OPINION | The Compliance Curtain: How Pakistan Performs DRUG BUSTS to Evade FATF Sanctions

By Commodore Ranjit Rai (Retd)

In the weeks before every Financial Action Task Force review, Pakistan’s coast seems to come alive. The Pakistan Navy conducts a drug bust in the Arabian Sea, the Anti-Narcotics Force announces arrests inland, and Islamabad’s ministries circulate identical press notes: proof, once again, that compliance is underway. When the FATF plenary closes and the IMF releases its next tranche, the headlines fade, the arrests dissolve into bureaucracy, and the pattern resets for the next cycle.

This choreography has endured for nearly a decade. Between 2018 and 2022, the years Pakistan spent on the FATF grey list, the government produced an extraordinary rhythm of law-enforcement activity. According to FATF’s public follow-up reports, dozens of ‘demonstrative’ operations were cited as evidence of progress. What those reports also record, however, is that conviction data remained thin and the number of effective prosecutions was ‘not commensurate with risk.’ The spectacle substituted for substance, and the system learned that optics work.

Money was the metronome. IMF staff reviews show that each FATF assessment period coincided with critical bailout negotiations. A clean bill from Paris smoothed disbursements; a poor grade complicated them. Between 2019 and 2023, Islamabad received three major IMF packages worth a combined $10 billion, and every tranche was accompanied by highly publicized counter-terror financing and narcotics campaigns. The sequencing was rarely accidental. As one senior South Asian diplomat told Reuters in 2022, “Every time the FATF meets, Pakistan finds drugs on a boat.” The maritime element provided both theatre and legitimacy. Joint communiqués from the US-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) describe a series of multilateral boardings in which Pakistani personnel participated. The CMF releases mention partner cooperation; Pakistan’s press bulletins elevate those patrols into sovereign victories. By the time the images reach domestic television, coalition operations have become national triumphs. It is diplomacy through choreography, a compliance curtain designed to impress creditors as much as citizens.

The curtain thins under scrutiny. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2024 South Asia Maritime Trafficking Update notes that seizures attributed to Pakistan frequently lack follow-up prosecutions in the public record. When charges are filed, defendants vanish into administrative limbo or plea-bargain for fines that barely dent the trade. The drugs reappear elsewhere; the reports do not. Islamabad meets the metrics of action taken, but not the substance of deterrence. International partners are not innocent bystanders. The FATF’s own summaries acknowledge “persistent reliance on externally supported operations.” The CMF and CENTCOM continue to publish joint imagery that Pakistan repackages for domestic credibility. It serves both sides: the coalition demonstrates reach, Pakistan demonstrates compliance, and the traffickers adapt.

This is not corruption in its crudest form; it is bureaucracy turned performative. The FATF grey-list years taught Pakistani institutions that visible motion can replace measurable reform. A photograph beside burlap sacks of narcotics can buy a few more months of forbearance from lenders and allies. The tactic mirrors what political scientists call compliance theatre, a ritual of obedience that sustains the very oversight it pretends to escape. The question now facing donors and watchdogs is whether they will continue rewarding performance. Enforcement without adjudication, seizure without sentence, and surveillance without transparency merely perpetuate dependence. FATF evaluators have begun to insert qualitative benchmarks on prosecution outcomes; the IMF has hinted that governance conditionalities will tighten. Whether those reforms hold depends on whether the next assessment cycle accepts another burst of camera flashes as proof of progress.

For the moment, the compliance curtain remains intact. It sways with every review mission and hardens again once the inspectors leave. Beneath it, the same routes, the same dhows, the same money trails persist, visible only when a photograph is required. Pakistan has learned how to stage contrition on command, and the world, needing the illusion of order, has learned how to applaud.

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About Author

Commodore Ranjit B Rai (Retd) is the author of the book 'The Indian Navy @75: Reminiscing the Voyage. He is an RNSC-qualified officer who served as Director Naval Intelligence and Director Naval Operations and writes on maritime matters. He also served as India Representative of Waterman Steam Ships USA and curated a New Delhi Maritime Museum.