“Around 50 yaba factories have been established in Myanmar along the border… the drugs are then transported by trawlers to Bangladesh and supplied to [places such as] Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong, and Chandip,” Mr. Islam said.

Increasingly, drug smugglers are using fishing trawlers to transport drugs because the coastguard pays less attention to them as compared with other vessels—an oversight that smugglers have been exploiting, according to Mr. Islam.

Chittagong’s Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Babul Akter and the Deputy Director of Chittagong’s Department of Narcotics Control, Mukul Jyoti Chakma, told reporters at a recent press conference that smugglers considered waterways “safer” for transporting yaba amid tighter security measures at over-land border crossings.

Babul said that smugglers transported yaba from Burma on fishing trawlers to their partners waiting on rivers or along coastal areas on the Bangladeshi side.

But the Bangladesh Coast Guard is fighting back, and just released a report saying that it seized 72,000 yaba tablets from fishing trawlers in January and 35,000 in February of this year.

In an operation carried out on June 20th, the Bangladesh police’s Detective Branch (DB) seized 30,000 yaba tablets at Chittagong Fishery Ghat (Gate) that were being transported from a fishing trawler to a water vessel repair shop. The operation was described in detail by DB Assistant Commissioner Anwar Hossain while speaking to reporters at his office.
 
In another case, the Bangladesh Coastguard arrested a drug smuggler and seized 150,000 yaba tablets along with a fishing trawler near a place called Chandip on June 30th, according to a coastguard official.
 
Since March 2014, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB); Repeat Action Battalion (RAB); and the Bangladeshi police and coastguard have conducted various joint operations and arrested many yaba smugglers from Teknaf, according to a civil society report which also noted that some yaba smugglers were killed during these operations.