De­spite calls from re­gion­al lead­ers for peace in the re­gion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly and ve­he­ment­ly de­clared that this coun­try, along with the Unit­ed States, will fight “fire with fire” to push back against drugs and gang war­fare in the Caribbean re­gion.

On a day packed with ad­dress­es from Cari­com lead­ers at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA), the cen­tral theme from them was for the US to pull back from its prox­im­i­ty to Venezue­lan wa­ters and to re­mem­ber that the Caribbean is a zone of peace.

How­ev­er, when it was Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s turn at the lectern, she said she had come with a “hard truth.”

“The no­tion that the Caribbean is a zone of peace has be­come a false ide­al. The re­al­i­ty is, stop, no such peace ex­ists to­day. For too many in our re­gion, peace is not dai­ly life, but an elu­sive promise, glimpsed and nev­er grasped. In its ab­sence, our cit­i­zens pay a ter­ri­ble toll.”

The PM ex­plained to the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly that in 2024, with on­ly a pop­u­la­tion of 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple, T&T record­ed 623 mur­ders.

“And many of them are gang re­lat­ed. So the re­al­i­ty is, be­ing a zone of peace is still an elu­sive dream that we’re pur­su­ing.”

The PM ac­knowl­edged that oth­er coun­tries may dis­agree with her po­si­tion but they do not suf­fer the same way T&T does.

“While there have been ob­jec­tions to the US mil­i­tary ac­tion against drug car­tels in the south­ern Caribbean, some ob­jec­tions from some coun­tries, I state to­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­minds the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that un­less force­ful and ag­gres­sive ac­tions are tak­en, these evil drug car­tels will con­tin­ue their so­ci­etal de­struc­tion be­cause they be­lieve af­fect­ed na­tions will al­ways un­re­served­ly sub­scribe to morals and ethics and hu­man rights and val­ues which they them­selves bla­tant­ly flout.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said crim­i­nals do not ad­here to ethics and moral­i­ty.

“There­fore, we will fight fire with fire with­in the law. That is why we will­ing­ly sup­port­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­liance an­nounced by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in­volv­ing the US and sev­er­al coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca and, of course, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing in the hemi­sphere.”

Back­ing the US, the Prime Min­is­ter added, “Pres­i­dent Trump’s com­ments on the ef­fects on coun­tries of re­lent­less nar­co and hu­man traf­fick­ing about or­gan­ised crime, il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion are cor­rect.”

Turn­ing to il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion, the PM said, “Small coun­tries like mine, Trinidad and To­ba­go, suf­fer from il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion. Be­cause of the re­cent in­creased pro­tec­tions at the US south­ern bor­der, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion of drug car­tels and crim­i­nal gangs have been rerout­ed in the east­ern Caribbean, which is where my coun­try is lo­cat­ed.”

The PM told the UN­GA that this has been a ma­jor cat­a­lyst for gang vi­o­lence, drugs and am­mu­ni­tion and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

“Ef­forts to repa­tri­ate il­le­gal im­mi­grants from Trinidad and To­ba­go from re­cent times have proven very dif­fi­cult. Crim­i­nal syn­di­cates are abus­ing asy­lum re­quests for refugee sta­tus. There­fore, Trinidad and To­ba­go is par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful for the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the car­tel and gov­ern­ments who en­able the il­le­gal­i­ty are “tak­ing us for fools”

“If left unchecked, gangs could re­place gov­ern­ments and states may as­cend in name on­ly but col­lapse in sub­stance.”

The Prime Min­is­ter used Haiti as an ex­am­ple of what hap­pens when gangs, guns and il­le­gal drugs go unchecked.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing her speech out­side of the UN Head­quar­ters, the PM was asked why she did not con­demn the geno­cide in Gaza, which sev­er­al world lead­ers did dur­ing the high-lev­el week.

The PM said, “Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs has al­ready ad­dressed that mat­ter. As you know, the time we are giv­en to speak is very lim­it­ed. So, since that is­sue was al­ready raised through For­eign Af­fairs in an­oth­er fo­rum, which I think he shared with you, that we sup­port the two-state so­lu­tion.”

The Unit­ed States, a ma­jor al­ly of Is­rael does not sup­port the two-state so­lu­tion which is the recog­ni­tion of an in­de­pen­dent state of Pales­tine along­side an in­de­pen­dent state of Is­rael.

T&T first is Kam­la’s stance

De­spite be­ing the Cari­com head for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar does not think her stance on the US-Venezuela ten­sions will be seen as a con­flict of in­ter­est.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side of the UN Head­quar­ters af­ter de­liv­er­ing her ad­dress at the UN­GA, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “This in­ter­ven­tion can on­ly ben­e­fit all of us at Cari­com. I don’t know what is the boogey­man nar­ra­tive that has been pur­sued by some per­sons. What is wrong with hav­ing peo­ple com­ing to help us fight against nar­co-traf­fick­ing, against hu­man traf­fick­ing? Why are you so con­cerned? Do you have any link­ages with the drug car­tels? No, we don’t. And there­fore, I take se­ri­ous um­brage to some per­sons with a false nar­ra­tive about this in­ter­ven­tion and what it will do for sov­er­eign­ty and what will not.”

She added, “What this has to do with sov­er­eign­ty? How does that af­fect your sov­er­eign­ty or my sov­er­eign­ty? We are still sov­er­eign na­tions. So, I don’t see any con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween be­ing the lead in the Cari­com for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. In fact, this is a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ef­fort that will as­sist all of us in the Cari­com.”

Asked if this state­ment was di­rect­ed to oth­er re­gion­al lead­ers, the PM said, “I’m speak­ing about those who have a dif­fer­ent view with re­spect to the in­ter­ven­tion by the US on this mat­ter.”

De­fend­ing her state­ment to the UN­GA and sup­port for the US, the PM said, “I can­not stop re­peat­ing. Some of the oth­er Cari­com coun­tries are not in the po­si­tion that we are in. They’re not so close. Their mur­der rate, their nar­co-traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing is not so much. We had over 600 mur­ders in one year.

“We can­not do things the same way and ex­pect things to change. So, I re­main very com­mit­ted to the Cari­com. That’s where we are sov­er­eign na­tions. We can dif­fer on cer­tain points. We re­main com­mit­ted to our com­mu­ni­ty. But at the same time, Trinidad and To­ba­go first.”