh, and from the enthralling rivers of Meghalaya to the lakes of Tripura, it would not be an exaggeration to say that drugs are perhaps next to FMCG products when it comes to their availability in North-East India.

In today’s date, no state in the Northeast is immune to the misery of the drug economy, and this business, quite obviously, has found its way to the top, which is hardly surprising. The money is huge and it knows no caste, no creed and no religion. In Meghalaya, the drug problem became apparent in the beginning of 2023, when Chief Minister Conrad Sangma approved and notified the draft policy formulated last year under the Drug Reduction and Elimination Action Mission (DREAM) Project for ensuring a drugs-free Meghalaya. In August 2023, the State Government of Meghalaya identified 7 districts as drug hotspots – East & West Khasi Hills, East & West Jaintia Hills, Ri-Bhoi, South & West Garo Hills.

Nagaland and Mizoram too, are not far behind. The frequency at which drug mafias are caught by the police and the security forces in these states is enough to give us a shiver. The same story is applicable to Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim as well. Although the drug issue is a nationwide problem, in the Northeast, it is a strategic and diplomatic nightmare too, for here the drug economy recognizes no state or international boundaries. The neighbouring country of Myanmar has been undergoing a never-ending, ruthless conflict for years now, but even more, since the February 2021 military coup in that country. This has provided a new lease of life to the drug economy.

It was towards the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s that nearly all North-Eastern insurgent groups had come to depend in some measure or the other on the drug trade to finance their armies. The location of the North-East on the Western corner of Myanmar and the infamous ‘Golden Triangle’, one of the two largest opium-producing regions in the world, naturally brought the militants closer to the drug trade, with the region soon becoming a hostage to drugs which acted as a form of lubricant in sustaining its economy over time. As per an estimate by the International Narcotics Control Bureau (INCB), countries around the Golden Triangle, particularly Myanmar, produce more than 70% of the drugs available globally.

This, in part, explains the routing of the channels of the drug trade from the Golden Triangle to the North-East. The various militant organisations of Myanmar, in particular, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Burmese Communist Party (BCP), and the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) began developing linkages with various insurgent outfits of the North-East such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). Drugs are brought up to the border town of Tamu along the India-Myanmar international border in Manipur and as well as the Bangladesh-Myanmar border along the Naf river, under the protection of Myanmar’s rebel groups.

It is from here that the North-Eastern insurgent groups and Bangladeshi syndicates take over and push the drugs further inland. The porous India-Myanmar border is extremely suitable for the free movement of insurgents as well as contraband. The free passage between the border towns of Moreh in Manipur and Tamu in Myanmar facilitates this process further. Insurgents on both sides of the border control the illicit trade and trafficking of drugs and narcotics on the Ledo Road, between Assam and China’s Yunnan province. Shared ethnicity and common economic interests have sustained this mutually beneficial illegal enterprise for a long time now.

Collusion, complicity, and inefficiency of security personnel on both sides of the border, are some of the other factors that have made North-East India a major route in the network of drug trafficking. However, the drug problem in the Northeast has been made extremely complex by the long international borders shared by the states of this region with several nations and traversing difficult, porous terrain. Also, the success of the drug syndicates in effectively roping within its fold people from diverse and wider sections of society, from politicians, businessmen, and insurgents to common civilians and professional criminals, proves beyond doubt the deep-rooted nature of this problem.

These people act as the nodal points in the vast commercial enterprise of drug trafficking. Several unfenced portions of India’s international border with Myanmar stretching through deep and dense forests are difficult to patrol. The NH-2 through Imphal and Dimapur at the intersection of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos, is precariously close to the notorious ‘Golden Triangle’. It is from here that heroin, popularly known by its street name of No. 4, is trafficked through Tamu and Moreh into Manipur and then to other parts of India and abroad. Drug smugglers also have the option of shipping unprocessed opium to laboratories near the India-Myanmar border in Manipur, where it is easily processed at a very cheap rate.

The INCB had identified the hill states of Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland as extremely sensitive zones in the route of drug trafficking. Amid the Naga-Kuki conflicts of the 1990s rose to power a Kuki politician of Myanmarese origin Lukhosei Zhou, began taking an active interest in the politics of Moreh in the late 1990s. In 2001, he became the Chairman of the autonomous council of Moreh, which gradually helped him to consolidate his hold over the border town. From then on till now, Zhou, with serious charges of drug trafficking against him, has been close to the power corridors in almost every political dispensation.

In June 2018, a team led by Thounaojam Brinda, an Additional Superintendent in the Narcotics and Border Affairs Department of the Manipur State Police had arrested Zhou from his house. Heroin powder and amphetamine tablets along with almost Rs. 60 lakh in cash were seized from him. Under Zhou’s leadership, Moreh soon emerged as the drug haven of Manipur. Despite the Central Government’s resolve to establish a drug-free North-East, the illicit trade has grown massively in recent times. In one of the largest drug hauls in the North-East, the Assam Rifles and the Manipur Police had seized a consignment of Rs. 500 crores worth of heroin and methamphetamine from a warehouse in Moreh in December 2021.

It was later found that the consignment’s owner was a woman from Moreh, married to a Myanmar-based Chinese national. Exactly a year earlier, i.e. in December 2020 the Manipur Police had seized drugs worth over Rs. 165 crores in Moreh and arrested four Indians and two Myanmarese nationals. Although the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021 disrupted the supply of drugs, they were up again within just a two-month time. Pro-China militant groups in Myanmar such as the Wa State Army largely control the drug trade along the China-Myanmar border. With the Taliban refusing to back the Afghan drug syndicates, the East Asian drug networks are monopolising a larger part of the Asian trade.

