Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Mem­bers of the De­fence Force were con­fined to camp yes­ter­day, as a state of height­ened aware­ness re­mained in ef­fect un­til fur­ther no­tice.

Sources con­firmed that the “alert state” was is­sued for mem­bers of the Reg­i­ment, the Coast Guard and the Air Guard to re­port to du­ty yes­ter­day, amidst re­ports from in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia out­lets that a US strike on Venezuela was “im­mi­nent.”

Mil­i­tary sources said the alert state, de­scribed in in­ter­nal mes­sages as a “State One Pos­ture,” is a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure in­tro­duced to en­sure all el­e­ments of the De­fence Force are pre­pared to re­spond swift­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly to any na­tion­al or re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat.

These re­ports of an im­mi­nent strike have since been dis­missed by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and sev­er­al White House of­fi­cials.

How­ev­er, De­fence Force sources con­firmed that while there was no di­rect, im­mi­nent threat to T&T, the height­ened alert state was de­clared as a pre­cau­tion in case of any changes in the “re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty land­scape.”

One source con­firmed that an hour-long joint brief­ing at­tend­ed by sev­er­al high-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cials at the De­fence Force Head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day af­ter­noon re­vealed that the call-out was sim­ply to en­sure “all hands were on deck.”

“They are mak­ing sure there are prop­er kit checks, arms and am­mu­ni­tion in­spec­tions and oth­er pro­ce­dures. It’s to en­sure our sta­tions are manned and al­so for bor­der se­cu­ri­ty to re­spond to any­thing. It’s just re­al­ly for us to adopt a pos­ture of readi­ness and I see the po­lice are do­ing the same right now.”

He stressed that such pro­ce­dures were not an in­di­ca­tor of any loom­ing threat and urged the pub­lic not to pan­ic.

De­spite this, sev­er­al schools closed ear­ly out of cau­tion, while gro­ceries na­tion­wide re­port­ed larg­er than usu­al crowds, with some per­sons buy­ing sup­plies out of fear of any ur­gent de­vel­op­ment.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the se­cu­ri­ty check­point on the out­skirts of the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day, sev­er­al civil­ian ve­hi­cles were seen dri­ving on­to the com­pound.

At least two sol­diers were al­so seen walk­ing on­to the com­pound af­ter briefly speak­ing with sen­tries on du­ty at the guard booth.

One De­fence Force source said as troops con­tin­ue to re­port at mil­i­tary bases across the coun­try, pro­ce­dures known as ac­count­abil­i­ty musters would be done on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to en­sure all mem­bers of par­tic­u­lar bat­tal­ions or de­tach­ments were at the fa­cil­i­ty.

A sec­ond brief­ing on the height­ened alert pos­ture was ex­pect­ed to be held lat­er yes­ter­day.

A low­er-rank­ing De­fence Force of­fi­cial said he was aware of col­leagues who were await­ing a flight from To­ba­go be­fore they could re­port to their des­ig­nat­ed mil­i­tary bases, not­ing that oth­ers had al­ready been in­struct­ed to be­gin bor­der pro­tec­tion op­er­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to a De­fence Force spokesper­son and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge for con­fir­ma­tion on the alert state, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day, re­tired Col Lyle Alexan­der said he was con­cerned that there was no for­mal con­fir­ma­tion from state en­ti­ties on the mat­ter.

“Sit­u­a­tions like this can cause the pub­lic to pan­ic and draw their own per­cep­tions of what they be­lieve is hap­pen­ing, which can cause some un­ease in the en­vi­ron­ment,” Alexan­der said.

“It’s sur­pris­ing that there’s no com­ment from the min­istry, so we just have to wait to see. There are some who may treat these things in a par­tic­u­lar way but there are oth­ers who will cer­tain­ly get ex­cit­ed and be con­cerned and that is cer­tain­ly what needs to be ad­dressed.”

Alexan­der, who served in the reg­i­ment for 34 years, al­so not­ed that while it was not un­usu­al for in­di­vid­ual sol­diers to be called out to re­port for du­ty, call­ing out such a size­able por­tion of sol­diers, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en on­go­ing mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions near­by, would raise ques­tions and con­cerns.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said there was an ur­gent need for the Gov­ern­ment to is­sue di­rect, clear mes­sag­ing in a bid to re­duce un­ease and pan­ic among the pub­lic.

He stressed that the im­por­tance of the au­thor­i­ties is­su­ing in­for­ma­tion was al­ready es­tab­lished. Point­ing to a sit­u­a­tion with ru­mours that emerged short­ly af­ter the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, he said the Gov­ern­ment had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ac­cu­rate­ly in­form the pub­lic.

“Whether this camp con­fine­ment is true or not, the fact is that it has cir­cu­lat­ed around the coun­try,” Grif­fith said.

“The Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre should be aware of this and hence be able to con­firm which of the fol­low­ing is tak­ing place; A) Con­firm that this is un­true and no camp con­fine­ment has tak­en place B) That on­ly spe­cif­ic mil­i­tary per­son­nel have been called to camp or C) That all mil­i­tary per­son­nel have been di­rect­ed to camp.

“Whichev­er one it may be, this in­for­ma­tion should have been im­me­di­ate­ly sub­mit­ted to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter as the chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil so she can ad­vise and di­rect the NOC to then in­form and guide the pub­lic ac­cord­ing­ly.”