Narcotics trafficking impact on human security in South and Central Asia

Abstract

Narcotics trafficking is a major threat to human security in South and Central Asian Countries. It is very interesting issue as a Non-Traditional security challenge of the region. This article explores impact of Narcotics trade and organized crime on state functioning and threat to human security. South and Central Asia has emerged as a crucial arena of international security, with an enhanced strategic importance that has replaced the region’s geographic isolation and geopolitical marginalization. Narcotic threats to South & Central Asia have changed in form and structure and most visibly geographically, from being primarily a problem from Golden Crescent, with imports from Afghanistan & Pakistan to a more multifaceted threat. The origin of the world’s largest exporter of heroin is today Eurasia, more specifically, Afghanistan, while other products are domestic in origin. This article traces the change in the threat posed by narcotics production and trafficking in South & Central Asia, over time and across the major parts of these regions. The research argues that the crime-terror nexus and diseases posed the greatest threat to human security in after independent to 2011; but that since then, the challenge has grown more complex and that different parts of these regions have developed in different directions: in Afghanistan and South & Central Asia, the crime-terror nexus has been eclipsed by the rapidly growing infiltration of state institutions by organized crime.