Manipur, particularly Moreh, is a nodal point in South Assia. These drug networks are largely manned by the Kuki-Chins of Myanmar and the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh. The drugs of consumption have changed in the Northeast over the past several years. Painkiller Spasmoproxyvon and sleeping tablet Nitrosun have been replaced by heroin and amphetamine, popularly known as the World is Yours. After the rise to power of Assam Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma, a massive manhunt was launched against the drug networks spread across Assam and the North-East. This has led to frequent crackdowns along the Moreh-Guwahati route over the past 2-3 years.

Traffickers are thus increasingly exploring sea and river routes from Myanmar to Kolkata. The illicit drug trade in the North-East is a highly sophisticated operation with clearly defined interests, strategies and aims with a unified power structure that exercises complete control over the entire process including a complex chain of small businesses. The activities involved in the trafficking of drugs and narcotics are carried out by many individuals, independent and intermediate traders who are known to often indulge in violent conflicts to protect their drug empires. The drug trade consists of different stages involving many invisible people from different walks of life.

The stage of primary production involving poor peasants and farmers is followed by secondary production that includes those intermediary people with the know-how required to convert the base into fine, processed drugs. The final stage is that of transport, distribution, and consumption where the billion-dollar drug cartels have in place the appropriate infrastructure to facilitate the transportation and distribution of the drugs. This infrastructure comprises a well-manned network consisting of several transit areas. The major outflows of drugs in North-Western Myanmar into India are from Sagaing via Tamu to Moreh in Manipur, and the towns of Kalay and Tiddim in Myanmar to Mizoram.

As per the terms of an Agreement signed between the Governments of India and Myanmar on April 12, 1995 trade is permitted through Moreh in Manipur and Tamu in Myanmar via the towns of Champhai in Mizoram and Hri in Myanmar. Although this cross-border trade was supposed to include only locally-manufactured commodities and other produce of the respective countries, the composition of the items of trade has undergone a drastic change over the years, with more trading being confined to non-traditional high-value items including computer hardware, electronics and drugs, most importantly.  

Since a huge portion of Manipur’s border with Myanmar is still unguarded, drugs and narcotic substances, particularly high-quality heroin, are smuggled into Manipur through Myanmar from the infamous ‘Golden Triangle’. Drug trafficking from Myanmar, extortion, and other organized crime are the major sources of funding for most of the insurgent outfits of the North-East. Their leaders are known to encourage farmers in the border districts of Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh, to cultivate poppy. In the absence of other gainful agricultural initiatives and employment avenues, the region has become the victim of poppy cultivation on a massive scale, especially the state of Manipur.

But, nowhere has the cultivation of poppy assumed such an organised form as in Manipur, which is also one of the major reasons behind the current unrest. The fact that a section of the farmers in Manipur has been prompted to cultivate poppy for greater profits has already been underscored earlier in several reports and research papers. Although poppy farming is prohibited in Manipur under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1985, the findings of several research studies and data on poppy cultivation released by the Government of Manipur from time to time show that the phenomenon has spread across the hills of the state and some zones in the Imphal Valley as well.

The overall quality of the soil and climatic conditions of Manipur are extremely suitable for the cultivation of several high-yielding varieties of poppy. A few months back, an Inspector General of Police in Manipur had claimed that the shift from agro- and horti-related activities to poppy cultivation has been a consequence of the relatively smaller size of the opium product and lesser price fluctuations, even though the cost of cultivation of poppy is higher. Despite price fluctuations, poppy cultivators generally do not suffer any major loss and no other crop can bestow the farmers a profit of such a huge magnitude as poppy does.

Moreover, given the near-complete absence of law and order in the hill districts of Manipur, especially the border districts, and no penalties as yet being imposed upon poppy cultivation, the fast multiplication of poppy plantations in these hill districts is quite well-understood. Also, drug cartels in the neighbouring countries of China, Bangladesh, and Nepal have been known to induce the poverty-stricken farmers of Manipur to undertake poppy cultivation, including the production of heroin and brown sugar. This had become apparent when just a few months before the beginning of the conflict in May 2023, two persons were arrested in New Delhi with 50kg of opium.

It later came to light that the supplier, who was from Manipur, had been in the business for the past 5 years. This incident came on the heels of a similar episode last year when 25 kg of heroin was seized in the National Capital from two drug traffickers who hailed from Manipur. The frequent seizures of huge shipments of heroin and brown sugar by authorities in Guwahati and other places like Delhi and Kolkata point to a rising trend in the trafficking of heroin from Myanmar through Manipur via Mizoram. Moreh being a volatile border town and trapped in the oppressive grip of Kuki militants on the one hand and drugs on the other, requires heightened vigilance and security measures on the part of the Government.

References

1. Facts About the Naga-Kuki Conflict. Prepared by the Manipur Naga Baptist Church Leaders’ Fellowship (MNBCLF).
2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-indias-gateway-to-east-asia-is-emerging-as-a-drugs-haven/articleshow/90705491.cms
3. https://thenortheastaffairs.com/manipur-violence-the-untold-story-of-moreh/

Acknowledgement: A sincere note of thanks to all those who have helped me in my ground studies, especially Vladimir, for helping me gather the details of the conflict every day.