‘Idukki’ is the name of a district in Kerala state. The acronym ‘IDUKKI’ refers to the cities Islamabad-Dubai-Kabul-Kandahar-Istanbul, which are hotspots linked to terrorist movements, narcotics trafficking, and terror financing. Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, is the latest addition to this diabolical circuit.
In June 2023, after a meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev issued a press statement that “Azerbaijan always supports and will continue to support Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir.” While Pakistan and Turkey are dominated by Sunni caste Muslims, Azerbaijan is populated with Shia caste Muslims. Though Azerbaijan does not have any major terrorist problem, yet, the government has designated 52 organisations as terrorist and banned them. International organisations banned as terrorist include Al Qaeda, Al-Nusra Front, Azerbaijani Jamaat, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Islamic International Brigade, ISIS, Jeyshullah and PKK. Yet, over the last few years, Islamic ideology has become visibly pronounced in Azerbaijan. Also, relations between Azerbaijan and neighbours Georgia and Armenia are not harmonious. Further, Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia are claiming independence. Azerbaijan’s drug problem is heroin from Afghanistan and Iran. One of the smuggling routes to Russia and other European states passes through Azerbaijan. Illegal drugs like methamphetamine, heroin processed from Afghan opium, and other drugs cross Iran’s 765-kilometre border with Azerbaijan. Astara district, hemmed in by mountains to the West and the Caspian Sea to the East, is a major entry point on the road to Europe.
India has rapidly emerged as one of the top 10 source markets for Azerbaijan tourism. More than 60,000 tourists from India visited Azerbaijan in 2022 and Keralites constitute a big segment. In return, India hardly gets any tourists from Azerbaijan.
In February 2023, when a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey, India was the first to help by launching ‘Operation Dost’ for providing humanitarian assistance. But in return, an ungrateful Turkey reportedly supplied cutting-edge Bayraktar Akinci drones to Pakistan. Bayraktar CEO Haluk Bayraktar categorically stated that there was no question of selling their drones to India, and that their priority was to sell it to ‘brotherly’ countries like Pakistan. Azerbaijan used these deadly drones against Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. In addition, Turkey is selling to Pakistan 30 T129 ATAK attack helicopters in a deal that has been billed as Turkey’s largest single defence industry export.
Turkey, along with Saudi Arabia and China, refused to attend the Kashmir G20 meet, held in May 2023 at Srinagar. Turkey has been reaching out to Indian Muslims as well. The Erdogan regime has invited several Indian Islamist leaders, including Zakir Naik, and film star Amir Khan to spread Erdogan’s influence across India. Turkish cleric Serdar Demirel visited Kolkata in 2016 to participate in a protest march organised by Muslims opposed to the Indian government’s bid to apply a Uniform Civil Code throughout the country.
Turkey has also funded many Indian Muslim NGOs in order to reach out to Muslim students and influence local madrassas and mosques. Muslims in India who see Erdogan as a leader of the Muslim world, celebrated his victory in the just concluded presidential elections. Turkey has always supported Pakistan at the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) on the Kashmir issue and has been a key instigator of resolutions against India.
Turkey’s Pakistan-oriented interest in Kashmir seems to be directed towards realising a larger geostrategic Islamist objective in South Asia. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was instrumental in converting the Hagia Sophia Church into the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and the attached Madrassa attracts lots of Muslim students from India also.
Ironically, Turkey, which has displayed an overtly hostile attitude towards India always, received 2.3 lakh tourists from India in 2022. Turkish Airlines operates to 11 different destinations in India. Though India received 6.19 million foreign tourists in 2022, hardly any Turks visited the country. Istanbul airport’s duty-free shop is the most frequented by Indian tourists. Many duty-free shops, in airports, across the world survive on the heavy shopping done by Indian tourists. Countries which are unabashedly anti-Indian like Turkey, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, and many more, are profiteering enormously from the shopping addicted Indian tourists. By simply tweaking the customs baggage rules, India can arm-twist those who are hostile towards it in the name of religion, stonewalling narcotics investigations, and Kashmir to revise their policies. The customs duty-free baggage allowance for Indian tourists is a handsome Rs 50,000 per person, but for those visiting Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar, being neighbouring countries, the duty-free allowance is restricted to Rs 15,000 only. By merely extending the list of neighbouring countries to include Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia, the entire tourism dynamics can be altered as also the sales figures of their duty-free shops at airports. Government needs to harness and weaponise the shopping power of Indian tourists to compel revision of anti-India attitudes of many countries.
As countries comprising the ‘IDUKKI’ belt continue to maintain an anti-India attitude, much cooperation cannot be expected in narcotics post-seizure investigations, which are highly complex as they are routed through different geographical jurisdictions. Countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Azerbaijan will simply ignore India’s requests for information, arrest of culprits, and extraditions. Dubai is a global financial hub, for all kinds of transactions, including Hawala and money-laundering. The nation’s financial prosperity is due to strict secrecy laws and non-interference in private transactions of citizens. Hence, even financial investigations of any kind are ruled out. This is the reason why the mega-seizures of narcotic drugs at Mundra port, Pipavav, Nhava Sheva, Lakshadweep and Kochi are not able to make much investigatory headway. Fishermen, illiterate carriers of foreign origin, clearing agents, name and addresses of name-lenders in import documents, cannot be storehouses of information, and valuable leads. Real masterminds are safely ensconced inside the ‘IDUKKI’ belt countries, and hence unknowable and inaccessible. All post-seizure, mega-narcotics investigations, end up facing a blank wall.
The author is IRS (Rtd), Ph.D. (Narcotics), Former Director General, National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics (NACIN). Views expressed are personal.
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