Pakistan’s bigger plans of narco-terrorism

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Abstract

Narco-terrorism is one of today’s buzzwords in both foreign and domestic policy in South Asia, especially in the context of the contentious India-Pakistan relations. Pakistan’s involvement in state-terrorism (Wolf, 2017) and sponsorship of international Jihadism are well-known and documented. Moreover, there are increasingly numerous reports regarding Islamabad’s engagement in a phenomenon described as narco-terrorism. The notion of narco-terrorism originates from an understanding that the two occurrences of trafficking in narcotics and terrorism are interconnected. Narco-terrorism is here understood as an integral component of Pakistan’s state-sponsorship of cross-border terrorism (Wolf, 2017) used so as to fund and conduct asymmetric warfare against its neighbours -foremost India- and achieve certain foreign policy goals. The United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is paying increasingly attention to the fact that ‘terrorist organisations use narcotics trafficking for the purpose of gaining revenue’ and fund their activities. It is argued here that, although state-sponsorship of terrorism is already deeply entrenched within Islamabad’s policies towards New Delhi, the ‘Narco-type’ not only constitutes one of its most brutal forms (due to its far reaching and long-lasting consequences) but is also rapidly intensifying. Moreover, one can state that narco-terrorism in the Pakistani context blurs the line between narcotic traffickers, criminal networks (f. ex. D-Company), terrorists (f. ex. Lashkar-e-Taiba/LeT), and state agencies - foremost the country’s military and intelligence services (Inter-Service Intelligence/ISI). […]