Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

The Do­ral Char­ter signed dur­ing the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit last Sat­ur­day sig­nals greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the US and T&T to dis­man­tle drug car­tels.

I sup­port any le­gal ini­tia­tive aimed at achiev­ing this.

My col­umn on Oc­to­ber 21, 2022, SoS to the USA, spoke about the mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of drugs still be­ing seized both in T&T and in car­go orig­i­nat­ing from T&T. I men­tioned that af­ter years of fail­ure, we need­ed more col­lab­o­ra­tion with the DEA and the US to as­sist us.

A lot has hap­pened since then.

Both the US and T&T changed their ad­min­is­tra­tions. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has strength­ened our re­la­tion­ship with the US, not just for en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions but al­so to tack­le our crime cri­sis. Some cit­i­zens sup­port­ed the bomb­ing of drug ves­sels orig­i­nat­ing from Venezuela, hav­ing wit­nessed wors­en­ing crime de­spite in­creas­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pen­di­ture and po­lit­i­cal promis­es.

The PM re­it­er­at­ed, “My main goal is to en­sure the to­tal erad­i­ca­tion of this plague that has brought grave de­struc­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Her goal is good, but the re­al­i­ty is elu­sive.

Amer­i­ca has spent over a tril­lion dol­lars since it launched its drug pol­i­cy in 1971 and, de­spite the work of the DEA, drug use in the US is in­creas­ing.

“We are still in the midst of the most dev­as­tat­ing drug epi­dem­ic in US his­to­ry,” said Van­da Fel­bab-Brown of the Cen­ter for Se­cu­ri­ty and Tech­nol­o­gy at the Brook­ings In­sti­tu­tion.

In 2022, 70,813 peo­ple died of a fen­tanyl over­dose in the US.

Those who are now so con­cerned about sov­er­eign­ty should note that in a 2005 BBC in­ter­view, then Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, spoke about the need for in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance. He said the il­le­gal drug trade had cre­at­ed a crim­i­nal elite with enough re­sources to cor­rupt pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. Prof­its from drug traf­fick­ing were be­ing used to buy weapons and am­mu­ni­tion, which were then used by feud­ing gangs, push­ing up the mur­der rate. He asked both Lon­don’s Scot­land Yard and the FBI for help.

Even at the Cana­da–Cari­com Sum­mit in Ot­tawa in Oc­to­ber 2023, then PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­pealed to Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau to help us com­bat crime. Row­ley said, “Gangs have been arm­ing them­selves more ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly; they have be­come bet­ter killing ma­chines to the point now where they pose a threat to the state it­self.”

Those want­i­ng to bring a ge­o­graph­i­cal or eth­nic nar­ra­tive in­to this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s failed ZOSO bill should note that Man­ning had his “Op­er­a­tion Bagh­dad” as one of sev­er­al in­ter­mit­tent­ly brand­ed joint po­lice–army, high-in­ten­si­ty se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives. It was a lock­down/clam­p­down op­er­a­tion aimed at ar­eas like Laven­tille, de­signed to tack­le the surge in drug- and gang-re­lat­ed crimes. It aimed to make crime-heavy ar­eas safe by hav­ing law en­force­ment move in with what was de­scribed as “Bagh­dad-like” force.

Man­ning re­vealed that his gov­ern­ment had pur­chased radars from Is­rael and Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to pur­chase ves­sels to pa­trol the seas and the air via he­li­copters with “at­tack ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

So, we have heard it all be­fore.

Why are we not in a bet­ter place?

On Sep­tem­ber 24, 2004, when for­mer pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke was mugged and robbed of his ve­hi­cle, op­po­si­tion leader Bas­deo Pan­day re­tort­ed that crime would get worse un­der the PNM be­cause of the par­ty’s “sym­bi­ot­ic” re­la­tion­ship with crim­i­nals.

But years lat­er, the cor­rupt Pi­ar­co Air­port fi­as­co showed that a crim­i­nal is not just a youth hold­ing a Glock, but al­so the busi­ness­man hold­ing a Mont­blanc pen to write his bribery cheques.

How­ev­er, to his cred­it, when Pan­day be­came PM, there was a drop in mur­ders and an at­tempt to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal net­works, ex­em­pli­fied by the hang­ing of Dole Chadee and his gang.

But or­gan­ised crim­i­nals learned well from Chica­go’s Al Capone, who had “sym­bi­ot­ic” re­la­tion­ships with po­lice, judges, pros­e­cu­tors, politi­cians and mem­bers of the civ­il ad­min­is­tra­tion who were on his pay­roll.

In 2006, Mex­i­co’s then-Pres­i­dent Fe­lipe Calderón de­clared war on the drug car­tels, and 60,000 re­lat­ed deaths oc­curred. The homi­cide rate dropped in his last two years in of­fice. Suc­ces­sive Mex­i­can lead­ers have learned to co­ex­ist with the car­tels. Don­ald Trump once of­fered to help then-Mex­i­co Pres­i­dent An­dres Lopez Obrador get rid of the car­tels by list­ing them as ter­ror­ists, but Obrador feared a vi­o­lent fall­out.

And so too we can ex­pect some fall­out if our “gang erad­i­ca­tion” is not han­dled wise­ly.

I think the best chance we had was when the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion start­ed its SoE. This should have been ac­com­pa­nied by an im­me­di­ate cur­few, tar­get­ing the gangs be­fore they were al­lowed to dis­perse their weapons far and wide.