WHILE Islamabad Police chase low-level peddlers, the capital’s kingpins have quietly taken their operations online. According to officials, drug dealers have turned their illicit businesses digital in response to a wide-ranging crackdown, using modern technologies to connect to clients and enlisting beggars to work as couriers. In the first of this year, police say they nabbed 1,002 drug dealers and seized about 400 kg of synthetic and organic drugs, along with thousands of bottles of liquor. Alarmingly, of the total arrests, 102 were made near educational institutions. The largest seizures were of hashish, but significant quantities of heroin and methamphetamine were also recovered. Police say dealers were using encrypted messaging apps to offer direct ‘home delivery’ to university dorms, private parties, music concerts and upscale areas of the city. The criminals seem to have adapted faster than the police could keep up, and Islamabad is now witnessing the ‘Uberisation’ of the narcotics trade.

The strategy needs an overhaul. Traditional street-level policing is of limited value when transactions are initiated online, and deliveries outsourced through informal networks. It also appears that dealers are attempting to shift the physical risks of the drugs trade away from themselves and onto the poor. The city’s social protection and rehabilitation programmes must therefore be strengthened so that vulnerable individuals are not easily drawn into criminal supply chains. The capital’s policing strategy must recognise larger trends and ensure that law enforcers keep their focus on nabbing high-level operators. Lastly, it appears that the city’s educational institutions are failing to provide a safe space to students. They must invest more resources and efforts into understanding why students are turning to drugs, and provide adequate counselling where needed. Without a thoughtful reorientation, efforts to make the federal capital ‘drug-free’ are bound to fail, especially if the authorities continue employing 20th-century strategies to dismantle 21st-century trafficking networks.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2026