The US drug report and the crime crisis

Friday’s rebuke by the US of Guyana’s drug efforts will be hard for this government to lightly dismiss especially in the backdrop of the current UK-funded security sector reform programme which identifies the narcotics trade as a risk factor.

One would also expect that in the wake of the convening of the national stakeholders’ forum on the crime crisis and the renewed sense of urgency in governmental circles, the criticisms contained in the State Department report will be weighed objectively and threshed to glean important insight on what is going wrong.

What was also startlingly conveyed in the report is the extent of Washington’s concern about the way the fight against the drug trade is being handled here. What had been talked about in recent years is now stated in black and white in the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR): Washington is not planning to put money into Guyana’s efforts to combat the trade but will focus on the just as direly needed substance abuse programmes – quite shamelessly neglected by the government over the years.

The report acknowledges that neither the government of Guyana nor US law enforcement has invested sufficient resources to ascertain the quantity of illegal drugs flowing through Guyana and therefore all projections are speculative. It then draws the line in the padi. “In the absence of both sound data and more robust DEA/INL involvement, the US will not augment resources for investigation and interdiction in Guyana. Instead, it will continue to channel any future assistance to initiatives that demonstrates success in treating substance abusers”. While data is mentioned, the key part of the sentence refers to the lack of progress with the government on the establishment of a Drug Enforcement Administration office here. Washington clearly has concerns about the quality of the drug fight here and wants its own personnel in situ. Georgetown has baulked or found ways of not agreeing in keeping with its general reticence to involve foreign law enforcement operators here. So the DEA is left to reconnoitre from Trinidad and to plot the capture of drug criminals from there.

This is quite a pity considering the valuable time that has been lost in confronting the drug lords and the drug trade. And more so now that there is a general acceptance across civil society and political parties that Guyana needs expert law enforcement help from overseas to help crush the merchants of crime. Will the government accede to this? That will be the ultimate test of the national stakeholders’ forum. More than four weeks after Lusignan and two weeks post Bartica there can be hardly anyone who would disagree that the failure of the Joint Services to capture the main body of the attackers or engage them is shocking and exposes their incapability.

In a country where there is such disrespect for data that the Bureau of Statistics can get away with not issuing inflation bulletins for months, Guyanese on the streets and in office buildings don’t need figures to tell them about the drug trade and its impact. They know through their own experience or anecdotally the conspicuous spending, the dozens of addicts on the streets, the bloody violence of the cartels, the unexplained discoveries of airstrips and burnt craft, the proliferation of high-calibre weaponry and the `businesses’ that materialize from nowhere. They also know that a lot of the violence and crime in general is driven by narco dollars.

While there were some successes noted by the INCSR such as the increase in cocaine seizures – mainly through one major bust by the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit – and the apprehension of a man wanted by the US who had been lying low here for some time, not much else has happened. In particular, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions in these columns and elsewhere, the much chirped about National Drug Strategy Master Plan has not been effectively rolled out. As the report puts it “cooperation among law enforcement bodies is fragmented and minimally productive; weak border controls and limited resources for law enforcement allow drug traffickers to move shipments via river, air, and land without meaningful resistance.” Essentially, if your main plan isn’t up and running nothing will work and the drug lords will rule. The government keeps quibbling about the money that is needed for the execution of the plan. That money must come from the country’s own resources. The VAT windfall should have been designated for national priorities such as crime, literacy and poverty alleviation programmes etc. If we don’t show we have our priorities right – the world cup bill will always stand out – we can hardly expect donors to rescue us.

That the drug trade poses a grave threat to a successful crime fight should now be a major part of the deliberations of the national stakeholders. They should seek to address what needs to be fast-tracked to even the scales: anti-money laundering legislation, a well-resourced and functioning Financial Intelligence Unit, soaking up the illegal weapons and improving the performance and professionalism of the security forces so that they would be trusted with information by members of the public.

There should also be serious consideration at all levels of how Washington can be more meaningfully engaged in assisting Guyana to battle the drug trade.