Guyana participated in anti-drug raids on Brazil airstrips
By Kim Lucas
Stabroek News
December 17, 2002
Local law enforcement officials last month participated in an operation which saw the destruction of several airstrips in Brazil thought to be used for drug trafficking.
The airstrips were close to the border with Guyana and the operation also included Brazilian and Surinamese law enforcement officials.
Confirmation is meanwhile being awaited on the status of a suspect airstrip in Guyana's New River Triangle.
Stabroek News understands that the clandestine operation took place about six weeks ago, after Brazilian Federal Police took satellite pictures of the borders of the three countries and "suggested" that there were a number of illegal airstrips being used by drug traffickers.
Foreign Affairs Minister Rudy Insanally yesterday confirmed that Brazilian authorities had destroyed a number of illegal airstrips, but he said he was awaiting a formal report from the Brazilian authorities about the exercise.
Stabroek News understands that no airstrip was destroyed in Guyana or Suriname during the operation, although law enforcement officials identified one field in the New River area. That airstrip, sources said, "can be destroyed in a future operation based on confirmation that it is illegal."
Information reaching Stabroek News states that the Brazilian Federal Police had known of at least three illegal strips in that country for about two years and at that time, suspected that there might be more in neighbouring Suriname and Guyana that were being used by narco-traffickers to transport illicit narcotics.
Recent reports say that a Brazilian drug lord, now in the custody of the Brazilian police, used the airstrips located in the New River area near the borders between Guyana and Suriname and, Guyana and Brazil, to smuggle arms to Colombia and drugs to the United States and Europe.
Local sources confirmed, also, that there were suspicions of an illegal airstrip about one kilometre on the Guyana side from the Brazilian border and a few in the New River area. It was following this that the governments of Guyana and Suriname were contacted by the Brazilian authorities and operation GUISU (Operation Guyana/Suriname) was planned.
The aim was to conduct surveillance on the areas and destroy the illegal airstrips identified by the satellite photos.
At the end of October, law enforcement officials from both Suriname and Guyana joined a team of Brazilian Federal Police and during the operation, the Brazilian Air force bombed one airstrip on the Brazilian side, while two others were destroyed by explosives through a combined effort of the three countries, sources said.
Stabroek News understands that the airstrip, identified on the Guyanese side of the border was found to be taken over by trees and this suggested that it had not been used recently. Officials said that the evidence of gold mining operations in the vicinity of some of the airstrips suggest that the fields might have been built by miners who subsequently vacated the area.
