Through­out the coun­try this week, there have been re­ports of he­li­copters and oth­er air­craft fly­ing above Trinidad, low enough for be­mused res­i­dents to cap­ture video of craft.

Those re­ports fol­lowed sim­i­lar ac­counts of at­tack drones in the air above Trinidad and in the Gulf of Paria, the calm and shal­low body of wa­ter through which runs a mar­itime bound­ary that sep­a­rates Venezuela and Trinidad.
These mul­ti­ple sight­ings of air­craft pre­sumed to be­long to the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary co­in­cide with the ar­rival in the Caribbean Sea of the US Navy’s Ger­ald R. Ford air­craft car­ri­er, which is re­port­ed to host 5,500 mil­i­tary per­son­nel and is de­scribed as the largest and most ad­vanced ves­sel of its type ever built.

The mul­ti­ple sight­ings of mar­itime and avi­a­tion as­sets al­so co­in­cide with the de­ploy­ment in this coun­try of scores of fight­ers from the US Ma­rine Corps’ 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) on Sun­day for six days of mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es and train­ing with mem­bers of the T&T Reg­i­ment.

The pop­u­la­tion was on­ly giv­en ad­vanced no­tice of this train­ing ex­er­cise last Fri­day, when an an­nounce­ment was made by Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, who out­lined that the train­ing would take place in both ur­ban and rur­al en­vi­ron­ments across the coun­try and would oc­cur be­tween dusk and dawn. Sobers al­so con­firmed that US mil­i­tary he­li­copters would be used in the drills.

It is use­ful to note that the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs is­sued a news re­lease on Oc­to­ber 23 on the vis­it to this coun­try of the USS Grave­ly, a Unit­ed States Navy guid­ed-mis­sile de­stroy­er, that start­ed on Oc­to­ber 26.

That ves­sel was al­so in­volved in a joint train­ing ex­er­cise with the lo­cal mil­i­tary, rais­ing ob­vi­ous ques­tions about the need to hold two such ex­er­cis­es with­in the space of less than a month.

The pres­ence of US troops in T&T for these back-to-back train­ing mis­sions is un­prece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of this coun­try and must been seen as part of the build-up of US troops in the Caribbean re­gion, which Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump still main­tains, at times, is part of an Amer­i­can mis­sion to counter drug traf­fick­ing in the re­gion.

All of this mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty is rais­ing ten­sion lev­els in this coun­try, lead­ing a moth­er of four young chil­dren, liv­ing near to the Cu­mu­to mil­i­tary base in Waller­field, to com­plain on Tues­day that the noise of a he­li­copter caused her house to shake.

“My daugh­ter was scream­ing. She went in­to a pan­ic im­me­di­ate­ly. Every­body came out­side pan­ick­ing be­cause we didn’t know what was tak­ing place. You see how close we live … that sound is ter­ri­ble. I didn’t even know this was a planned ex­er­cise. I re­al­ly thought we were go­ing to war. Even my dogs ran in­side the house.”

Even in this strained and con­fus­ing cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment, it is un­ac­cept­able for peo­ple liv­ing near to T&T's mil­i­tary bases not to be prop­er­ly in­formed of im­mi­nent mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty that may re­sult in the very noise pol­lu­tion that T&T's Prime Min­is­ter is seek­ing to curb by re­strict­ing large fetes.

At this time of height­ened in­se­cu­ri­ty and fear, Gov­ern­ment would be well served to analyse its com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy with a view of de­ter­min­ing whether it can do more to reach more of those af­fect­ed.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing the facts in a time­ly fash­ion with em­pa­thy and un­der­stand­ing will ease the ten­sion and un­cer­tain­ty that many peo­ple feel at this time.