Guyana, Venezuela, Suriname serve as cocaine air-bridge to Hispaniola -LA Times
Stabroek News
March 25, 2007
Guyana has been identified among those countries that serve as an "air bridge" to facilitate the direct flow of cocaine from Colombia to the Caribbean.
According to an article in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times, US action to combat the flow of drugs has denied Colombia's traffickers a once thriving route to Central America and Mexico, but a new air bridge linking airports and airstrips in Venezuela, Suriname and Guyana to Hispaniola - the Dominican Republic and Haiti - has been created. Twin-engine Beechcraft King Air business planes are used, since, with the passenger seats removed, they can ferry three-quarters of a ton of cocaine per flight.
The article points to corruption in Venezuela as well as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's decision to sever anti-drug ties with the US as being a new cause for concern about the US's ability to win its war on drugs in Colombia. It noted that at a Caribbean drug summit last Friday in the Dominican Republic, Vene-zuelan officials acknowledged the drug problem and said they would use Chinese satellite technology and newly purchased Russian aircraft to combat traffick-ers. Haitian and Dominican leaders have already issued pleas for help in recent months to stem the flow of drugs from Venezuela, but to little avail. The US has criticized the Guyana government for its failure to go after major drug traffickers, but President Bharrat Jagdeo has said that assistance from Washington has not been enough, and nowhere near the scale of assistance given to Colombia. "We need help," he told a military officer's conference recently, while giving the assurance that "even with our limited resources we have been fighting drug dealers."
In its International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the US State Department has noted that Guyana is a trans-shipment point for cocaine destined for North America, Europe, and the Caribbean. In fact, for 2006, domestic seizures of cocaine were found to be insignificant, owing, among other things, to the government's inability to control its borders, a lack of a law enforcement presence, and a lack of aircraft and patrol boats. As a consequence traffickers can move drug shipments via sea, river, and air with little resistance.
The report also noted that the Guyana government is yet to implement the substantive initiatives of its $600M National Drug Strategy Mas-ter Plan, which was launched almost two years ago.
The Los Angeles Times article cites US and Latin American investigators as alleging that Venezuela has become a sieve through which a soaring amount of Colombian cocaine moves annually by air and sea. "Venezuela's permissive and corrupt environment led to more trafficking, fewer seizures and an increase in suspected drug flights over the past 12 months," Anne Patterson, Assistant Secretary of State for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, was quoted as saying in the article. "There is systematic corruption. Maiquetia is wide open," a foreign counter-narcotics official added, referring to the airport. Close behind are smaller airports and airstrips in Vene-zuela's Apure, Portuguesa and Sucre states, and sea ports such as La Guaira and Puerto Cabello, where tons of cocaine leave in containers or amid bulk cargo.
The US Embassy in Caracas estimates that the amount of Colombian cocaine passing through Venezuela en route to the United States, Europe and elsewhere has quintupled to 250 tons a year since 2001. Depending on whose total cocaine production figures one accepts, a quarter to half of all Colombian drug exports use this country as a "trampoline."
Venezuela has always been a conduit for Colombian drugs because it shares a porous 1,300-mile border with the neighbour where most of the world's cocaine is manufactured. But a US-funded crackdown in Colombia has forced traffickers to seek new routes and international alliances.
US and Colombian officials also cite escalating corruption in the Venezuelan security forces and Washing-ton's deteriorating relations with Chavez, a vocal foe of the United States.
In August 2005, Chavez announced an end to a 17-year anti-drug agreement with the United States. He forbade Venezuelan officials from sharing any information or mounting joint operations with the US Drug Enforce-ment Administration, whose agents he describes as spies. In 2006, the amount of cocaine seized in Venezuela dropped by about 40% after having increased every year since 1999, according to the State Department.
Cocaine seizures by Venezuelan authorities in the last two months totalled 4.8 tons, a number that critics find suspiciously low, given the size of single shipments seized elsewhere.
"Twenty-two percent of announced cocaine seizures last year, which totalled 55 tons, came as a result of luck - drugs discovered at the border or checkpoints," said one former high-level Vene-zuelan counter-narcotics official who asked not to be named. "As much movement as there is, the percentage should be much smaller. It shows the lack of investigation."
The State Department worries its successes in Colombia are coming undone. Since 2000, the US, through Plan Colombia, has spent $4 billion fighting drug trafficking in Colombia. "We want to work with the Venezuelans," said Patterson, the Assistant Secretary of State. "But we haven't gotten very far in recent years, and their problem is increasing. That's the worrisome thing about this. Success in Colombia has basically led to a migration of some of this into Venezuela."