Drug Trafficking as a Non-Traditional Security Threat to Central Asian States

Abstract

The traditional concept of security is too narrow and includes military security alone, and the state was its only and ultimate reference point. Advocates of non-traditional security threats shifted the reference point of security to individual and the ultimate objective of both security and state is to provide human beings with an environment within which he can be at his best self. A host of issues related to an individual’s societal, economic, and political lives thus became part of the new security discourse threatening to dilute the concept of security in a traditional—military sense. Despite ideological differences, certain issues were regarded to have direct consequence for individuals sharing all political ideologies and all value systems. These issues are transnational in nature and entail a transnational approach to address the non-traditional security concerns. Drugs and trafficking in drugs are such issues that as a threat to human life transcend national boundaries. Trade in illicit drugs has the largest societal, political, and economic consequences and threatens the fabric of societies through addiction, crime, and disease. It exacerbates corruption in weak states and impairs their economic and political functioning. Central Asian states have been a victim of growing international drug trafficking, which pose serious threats to the larger region, including China, India, and Russia. In this backdrop, this article tried to focus how drug trafficking, as a non-traditional security threat, pose a serious threat to the national security of the Central Asian Republics in particular and the larger region in general. The article also attempted to explore how the narcotics trade has affected national and transnational security in the region to a large extent.