The nexus between drug trafficking and terror financing in the Bay of Bengal region demands a 'Whole of Region' approach. Examine.

At the first BIMSTEC Home Ministers' Meeting (New Delhi, October 2026), Amit Shah called drug trafficking "death trafficking". He said that "the security of one member state strengthens the security of the entire region" [1]. The crime chain crosses borders, so national action alone cannot break it.

Nature of the Nexus

• Source: in 2024 a record 236 tons of methamphetamine were seized in East and South-East Asia. Most of it was made in Myanmar's Shan State, part of the Golden Triangle [2].
• Conflict financing: Myanmar's civil war is raising armed groups' "need for proceeds from the drug trade" [2].
• Laundering channels: drug money funding terror, diversion of precursor chemicals and dark-web payments [1].
• Converging crimes: in March 2025, 283 Indians lured by fake jobs into cyber-scam compounds were rescued through India–Myanmar–Thailand coordination [3].

Why a 'Whole of Region' Approach

• Drugs may be made in one state, pass through a second and be consumed in a third. No single country controls the whole chain.
• Money trails cross jurisdictions. Breaking them needs intelligence sharing, financial investigation, mutual legal assistance (MLA) and extradition [1].
• BIMSTEC links South and South-East Asia, and India leads its Security pillar, which includes counter-terrorism and transnational crime [4].

Emerging Framework

• 2009 Convention on Terrorism, Organised Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking (in force 2021) [5]; 2022 MLA Convention [4].
• October 2026: a Plan of Action on Drug Control and an MoU on capacity building against money laundering and terror financing (AML/CFT) [1].

Limitations

• Slow ratification: the 2009 Convention took 12 years to come into force [5].
• Areas outside government control: armed groups hold much of Shan State, so plans agreed between governments cannot reach the labs there [2].
• Sovereignty limits: MLA and extradition operate "in accordance with national laws" [1].
• Trust deficit: smaller members may see the security agenda as India-driven while the trade agenda stalls.

The drug-terror chain is regional, so the response must be regional too. The way forward is to:

• set ratification deadlines, with the Dhaka Secretariat publicly tracking progress;
• adopt a standing BIMSTEC protocol for rescuing trafficking victims;
• target routes, precursor chemicals and money trails where state control is weak;
• move the stalled BIMSTEC FTA forward to build trust among members.

Done this way, "Whole of Region" would build a real Bay of Bengal security community and advance SDG 16.4 on curbing illicit financial and arms flows.