BIMSTEC’s Security Challenge: The Threats That Move Across Borders

The New Delhi meeting reviewed the work of five specialised sub-groups dealing with human trafficking, narcotic drugs and precursor chemicals, anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, legal and law-enforcement issues, and cooperation against radicalisation and terrorism.

The 11th BIMSTEC security meeting was not really about borders. It was about everything that moves through them. A criminal network can exploit five jurisdictions before five bureaucracies finish deciding who should call whom. This reality framed the discussions in New Delhi on September 28–29, when diplomats gathered for the 11th meeting of the BIMSTEC Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime.

Delegations from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand met under the chairmanship of Dr Suhel Ajaz Khan, Additional Secretary for Counter Terrorism in India’s Ministry of External Affairs. The discussions covered traditional threats alongside newer forms of transnational crime, with recommendations aimed at strengthening regional cooperation.

The significance of the meeting extends far beyond what is printed on its agenda, because the more consequential question is whether BIMSTEC can turn geographical proximity into security cooperation that moves faster than the networks it seeks to disrupt.

The Bay of Bengal Has Become a Highway for More Than Trade

From ancient maritime trade to modern digital commerce, the region has always lived by movement. Today, it is struggling to secure that movement without strangling it.

The seven BIMSTEC countries account for about 1.8 billion people, roughly 22% of the world's population, while their combined GDP reached an estimated USD 4.9 trillion in 2023, equivalent to 4.67% of global GDP. That scale gives the organisation a security footprint far larger than its seven-member structure might suggest.

The Bay of Bengal connects ports, markets, roads, financial systems and digital networks. The same connectivity that allows goods and capital to move efficiently can also be exploited by traffickers, narcotics syndicates, cybercriminals and terrorist organisations.

BIMSTEC recognised this problem early. Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime became a priority sector in 2005, while the Joint Working Group was created to advance cooperation at both policy and operational levels. Its six specialised sub-groups now cover intelligence sharing, legal and law-enforcement cooperation, narcotics, terrorist financing, radicalisation and terrorism, and human trafficking. The institutional idea is therefore nothing new. What has changed is the speed and sophistication of the threat.

The Criminal Network Has Become a Security Ecosystem

The New Delhi meeting reviewed the work of five specialised sub-groups dealing with human trafficking, narcotic drugs and precursor chemicals, anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, legal and law-enforcement issues, and cooperation against radicalisation and terrorism.

Such an intricate architecture reflects a basic reality. Terrorism rarely exists in isolation from the systems that finance, recruit, transport or conceal it. Organised crime can intersect with trafficking, narcotics, cyber fraud and illicit finance, creating networks in which the same infrastructure serves several criminal purposes.

The human cost can be rather concrete. A 2023 UN human rights assessment cited credible estimates of around 100,000 people in Cambodia and at least 120,000 in Myanmar being held in situations where they were forced to carry out online scams. Victims were reportedly subjected to forced labour, arbitrary detention and serious physical abuse.

The distinction between conventional security and transnational crime no longer exists. A person recruited through a fake job advertisement, transported across a border and forced into cyber fraud is simultaneously part of a trafficking story, a criminal-financing story and a digital-security story. The threat does not fit neatly into one ministry. The response cannot either.

The Money Trail Matters as Much as the Physical Trail

If criminal networks have become more fluid, their finances have become more difficult to follow. The 14th BIMSTEC Sub-Group on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism met in Shillong in July 2026 with delegations from all seven member states. It finalised a paper on illicit flows of funds, an action plan to prevent illicit financial flows, and an MoU on capacity building. Member states also agreed to develop a 2026–28 AML/CFT work plan and stressed the need to operationalise a regional contact-point network among Financial Intelligence Units.

The discussions went well beyond conventional banking. Officials examined risks linked to virtual assets, fintech platforms, artificial intelligence, trade-based money laundering, online fraud and other cyber-enabled financial crimes.

This is the 21st-century version of the security question. It is no longer enough to ask where an attacker crossed a border. Authorities need to know where the money originated, which digital platform carried it, which intermediary moved it and which jurisdiction can legally access the evidence.

INTERPOL's recent assessments show why this matters. By March 2025, victims from 66 countries had been trafficked into online scam centres, while the organisation warned that criminal groups were expanding into new regions and exploiting artificial intelligence.

Borders Can Protect People Only When Institutions Can Cross Them

Human trafficking adds another uncomfortable dimension to the BIMSTEC security conversation. The organisation established its Human Trafficking sub-group in 2015, with its first meeting held in Dhaka in 2023. Its work reflects an effort to create regional mechanisms for preventing trafficking and improving cooperation concerning victims.

The challenge is that victims and criminals often move through the same regional corridors. A border that enables legitimate migration and commerce can also become a passage for exploitation. In this precarious situation, legal cooperation matters as much as physical enforcement.

The BIMSTEC Convention on Cooperation in Combating International Terrorism, Transnational Organised Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking was signed in 2009 and entered into force in March 2021 after ratification by all member states. The BIMSTEC Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters followed in 2022.

Seventeen years from the signing of the first convention to the 2026 security meeting is a reminder that regional security architecture is built through long institutional timelines. But criminal networks do not necessarily respect those timelines.

A suspect does not become less dangerous because evidence is sitting across a frontier, or a financial trail does not become irrelevant because the transaction crossed a jurisdiction. The practical test has always been fairly simple: can information, evidence and intelligence move as efficiently as the threat?

New Delhi Is Building a Larger Security Architecture

The 11th JWG-CTTC meeting also sits inside a wider expansion of BIMSTEC's security agenda. In July, New Delhi hosted the fifth meeting of BIMSTEC National Security Chiefs, where members discussed terrorism and organised crime alongside cyber, maritime and energy security, connectivity, disaster management and emerging threats.

It is widely accepted that the Bay of Bengal can no longer be divided neatly into separate compartments. A cyberattack can disrupt critical infrastructure, and a crisis of any sort can create opportunities for trafficking. India's position within this structure is also distinctive. It is the lead country for BIMSTEC's Security sector, which includes Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime, Disaster Management and Energy.

The 11th JWG-CTTC gathering came more than three years after the 10th meeting, which was held in New Delhi on January 12–13, 2023. The gap does not by itself prove institutional failure, particularly because several specialised mechanisms continued meeting during the intervening period. It does, however, underline why continuity matters.

After all, a contact point created on paper has little value if officials cannot reach one another during a crisis.

What Follows the Meeting

BIMSTEC now has much of the vocabulary required for regional security cooperation. It has conventions, working groups, specialised sub-groups, financial-intelligence mechanisms and meetings of national security chiefs.

The harder task is converting that architecture into operational muscle, which will ensure faster information exchange when a threat emerges, stronger financial-intelligence cooperation when money crosses borders, smoother legal assistance when evidence is held elsewhere, and sustained coordination when trafficking or narcotics networks exploit regional corridors.

It also means accepting that emerging security threats will not wait for institutional categories to catch up with them. Artificial intelligence and cyber-enabled fraud are already altering the way criminal networks recruit victims, move money and conceal operations. INTERPOL's regional assessment released in June 2026 found that cybercrime accounted for more than 30% of recorded crime in more than half of the surveyed countries across Asia and the South Pacific.

The 11th JWG-CTTC meeting sits at a point where BIMSTEC's geography and its institutional ambitions are finally confronting the same problem. The region is becoming more connected every day. Criminal networks already understand what that means.

The real measure of BIMSTEC's security architecture will be whether governments can learn to connect just as quickly, so that the borders criminals exploit become the bridges through which investigators, intelligence and justice can move.