Richard Ra­moutar

Ac­cord­ing to the UNDP Re­port of 1995, the il­lic­it trade in nar­cot­ic drugs is con­sid­ered one of the most cor­ro­sive threats to hu­man so­ci­ety. Dur­ing the past two decades, the nar­cotics in­dus­try has ex­pand­ed from a mi­nus­cule en­ter­prise to a high­ly glob­al mul­ti-na­tion­al busi­ness which gen­er­ates bil­lions of dol­lars in prof­its. Af­ter the 9/11 ter­ror­ism in­ci­dents, the Caribbean Basin has been at the apex of the il­lic­it drugs trade whilst gen­er­at­ing ten­sion and un­easi­ness from lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lead­ers from the US, UK and Cana­da con­cern­ing the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem. As a mat­ter of fact, in a 2006 ad­dress at the Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos it was stat­ed in a Cari­com news re­lease that, "Nar­co-traf­fick­ing and its as­so­ci­at­ed evils of mon­ey laun­der­ing, gun smug­gling, cor­rup­tion of pub­lic of­fi­cials, crim­i­nal­i­ty, and drug abuse con­sti­tute the ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty threats to the Caribbean Basin to­day."

The Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODOC), in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty schol­ars, ex­perts and in­tel­li­gence an­a­lysts such as Ivelaw Grif­fith, Bar­ry Buzan, Ken Booth, as well as our own Prof Ramesh De­osaran, Com­modore An­tho­ny Franklin, An­cil An­toine, Ed­mund Dil­lon and James Philbert have re­peat­ed­ly out­lined the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of ge­og­ra­phy, geo-strate­gic lo­ca­tion rel­a­tive to the trans-ship­ment points. In ad­di­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, trav­el and move­ments across bor­ders, porous bor­ders, or­gan­ised crime and cor­rup­tion as fac­tors that ad­vance the il­lic­it drug and firearms trade. Ad­mit­ted­ly, we are cog­nisant of the fact that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not ex­empt­ed from the ser­pen­tine ten­ta­cles of the so­phis­ti­ca­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal savvy of the in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works. Ac­cord­ing to ex­perts and in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­volved in re­search­ing the field of or­gan­ised crime and drug traf­fick­ing, the na­tion is painful­ly aware of the al­leged ex­is­tence of a par­al­lel econ­o­my, move­ment and place­ment of bil­lions of dol­lars in­to a va­ri­ety of in­dus­tries, casi­nos, gam­ing in­dus­try, jew­el­ry chains, re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment, in­sur­ance in­dus­try and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. The judge­ment of con­vict­ed na­tion­al Zim­mern Be­har­ry in Mi­a­mi is a per­ti­nent ex­am­ple of how both il­le­gal drugs and monies are laun­dered across bor­ders.

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment con­vinced the pop­u­la­tion that they pos­sess both the po­lit­i­cal will and de­ter­mi­na­tion to hope­ful­ly put an end to this men­ace to so­ci­ety. This men­ace has been hav­ing ad­verse con­se­quences on the rule of law and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­er­nance. As such, the PP is placed in an un­en­vi­able po­si­tion as to whether any mean­ing­ful and ef­fec­tive plans have been im­ple­ment­ed with pro­gres­sive re­sults since May 24, 2010. Cov­er­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's ad­dress to the Unit­ed Na­tions on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2010, News­day re­porter Sean Dou­glas point­ed out that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for "tough ac­tion against the trade in il­lic­it drugs and firearms", that the UN's Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) be used to stop the trade in il­le­gal firearms, and that the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) be em­pow­ered to try drug traf­fick­ers. In a speech hail­ing glob­al co-op­er­a­tion, Per­sad -Bisses­sar stat­ed that, "rhetoric must be backed by ac­tion."

It would be in­ter­est­ing to note whether the PP Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion and re­lat­ed ac­tion on il­le­gal drugs, guns and mon­ey is su­pe­ri­or to and dif­fer­ent to any pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. This is nec­es­sary to com­pare the pre-elec­toral plat­form speech­es and to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween rhetoric and ac­tion. Se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts have de­cried the de­ci­sions made in the in­ter­ests of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as most trau­mat­ic and dis­ap­point­ing so far. The Na­tion­al -An­ti-Drug plan of Trinidad and To­ba­go 2008-2012, de­vel­oped by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, un­der­scored the sig­nif­i­cance of some of the agen­cies which ought to make a mean­ing­ful and ef­fec­tive im­pact on the il­le­gal drug and firearms trade. Such agen­cies in­clude the Or­gan­ised Crime, Firearms and Nar­cotics Bu­reau (OCFNB) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the Counter Drug Crime Task Force (CD­CTF), and the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA). Al­so, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) set up by Act 24 of 1995 as a qua­si-au­tonomous mul­ti-agency unit, un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and the ma­rine Ship Safe­ty, and Port fa­cil­i­ty Se­cu­ri­ty Unit with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard.

It would be pru­dent to re­view some of the func­tions of at least three of these agen­cies. The OC­NFB is the agency with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice that has a di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for drug con­trol ac­tiv­i­ties. The OCFNB was set up as a spe­cialised unit un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to fo­cus on crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions, drug traf­fick­ing, and the re­moval of il­le­gal firearms from cir­cu­la­tion. The OCFNB al­so un­der­takes de­mand re­duc­tion in the form of pub­lic in­for­ma­tion ac­tiv­i­ties at schools and com­mu­ni­ty events. The SIA op­er­ates with­in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and un­der­scores the im­por­tance of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion as crit­i­cal to the drug trade.

The role of this agency is there­fore im­por­tant to the drug is­sue. The quan­tum of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the SSA in­clude the fol­low­ing: (a) act as an of­fice to cen­tralise in­for­ma­tion that could fa­cil­i­tate the de­tec­tion and pre­ven­tion of il­lic­it traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics drugs, psy­chotrop­ic sub­stances and pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals. For co-or­di­nat­ing op­er­a­tions for the sup­pres­sion of il­lic­it drug traf­fick­ing and drug re­lat­ed mat­ters and for co-op­er­at­ing with the Ser­vices or the cor­re­spond­ing ser­vices of oth­er coun­tries, (b) Pre­pare, mon­i­tor, and im­ple­ment a Drug In­ter­dic­tion Strat­e­gy, (c) Serve as the recog­nised lo­cus for in­ter­fac­ing with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on all as­pects of drug in­ter­dic­tion ini­tia­tives, and (d) fa­cil­i­tate the ful­fil­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions un­der glob­al and re­gion­al in­stru­ments in re­la­tion to drugs and re­lat­ed se­ri­ous crime.

To be con­tin­ued next week....