The Guyana Defence Force high command last week suggested that there needed to be a “paradigm shift” in its approach to security and a “revolution” in its professional culture.
Acknowledging some of the Force’s most egregious failures this year, Colonel Bruce Lovell referred to the recent loss of another assault rifle from its main base, the fact that it had not recovered all of the rifles that were lost last year, and numerous other acts of indiscipline that landed several soldiers in the civil courts to answer charges for serious crimes including murder.
Colonel Lovell announced that “We have to radically redesign our processes to be true to our mandate and this therefore impels us to critically examine issues such as our roles, our doctrine and our force structure and organization.” He noted, moreover, that a fundamental aspect of the paradigmatic shift would be in the force’s approach to training. This is especially appropriate in light of the fact that the misbehaviour of young officers and junior soldiers is bound to reflect inadequacies and deficiencies on their respective initial cadet and recruit training courses.
The force at present trains cadets from Antigua, Barbados, Belize and elsewhere in the Caribbean and, as Colonel Lovell confessed, for the GDF to become truly professional, it has to re-examine its methods of training so that the appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes are inculcated.
In accordance with the roles prescribed under the Defence Act, the force is committed to territorial security which was severely tested by the recent Venezuelan aggression on the western frontier. It is also committed to preserving public order and internal security by supplementing and, in some cases it seems, supplanting, the police in the apparently interminable counter-crime campaign on the East Coast. The force must surely review the results of its performance there after a very long period of six years to determine how successful its efforts have been.
In order to deal with crime on the coastland, the Force must be prepared to control the country’s borders and hinterland much more effectively if it is to suppress narco-trafficking and gun-running. To do so, the force accepts that it will have to alter its deployment and improve its manner of movement by air, land and water. “There has to be a paradigmatic shift in our approach to security provision.” The question is, how will the shift be financed?
Recent events have shown also that the force has also been challenged to undertake extensive civil defence tasks, for example, during the catastrophic flood of 2005 and the devastating hurricane in Grenada. A few years ago, it was called upon to join an international peacekeeping mission in Haiti, a task which is not unlikely to recur either there or elsewhere in the Caribbean.
According to Lovell, a key factor in ensuring territorial integrity is the concept of having the “operational agility” to deploy troops rapidly. He cited, as an example, the response to the recent discovery of an illegal airstrip in the Corentyne. He missed the point though, that with efficient border surveillance, intelligence and diligence, and given the long time it must have taken for slow-moving equipment to arrive at the site and complete such extensive works that allowed a foreign aeroplane to land, a reactive operation should not have been necessary at all.
Happily, the force has already started the process of self-assessment. It is said to be currently conducting an organisational analysis which should lead to what he called a strategic defence review. The high command, however, should not underestimate the difficulty in improving the force’s performance in the middle and long terms.
Much of what it talks of doing will depend on the policy direction and the financial allocation of the Guyana Defence Board and the Office of the President which together performed the roles of directing and managing the same force for over 15 years. They have their own ideas on how the force should be employed and deployed and how much they are prepared to spend for national defence. They must know why the maritime, aviation, transport assets are as they are.
The force first needs to convince the Defence Board and the Office of the President that they also need a “paradigm shift” in their approach to national defence.
