KI­TO JOHN­SON

Part III: Deal­ing with the fall­out-where do we go from here?

As Amer­i­ca and its al­lies searched the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq for Osama and Sad­dam at the be­gin­ning of the mil­len­ni­um, an ax­is of evil every bit as po­tent as that de­scribed by George W Bush was able to wreak hav­oc across the Caribbean Basin re­gion with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences.

In 2001, there were a rel­a­tive­ly pal­try 151 mur­ders in Trinidad & To­ba­go, but just five years lat­er, an aca­d­e­m­ic study would con­clude that "guns and the il­le­gal trade in drugs have formed a sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship which has seen the emer­gence of in­creas­ing vi­o­lence through­out com­mu­ni­ties re­gion­al­ly."

Thus, by 2008, the na­tion would wit­ness a nigh 400 per cent in­crease as the mur­der toll soared to more than 550. Even though the lev­els of blood­let­ting have eased off slight­ly in re­cent years, thoughts of re­cap­tur­ing the rel­a­tive calm and sta­bil­i­ty en­joyed a decade or so ago, con­tin­ue to be noth­ing more than wish­ful think­ing.

The 9/11 hi­jack­ers were re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of just un­der 3,000 peo­ple in the at­tacks on the World Trade Cen­ter, the Pen­ta­gon, and the downed Unit­ed Air­lines Flight 93 in Penn­syl­va­nia. By con­trast, Mex­i­co's crim­i­nal in­sur­gency has claimed more than four times that num­ber in the last year alone. Whilst Mex­i­co and its rapid de­scent in­to chaos might be a tempt­ing place for com­par­isons to be­gin, the sit­u­a­tion that ex­ist­ed in Ja­maica cir­ca 2009 is in­deed much more per­ti­nent to us in this coun­try.

Diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween Un­cle Sam and Ja­maica reached a nadir fol­low­ing the lat­ter's re­peat­ed re­fusal to ex­tra­dite Christo­pher 'Dudus' Coke to face mul­ti­ple felony charges in the Unit­ed States. The Amer­i­cans strong­ly sus­pect­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing's re­luc­tance to ex­tra­dite 'Dudus' stemmed from the drug lord's re­put­ed links to mem­bers of the Ja­maica Labour Par­ty-in­clud­ing Gold­ing him­self.

In fact, Dudus's for­mer strong­hold of Tivoli Gar­dens was lo­cat­ed in the heart of Gold­ing's West Kingston con­stituen­cy. That same year, the US State De­part­ment's an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Strat­e­gy Con­trol Re­port de­liv­ered a damn­ing as­sess­ment of the Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties.

"Ja­maica's de­lay in pro­cess­ing the re­quest for a ma­jor sus­pect­ed drugs and firearms traf­fick­er high­lights the po­ten­tial depth of cor­rup­tion in the Gov­ern­ment....Per­va­sive pub­lic cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues to un­der­mine ef­forts against drug-re­lat­ed and oth­er crimes, and plays a ma­jor role in the safe pas­sage of drugs and drugs pro­ceeds through Ja­maica."

When rev­e­la­tions sur­faced that the Ja­maican ad­min­is­tra­tion had hired a Cal­i­forn­ian-based law firm to lob­by against Coke's ex­tra­di­tion, the Amer­i­cans were pre­sent­ed with the smok­ing gun that they had long been seek­ing. Fear­ing that the Yan­kee big stick was about to be wield­ed with im­puni­ty, Gold­ing de­cid­ed that he could stall no longer and signed off on the ex­tra­di­tion re­quest.

But, decades of turn­ing a blind eye to men like Coke and their ac­tiv­i­ties in the so-called gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties such as Tivoli Gar­dens, meant that the West Kingston en­clave had be­come a vir­tu­al state with­in a state.

