Hardly a week passes that the Guyana Police Force Narcotics Branch does not declare the success of another law enforcement exercise such as Operation Greenfield or Operation Consolidation. Raids have become routine because cultivation is widespread and farms cannot be concealed from aerial surveillance.
The Guyana Defence Force’s helicopter usually would pinpoint the target area to which soldiers and policemen would travel by boat and trek through the bush. There they would arrest two or three dusty peasants, cut down and burn a few hectares of plants, seize and weigh the compressed marijuana, inventorise the tools, utensils and equipment, take a few photographs and issue another press release.
Charged before the courts, many of those found guilty of trafficking could expect to spend three years in jail. The next week, however, the operation will be repeated in another area where a similar routine will be reenacted. The middlemen – who are the financiers and wholesalers behind the commerce – remain untouched.
New entrepreneurs have been able to transplant the transnational experience gained from this country’s highly-organised and hugely lucrative cocaine trade to transform ganja farming into a commercially efficient business. From police reports, cultivation of the crop has spread to new areas – Sand Hills and De Veldt on the Berbice River; Bara Cara on the Canje; Hauraruni and Coomaka on the Demerara and elsewhere, many sites located in Guyana’s near-hinterland over 100 km from the coast.
Ganja grows easily in those places. With its numerous rivers and creeks, loose soils and sunny weather, the thin plants quickly stretch to 5-6 metres in three to four months and yield three crops every year. Peasant farmers generate thousands of seedlings in their nurseries. They are supplied with chemical fertilizers, insecticide and motor blowers to eradicate pests. Middlemen with their SUVs or motorboats collect their produce and take it to the markets.
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Merai, who commands the Police Force’s ‘B’ Division, claimed that Berbice had become the country’s “largest drug-producing area.” After one raid, he said that the homes of suspects were found to be “well equipped.” Farmers possessed motor-blowers, measuring scales and boats as in other areas. Mr Merai confirmed that, in the case of Berbice, the speedboats with high-powered engines that were found were “faster than the police boats and can reach as far as Venezuela.” They could be used to transport the drugs through the rivers and creeks, especially during the nights.
This ceaseless cycle – raiding by the security forces, sentencing by the magistrates and replanting by the farmers – could continue for years. Although the police, courts and prisons are kept busy, however, the problem of ganja cultivation which has been going on for decades has not been significantly reduced, much less solved. At the present rate, despite the well-publicised efforts of the law enforcement agencies, the problem will worsen, not improve.
If the administration is serious about the eradication of ganja cultivation, it needs to rethink its current methods of operation. It must involve the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit more deeply in the suppression of the trade. It must provide the Police Force with the maritime resources it needs to patrol the rivers and creeks regularly. Most of all, the intelligence services must identify the middlemen who are the real profiteers. It is they who keep the business booming.
