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Talking Defensive
For the BSF, smuggling of narcotics is a major irritant on western front
By Ajit K. Dubey
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The Border Security Force (BSF) is deployed on two of the most active borders that India shares with Pakistan and Bangladesh. The two countries are the biggest adversaries in the Indian security establishment. A sentiment that was reiterated in the National Security Advisor (NSA) M.K. Narayanan’s speech at the Air Chief Marshal P C Lal Memorial Lecture in New Delhi. The NSA said: “India cannot ignore that 'strong anti-India pockets' continue to flourish in Pakistan, especially among intelligence agencies like ISI, with Bangladesh also being used as a 'spring-board' for terrorist attacks to be launched against India.”
The BSF has been traditionally grappling with these problems on the borders ever since the two countries started their terror regime in India. The BSF hosted its counterparts, Pakistan Rangers, in a biannual meeting in Chandigarh where the two sides met to discuss the problems pertaining to the border. After the talks, the two sides decided to make relations more cordial and improve the level of understanding among the border population across the zero line to avoid inadvertent crossings. “Both countries have agreed to continue and strengthen the exercise of handing over inadvertent crossers to their respective countries after flag meetings of the Field Commanders, rather than pushing such ‘offenders’ into prisons,” BSF additional director general (West) G.S. Gill said after the meeting. “The company commanders will decide such cases after verification within 24 hours,” said Maj. Gen. Muhammad Haroon Aslam, Pakistan Rangers (Punjab).
Referring to the cumbersome exercise of repatriation, which keeps the accused in jail for months, Gill said the motive behind the exercise is to mitigate the sufferings of families living on either side of the border. During the meeting, CPWD and Survey of India took up the issue of boundary demarcation with reference to border pillars, which are damaged or missing since the last biannual meeting.
In the last six months, India has handed over 41 inadvertent border crossers to Pakistan, while the Rangers have apprehended 42 such crossers, but has yet to hand those over to the BSF as a majority of these are Bangladeshi or Myanmar nationals.
On the western front, there were more issues which were not discussed by the two sides. The BSF is also deployed on the Line of Control (LC) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) against the regular Pakistan Army posts in the sector. Along the LC, the BSF is expecting a rise in the infiltration level by Pakistani terrorists as summer approaches. “We have confirmed reports that more than 400 terrorist are waiting across the LC to crossover to the Indian side. The infiltration will start once the snow starts melting,” said a senior MHA official, stating that the infiltration figures of terrorists in 2008 would be more than they have been in the past few years. According to senior officials in the MHA, the militants have reactivated their terrorist launchpads to infiltrate terrorists into India. The MHA officials said that the terror outfits are against the continuation of peace talks by the new Pakistani establishment and have started carrying out their activities in the Kashmir valley after a brief lull, to sabotage the peace process. “The recent blast and attack on troops in Srinagar is a proof of the increased militant activity,” said the officials.
Smuggling of narcotics poses as a major irritant on the western front through the Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat borders. The quantum of narcotics smuggling is relatively low through the Rajasthan and Gujarat border, but it is a major cause of worry on the Punjab border. In 2007, the BSF seized 99 kg of heroin - valued at over Rs 990 million in the international market - from smugglers and their couriers in Punjab alone. The seizures from the smugglers is said to be a very small fraction of the quantity that gets into the Indian markets from this border.
BSF has already foiled a number of smuggling attempts in the past and determined to wipe out the scourge of smuggling from the area of responsibility of Punjab Frontier. To keep a check on the smugglers, the BSF has now changed its deployment pattern along the border and introduced an element of surprise to keep smugglers and their agents at bay. "The movement and timing of the personnel on duty has been staggered. We have put up concealed troops as a second line of defence to the patrolling parties. An element of surprise has helped us wrest the smugglers," asserted a BSF official. The smugglers employ various techniques like using long pipes to slip drug packets across the electrified barbed wire fence, packing the stocks in polythene bags and letting them float into India through the border rivers and streams on rubber tyres and jute mats, throwing consignments over the fence and communicating to the other side through mobile phones. They also bury drugs in open fields falling inside India but away from the fence. Agents from India later dig out the drugs. According to a BSF official, the smugglers sometimes keep the narcotics packets inside the cattle, which go to other side of the fence.
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