Drugs, Pol­i­tics and Se­cu­ri­ty

There­fore, the stark re­al­i­ty was that the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment had to de­clare war against a seg­ment of its own pop­u­la­tion in or­der to get its man-with sol­diers and po­lice fight­ing dead­ly street bat­tles against crim­i­nal el­e­ments armed to the teeth with so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry. One month would pass and 74 peo­ple would lose their lives be­fore 'Dudus' fi­nal­ly sur­ren­dered; af­ter which the au­thor­i­ties quick­ly called in the US Mar­shals and hand­ed Coke a one-way tick­et to the States.

Com­ment­ing short­ly af­ter the out­break of vi­o­lence in Ja­maica, Dr Ivelaw Lloyd Grif­fith, Provost at York Col­lege, City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, and au­thor of sev­er­al books on Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty, ex­plained: "The sad dra­ma be­ing played out in Ja­maica is not just about Christo­pher Coke; it is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the nexus be­tween drugs and se­cu­ri­ty and how in­del­i­cate po­lit­i­cal deal­ings can have un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences.

"It is the clear­est ex­am­ple of how that nexus can re­sult in the sov­er­eign­ty of Caribbean na­tions com­ing un­der siege from with­in." It is this same nexus of drugs, pol­i­tics and se­cu­ri­ty that was un­earthed al­most three decades ago in T&T by the Scott Drug Re­port.

How­ev­er, de­spite T&T fea­tur­ing in year­ly glob­al as­sess­ments as be­ing a ma­jor trans­ship­ment point for drugs flow­ing north­wards, on­ly one se­ri­ous play­er, Zim­mern Be­har­ry, has ever been ex­tra­dit­ed to face charges aris­ing out of in­ter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing. None of the net­works iden­ti­fied by Garvin Scott in 1985 have ever been se­ri­ous­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed-let alone dis­man­tled-while politi­cians of all per­sua­sions con­tin­ue to bury their heads in the sand in the hope that the prob­lem sim­ply goes away. Con­sid­er­ing Scott's find­ings, it would be fool­hardy to as­sume that re­la­tion­ships like the one that ex­ist­ed in Ja­maica vis-a-vis Christo­pher 'Dudus' Coke and cer­tain high-rank­ing politi­cians, do not al­so ex­ist here in this coun­try.

Fol­low­ing the seizure of $22 mil­lion worth of co­caine at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Au­gust last year, and a spate of mur­ders that the au­thor­i­ties be­lieved were di­rect­ly linked to the find, the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion de­cid­ed on the dras­tic step of call­ing a State of Emer­gency to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. But, apart from the dip in the mur­der rate that a night­ly cur­few would have been ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate, the State of Emer­gency fell far short of ex­pec­ta­tions, as not one ma­jor drug deal­er or mon­ey laun­der­er was ap­pre­hend­ed, and no sig­nif­i­cant caches of weapons were ever re­cov­ered. Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly lament­ed the gov­ern­ment's fail­ure.

"Find­ing six guns and ar­rest­ing 30 per­sons some­where in East Port of Spain does not jus­ti­fy a state of emer­gency. By the time you de­cide to de­clare a state of emer­gency, you should have a good idea where the stash­es of guns are, and as soon as you de­clare it your teams move in and, in my vivid imag­i­na­tion, fill up big box­es with them and dump them in the Gulf of Paria.''

And so, as in­con­se­quen­tial young men were be­ing round­ed up all over Trinidad and tout­ed as gang king­pins-many of whom could bare­ly even af­ford a posey-a con­tain­er full of drugs was sit­ting on the docks at Point Lisas await­ing clear­ance, and a ship­ment of high-pow­ered au­to­mat­ic ri­fles was be­ing in­ter­cept­ed at TT Post.

Plot­ting a Course For­ward

De­spite what has been writ­ten to the con­trary, Trinidad & To­ba­go is no nar­co state-well, not yet in any case. No politi­cian, se­nior mem­ber of the ju­di­cia­ry, nor those in the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, has ever been tar­get­ed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments be­cause of spe­cif­ic po­si­tions or views that they might hold–– what­ev­er this cur­rent gov­ern­ment may try to have us be­lieve.

