The anti-drug operation has claimed the lives of scores of people and arrest of even a larger number of people, as Yaba trade continues in the country, according to a rights group.
At least 135 people were killed in the ongoing anti-drug operation in less than one month. According to RAB, 8,300 people have been arrested during the campaign launched at the beginning of May and 4,795 drug dealers and users have been handed fines or jail terms in trials by mobile courts.
On May 3, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had launched the anti-drug campaign that human rights activists have compared to the aggressive drug war launched by the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in that country.
Human rights activists in Bangladesh have called the anti-drug campaign illegal. Bangladeshi security forces, particularly the RAB, have been repeatedly accused by local and international human rights groups of carrying out extra-judicial killings in alleged encounters with criminals and terrorists.
According to the non-profit Odhikar, 3,060 people were killed by the security forces between 2001 and April 30, 2018, with 73 of the killings taking place in the first four months of this year.
Drug seizures in rural Islamic communities have increased by eighty thousand per cent over the past nine years. "In the past decade, meth pills flowing into Bangladesh went from a trickle to a tsunami," "Just nine years back, police were seizing only about 35,000 pills per year. You could comfortably fit all of that inside a backpack. Annual seizures have since swelled to 29 million pills, an increase of more than 80,000 per cent. That's enough meth to tweak out everyone in Texas - with plenty left over for Nebraska."
Bangladeshi police are seizing so many of these pills that they had to improvise a quick and easy way to dispose of them. They came up with the idea of dumping the pills in a hole in the ground, then melting them with confiscated whiskey.
Investigations attribute the problem to a combination of poorly-trained, poorly-compensated, easily-bribed police and a huge number of bored young customers living in the marshlands. The authorities are so indifferent to the drug trade that smugglers scarcely bother to conceal their contraband anymore. It is not just corruption and ineptitude paralyzing the police. They are not sure they would win a fight with heavily-armed drug traffickers if they intervened.
Many customers rely on the Yaba pills to enhance their performance at hard labour or ability to concentrate on academic tasks, rather than seeking a recreational high. Sources said one fisherman when asked said meth was a better way to stay warm and keep working hard on the cold seas than drinking booze.
Another key factor in the rising popularity of Yaba is that Muslim customers believe it to be less immoral than alcohol under Islamic law. Alcohol is illegal in Bangladesh and harder to smuggle than tiny Yaba pills.
It was rumoured that Bangladesh was responding to international pressure after a 600 per cent increase in pseudoephedrine imports over the past five years. A single US$67 keg of the medicine was said to provide enough material for 400,000 Yaba pills, with a street value of $626,000. Bangladeshi officials complained that dodgy chemical plants in India were pumping out a vast quantity of pseudoephedrine for smugglers to transport into Bangladesh.
