The Crux of Transnational Yaba- Trafficking Nexus in Bangladesh: Explaining the Reasons and Advocating Counter- Strategies

The paper examines regional patterns of synthetic drug Yaba trafficking as a major challenge in the governance system of Bangladesh. The heightened security threat has been recognized as one of the significant Transnational Organized Crimes (TOC) of Bangladesh since last few decades. Depending primarily on secondary literatures and expert interviews, this paper highlights such trafficking as an emerging source of regional instability and security threat. Bangladesh being both transit and destination country of South Asian and Southeast Asian Yaba trafficking network has been examined as a regional test case. A significant linkage of accessible Bangladesh- Myanmar Yaba trafficking routes with adjacent drug cartels of Golden Crescent, Golden Triangle and beyond has been traditionally highlighted as the prime reasons behind such instability. But the paper has argued about several alternative facilitators crucially indicating towards erroneous governance system revealing; capacity gap, networked syndicate, incompatible regional initiatives and involvement of authoritative officials to inflame the geo- strategic convenience. The paper further investigates overtime domestic as well as international law enforcement entities’ failure to combat the accelerating challenge. Thereby, in countering the regionally interlinked crisis, this paper prescribes for a plausible regional law enforcement regime along with regional co-operation and domestic efficiency to escape an ‘Yaba War’ and to provide imperatives for future research.