If any­thing, the State of Emer­gency showed that when the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices are in the mood to act in a con­cert­ed and de­ter­mined man­ner, they are able to ex­ert an over­whelm­ing de­gree of con­trol over all of Trinidad & To­ba­go. The ques­tion then must sure­ly be what ex­act­ly pre­vents this from be­ing the sta­tus quo in the medi­um to long term.

The count­less de­bates that re­volve around re­in­stat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, im­ple­ment­ing fur­ther leg­is­la­tion, re­form­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and so on, are well-in­ten­tioned and do in­deed take us fur­ther for­ward. Nev­er­the­less, all these ar­gu­ments con­tin­u­al­ly fail to ac­knowl­edge the gi­ant twin ele­phants that have been stand­ing in the room for the past thir­ty years-drugs and cor­rup­tion.

Like us, the Ja­maicans had al­so tend­ed to dither where these two in­ter­re­lat­ed is­sues were con­cerned, un­til the Amer­i­cans forced them-al­beit kick­ing and scream­ing-to con­front the beasts head on. The re­sults were al­most in­stan­ta­neous. In the six months fol­low­ing the state's in­cur­sion in­to Tivoli Gar­dens, and the sub­se­quent ap­pre­hen­sion of 'Dudus' Coke, the mur­der rate in cen­tral and west­ern parts of the cap­i­tal, Kingston, dropped by 60 per cent.

In Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Colom­bia pro­vides con­crete ev­i­dence of how firm lead­er­ship and res­olute po­lit­i­cal will can lead to light at the end of the dark­est tun­nel. Rid­dled with vi­o­lence and ram­pant cor­rup­tion a mere twen­ty years ago, Colom­bia was la­belled as one of the world's pre­mier nar­co-states as both the Medellin and Cali car­tels ri­valled the gov­ern­ment in terms of mon­ey, pow­er and in­flu­ence.

How­ev­er, jour­nal­ist William Rem­pel ex­plains that in re­cent times, "new crime or­gan­i­sa­tions are be­ing picked apart with silent ef­fi­cien­cy-aid­ed by Bo­go­ta's en­thu­si­as­tic em­brace of ex­tra­di­tion, with more than 1,300 of Colom­bia's top crime boss­es and their most dan­ger­ous en­forcers sent north to face traf­fick­ing charges in the Unit­ed States."

Rem­pel ar­gues that while there is scant ev­i­dence that ex­tra­di­tion stops drug traf­fick­ing per se, it se­vere­ly dents the op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ties of or­gan­ised crime groups to pose any se­ri­ous threat. Colom­bia's trans­for­ma­tion from pari­ah to re­gion­al en­vy isn't sim­ply down to ship­ping off its crim­i­nals to the Unit­ed States and hop­ing for the best.

It has un­der­gone a root and branch ex­am­i­na­tion of its en­tire se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus to ef­fec­tive­ly co­or­di­nate how the dif­fer­ent agen­cies in­ter­act with each oth­er. Law en­force­ment per­son­nel now en­joy first class pay, train­ing and lead­er­ship, as well as a pletho­ra of en­ti­tle­ments and ben­e­fits that en­sures the pro­fes­sion at­tracts the best pos­si­ble can­di­dates, that their morale re­mains high, and that they are able to large­ly re­buff cor­rupt­ing in­flu­ences. In this re­gard, Colom­bia's ac­tions should be seen as a ''les­son for Mex­i­co and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion threat­ened by drugs.''

No crime-fight­ing method is fool­proof, how­ev­er, and as long as there con­tin­ues to be huge de­mand for nar­cotics in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, pro­hi­bi­tion will en­sure that crim­i­nals en­gaged in what is now a multi­bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try, find ways to beat the sys­tem. Af­ter a year of progress, Ja­maica again finds it­self on the back foot as oth­er lo­cal crime groups pick up the slack left by 'Dudus' and the Show­er Posse. Nev­er­the­less, sim­ply stand­ing by and do­ing noth­ing in the face of such an ex­is­ten­tial threat to our sov­er­eign­ty, is no longer a cred­i­ble op­tion for re­gion­al gov­ern­ments-ours in­clud­ed.

kit­o­mar­cjohn­son@gmail.com