Of illegal airstrips and drug trafficking
My column – by Adam Harris
Kaieteur News
May 13, 2007
Poor countries are always called on to do things far beyond their capability and the funny thing is that these countries do not recognize that they are incapable of doing the things that they are asked to do.
Throughout this past week, the discovery and destruction of the airstrip near Orealla played on my mind. I sat and wondered at the ability of some people to first of all identify a strip of land that is long and flat enough to construct an airstrip, set about building that airstrip and then make it operational without the local authorities not even knowing.
And the airstrip at Orealla was not the first but it was one of the most significant. Orealla is close to the civilization so the people had to be aware that a strip there was operational. It is not likely that they were aware that the government or some private person had constructed the strip with the permission of the authorities.
Quite often we see things happening and unless we ask we are not told about these developments because our authorities often take us for granted and simply go about doing things without notifying us.
I knew that there was scarcely a month going by without some government team visiting the community to take some form of relief to the people there. This was not really public knowledge because many of the people whose responsibility is to inform people simply did not accompany the teams nor did they even know about these visits.
From time to time the newspaper with which I work would enjoy these reports from a reporter who lives in the easternmost county of the country. There were decisions to make a tractor available to the community, the construction of health facilities and the donation of farming implements.
But at no time did the reporter report hearing the passage of an aircraft in Orealla. The nearest official airstrip is located at Skeldon. It was constructed by the sugar people and recent queries from people in the community failed to reveal when this airstrip was constructed.
It is just that people tend to take certain developments for granted. The other thing is that Guyana does not have enough small aircraft to land on that airstrip so the passage of aircraft in that part of the world is a rare event, so rare that people would merely glance skyward and go about their business.
And so it was that whoever constructed the strip near Orealla must have been able to operate with near impunity. Neither Guyana nor Suriname has the capability to protect their airspace. They both lack radar and the necessary interceptor aircraft to investigate any suspicious aircraft that may enter their territory.
They also do not have the military force to effectively patrol certain parts of their territory and the days of the forest ranger who walked the length and breadth of forest concessions are all but over.
But there is one interesting fact that everyone tends to overlook. To construct an airstrip requires labour and machinery. The labour force, more often than not, is recruited from the community near which the airstrip is constructed, so I am willing to bet that the people from Orealla and the nearby communities were involved in constructing that airstrip.
I still recall the time when someone with lots of money actually succeeded in hiring equipment from the bauxite company in Linden and went about constructing an airstrip. It was some time before this came to light.
The authorities mounted an investigation and to this day I doubt that there was a satisfactory answer. I remember the people who operated the heavy duty equipment saying that they got instructions from their supervisor. I don't recall the excuse provided by the supervisor but I vaguely recall him saying that he got his instructions from somebody in the office.
And that is another thing. We rarely communicate with our juniors by way of memoranda, simply called memos. That means that there is no paper trail with the requisite signatures. This was the case in Linden and to this day, many years after that incident I doubt that there was a satisfactory explanation for what happened.
Suffice it to say that the project was halted and the airstrip never got off the ground. At Orealla, the situation was markedly different. The heaviest piece of equipment must have been a tractor and I am willing to bet that the tractor came from Orealla. I am also willing to bet that the labour came from that very community.
I cannot say that the reason offered for the airstrip construction would have raised any suspicion, but what boggles the mind is that the people of that community never mouthed a word to the authorities who visited them.
The other day when an aircraft crashed in the Kopinang Mountains , the plight of the poor country came to light. We recognized that there was no search and rescue capability.
But back to the airstrip. The aircraft would have come in, but there was no way the authorities could have known because they lacked the capability to detect them.
The Americans have been pressuring Guyana to combat the drug trade. They have long recognized that Guyana is a transshipment point for drugs from South America . They caused expensive sophisticated surveillance to be set up at the airport but as we all know, the drugs that pass through the airport are but a drop in the ocean. Most would come in and leave by air at locations that we now know nothing about.
We are now left to wonder what it was that kept coming in at that airstrip that the army destroyed the other day. Did criminals from foreign lands land there and enter this country illegally and still live here? Did executioners from foreign lands land there, do what they came to do and leave undetected?
At this time there is a murder, a high profile murder for which one person has been charged. There is some speculation that the killer may be someone from outside Guyana . If that is the case then there is a lot left to be said.
Human trafficking is big business. Have people smuggled others out from this airstrip? Then Guyanese would seek to leave this country at any cost. Was this airstrip used to get them out?
I know that it is impossible for the military to fly in search of illegal airstrips. I also know that the private aircraft that fly across this country do not spend too much time looking for illegal airstrips.
The question is, therefore, will we be able to monitor many of them?
Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said, Thursday, that the authorities are aware of many of these airstrips and are monitoring them. I doubt it, because at no time has there been a report of any illegal activity coming from these monitored strips.
The aircraft that was found at Kwapau in the Mazaruni was spotted by accident. A police patrol heading into the interior happened upon the aircraft and the vehicle. The burnt aircraft found some time at the disused Bartica airstrip had been there for some time before someone found it.
And they will continue to elude detection because the people who construct them have studied our authorities and know that they are building away from prying eyes.