While the governments of India and Burma have taken steps against the growing incidence of drug trafficking along the international border, the traffickers have started to adopt novel strategies to convey their consignments to different destinations. Animals and even fish find a role in this business, leaving Indian and Burmese authorities at a loss regarding counter-trafficking strategies.

“Animals, particularly buffalos, are now commonly used by the traffickers“, says Wangshing (name changed). The 22-year old Manipuri youth was arrested a few months back in Moreh near the Indo-Burma border with a consignment of ephedrine tablets. Wangshing, now arrested under the Narcotics Prevention Act, says buffalos are fed plastic bags containing heroin and amphetamine tablets with the help of hollow bamboo sticks. The traffickers later collect the bags from the buffalo dung.

Dwelling on two years of experience in drug trafficking, Wangshing states that heroin is mainly brought from the Thai-Burma border and then sent to the region through Moreh and Champhai (Mizoram), meeting popular demand. “During my time we used to send drugs through Moreh which was less risky than other routes due to the large-scale movement of people along the border”, he adds. Some traders with dual citizenship certificates, both Indian and Burmese, are able to exit India when the situation is tense and flee to Burma and vice versa.

Wangshing’s gang of three has been decimated by shooting encounters with the security forces during a shot-out on the way of trafficking a consignment of aphedrine tablets. Wangshing tells of his history of drug abuser turned drug trafficker. Drug trafficking, he says,
”is one-way traffic. I knew only a few Burmese and I did not know their names”. He professed no knowledge of the involvement of underground groups and Burmese military personnel in trafficking; any such involvement, he says, is kept secret.

Wangshing narrates how traffickers use local youths in the border areas who have full information of the movement of security forces. ”Nobody wants to get involved in the drug field but the prevailing situation compels people to get involved anyway. The people in the border areas are very poor so they have become a soft target of the drug traffickers”, he adds.

Wangshing is not alone: there are hundreds of youths in Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland in the north east of India who have become victims of drugs. The situation is aggravated by the passivity of the Burmese and the Indian government. Governmental employment schemes for youths in the border areas are the urgent need of the hour if the generation of the future is to be saved from deadly drug abuse.