A major problem, major source
Editorial Viewpoint by Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
March 4, 2007
NARCO-TRAFFICKING remains a most challenging problem for the Caribbean and Latin America region, including Guyana.
As the problem persists, at varying levels across borders, it has also become the norm for the United States authorities to regurgitate in annual reports, real and perceived problems for more effective responses by governments. Without, of course, sharing any blame.
It is not that governments, and those of our Caribbean Community in particular, are either unaware of or uncommitted to dealing with this horrible crime that, like an infectious disease, is affecting so many aspects of our social and economic life.
Rather, it is the little credit, if any at all, often sandwiched between layers of criticisms that fill the annual "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report" which comes from the leading nation in this western hemisphere that remains the single biggest consumer of illegal drugs --the United States of America. The latest such report, released last month by the U.S. State Department, is no exception to the norm.
No attempt should be made to minimise the social, economic as well as political problems resulting from drug trafficking and related crimes of money laundering and gun-running.
Their harmful effects with corrupt practices by law enforcement agencies; the crowded prisons, violence and demeaning behaviour of our young people, including primary and secondary school students, hit us with depressing regularity.
What is of equal concern is that too often the U.S. State Department's annual report gratuitously indulge in language of expediency -- in the absence of EVIDENCE -- to delink governments, and more specifically top officials and lawmakers, from facilitating either production, processing, shipment or distribution of illegal drugs.
The report would then move with full speed, consistent with a standard format, to virtually pour scorn on what such governments are failing and more than imply complicity with alleged corrupt cops, immigration and customs officials and even whack away at "weak" judicial systems.
Not just Guyana, but other CARICOM governments have had cause to complain against failure and/or refusal by U.S. authorities to share vital intelligence information they claim to have and which could be quite helpful, once verified, for effective and appropriate actions to significantly curb the flow of illegal drugs like cocaine and marijuana to the U.S. and Europe via Caribbean air and sea routes.
This, by no means, should justify the Guyana Government, or any of its CARICOM partners, from failing to actively and systematically pursue policies and programmes that could significantly curb the illicit drug trade.
For example, the foot-dragging by the government in relation to any visible effective implementation of the 2005 "National Drug Strategy Master Plan", to which the U.S. State Department report has also made reference in chronicling the deficits against the Jagdeo administration's responses to the narco-trafficking.
Countries like Guyana do not, of course, have the resources to circulate anti-narcotics reports that could also expose the extent of illegal consumption of drugs in the U.S.; the level of related corruption and abuses that this horrendous crime has on its law enforcement and judicial arms; or how its private sector moguls are also linked to the drug cartels and barons who exploit Caribbean jurisdictions in accumulating wealth with their evil trade.
This is a factor that even sections of the Caribbean media often fail to focus on. More attention should be paid to the realities of life in the major centres of importation and consumption of illegal drugs, namely the U.S. and Europe with the former in the lead.
Without divulging sensitive intelligence information/strategies, there needs to be more transparency in bilateral and multilateral cooperation arrangements between CARICOM and the U.S.
It could help to disabuse feelings abroad in our region that the cooperation and assistance flowing from Washington administrations are more geared to satisfy America's needs than responding to specific social and economic initiatives to enable significant reduction, if not throttling, of narco-trafficking criminal networks.