How Guyana became a narco-state

 
Another year and the US Department of State issues another warning in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report that “Guyana is a trans-shipment point for South American cocaine on its way to North America and Europe.”
Another month and another report makes international headline news. Another batch of cocaine has been seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Canada Border Services Agency from a star-apple shipment at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport or another pink suitcase of cocaine sails through Guyana’s porous airport security and lands safely at the John F. Kennedy airport in the United States, for example!

Another week and more cocaine is found in drinking straws at the Timehri airport bond; or cocaine found in fish food; or cocaine found in soap powder; or cocaine-in-coconut milk; or cocaine found in fish, vegetables, fake walls of suitcases, false-soled shoes or in the wheel chair of a crippled pensioner who was about to board a flight to the USA.

Another day and another display of dumb denial by the Minister of Home Affairs who has responsibility for the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit and the Guyana Police Force’s Anti-Narcotics Section.

Guyana, under the People’s Progressive Party Civic administration has become a narco-state. It has become a national warehouse and an international emporium from which narco-traffickers export their merchandise to foreign markets. From the start of Bharrat Jagdeo’s tenure as President, the US Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report has been making increasingly critical reports of the administration’s failure to suppress the narcotics trade.
The INCSR has routinely criticised the Administration’s inability to control the country’s porous borders that allow traffickers to import and transport narcotics without resistance.

It is a well-known fact that cocaine continues to come into the country through the unpatrolled borders of the hinterland and the rivers of the coastland. Light aircraft land at any of the sixty isolated airstrips or make airdrops into rivers where the drug is retrieved by local retailers. The administration, however, has never seen it fit to give CANU and the Police the resources or personnel to reach those places.

The INCSR, for the first time in 2004, cited the administration’s “lack of political will” as a contributory factor to the continuing ineffectiveness of the national counter-narcotics programme. The INCSR, since then, has focused on the remarkable relationship between the inactivity of the administration’s counter-narcotics agencies on the one hand and the vitality of the narco-trafficking and money-laundering cartels, on the other.

The United States Embassy some time ago estimated that narco-traffickers’ annual earnings were equivalent to 20 per cent or more of Guyana’s reported GDP. This enormous wealth pays the wages of armed gangs, purchases political influence and bribes law-enforcement officials in order to protect narco-enterprises. Money-launderers associated with narco-traffickers distort the domestic economy by pricing their goods and services below market rates thereby undermining legitimate businesses and stultifying the local manufacturing sector which cannot compete with contraband goods.

Clement Rohee, on being appointed Minister of Home Affairs six years ago, swore to be “tough on drug lords.” Like his predecessors in that Ministry, talk was cheap. The first, Feroze Mohamed, inherited a plan called Guyana’s Strategy for Dealing with the Drug Problem but never implemented it;   Jairam Ronald Gajraj introduced a second plan called the National Drug Strategy Master Plan, 1997-2000 but never implemented it; and Gail Teixeira introduced the National Drug Strategy Master Plan, 2005-2009. Clement Rohee inherited the Teixeira NDSMP in 2006 but, again, never fully implemented it.

Rohee has not been able to dismantle the rich narco-trafficking cartels or to disentangle the narcotics trade from the political connections which have helped them to thrive. Rohee’s main contribution has been to establish an impotent Task Force on Narcotics and Illicit Weapons and to add to the pile of paper reports in the Ministry.

Narco-trafficking is not a victimless crime. It is the force fuelling this country’s high rates of armed robbery, murder, violence and gun-related crimes. There are now three armed robberies in Guyana every day. Narco-trafficking and gun-running are driving away the local educated élite, scaring foreign investors, undermining economic growth, impeding social development and threatening human safety.
A former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Georgetown once pointed out that “it is clear that the drug-trade is pumping huge amounts of money into Guyana’s economy…but it is also pumping huge amounts of violence and corruption into Guyana.” Former Head of the Police Criminal Investigation Department Assistant Commissioner Heeralall Makhanlall once warned that ‘execution-type killings’ are suspected to be related to the narcotics trade.

Guyana continues to pay a high price for having become a narco-state – a dubious distinction earned by dint of the determination of ministers who have not demonstrated that they had “the political will” to combat narcotics-trafficking.