National Security Strategy
Guest editorial
The first duty of the State is to protect its people, territory and institutions from any danger - internal or external. It is for that reason that, a week before Guyana became independent, the Defence Ordinance (later the Defence Act) was passed into law on 19 May 1966, bringing the Guyana Defence Force into existence. That was the easy part and it would take a long time for a national security strategy to emerge. There was also an external danger arising mainly out of the Venezuelan claim to the Essequibo. In May 1966, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham ingenuously told the House of Assembly that "...the Venezuelan question is settled for all practical purposes". But, by September, the British Middlesex Regiment departed and the Venezuelan armed forces pounced on the Guyana side of Ankoko Island in the Cuyuni, remaining in possession up to the present day. Guyana's security strategy and the GDF's role were premised on the twin tasks of internal security and territorial defence. In 1969, the GDF had to go into action to quell the Venezuelan-inspired secessionist revolt in the Rupununi - a district the size of Scotland - and to expel Surinamese armed forces from the New River - an area the size of Jamaica. With land frontiers and a sea coast of over 25,000 km, and a vast sea space, there would be a high cost. Troops had to be recruited, trained and deployed; aircraft, boats, vehicles and weapons had to be acquired. The expected eruption of worldwide peace at the end of the Cold War did not have a marked effect on Guyana's security situation. The border conflicts have not disappeared and, indeed, fissiparous internal tendencies have been aggravated since 1997. Brazilian garimpeiros still settle in the hinterland at will; narco-trafficking by air, land and sea has apparently become more frequent; the plunder of the country's fisheries proceeds undisturbed, undeterred and undetected. Much of this lawlessness has been made possible by the drastic reduction in Guyana's defence capability. Manpower is at the level it was in 1973 (about 2,300 troops); troop carrying vehicles and aircraft are routinely rented from commercial operators and boats needed to conduct patrols in our coastal waters must be borrowed from fishing companies. Although much has been made of the high-profile military cooperation with the American, British and French armies and participation with Caribbean defence forces in 'Tradewinds' exercises, there has been no improvement in the GDF's material resources or change in the 'core' defence problems facing Guyana. The danger of not having a clearly defined national security strategy became evident when the PPP entered office in October 1992. In his first policy pronouncement in January 1993, President Cheddi Jagan called on the GDF to "embark on 'revenue-earning enterprises' such as training civilians in craft and industrial skills, promoting clubs and scouting activities; organizing national events and disaster preparedness, bidding for contracts involving construction and engineering in infrastructural works; undertaking projects linked to housing, food production and gold-mining." This thinking will not solve Guyana's national security problems but this has been the policy which has silently guided the decisions over the past seven years and is slowly suffocating the GDF by depriving it of capital funding for essential material. Of the $2.0B the GDF will receive this year, only $117M will go to infrastructural work such as buildings and roadways and nothing to defence equipment. Fear of street protests and violent crime has fuelled talk of retraining the Defence Force to support the Police Force and perform more law enforcement duties. This seems like an attractive short-term tactic but, in the long-term, it is likely to do more harm than good. A national security strategy must address the real issues of Guyana's land, air and maritime problems. To do this, the country needs a Defence Force, performing its specialised role, not an expensive, poorly-equipped organization which is incapable of protecting the State and its territory.
|