Sturge requests more US military assets in fight against drug cartels

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has re­quest­ed in­creased mil­i­tary sup­port from the Unit­ed States to help Trinidad and To­ba­go com­bat drug car­tels op­er­at­ing in the Caribbean.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Con­fer­ence, a high-lev­el mil­i­tary and de­fence sum­mit in Flori­da, Sturge told US Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth that while T&T has high­ly-trained per­son­nel and a strong com­mit­ment to push­ing back against nar­co-traf­fick­ers, it lacks the re­sources need­ed to do so ef­fec­tive­ly.

“We re­quire as­sets in the in­ter­im that would en­hance our mar­itime do­main aware­ness as well as en­able us to car­ry out tar­get­ed re­in­force­ment that would serve both our in­ter­ests and would de­liv­er im­me­di­ate hemi­spher­ic ben­e­fits. Our Gov­ern­ment is ded­i­cat­ed and ready to shoul­der all re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and once pro­por­tion­al­ly equipped to the ex­pec­ta­tions faced up­on us, we will de­liv­er re­sults,” Sturge told the sum­mit.

He added, “If we are to de­liv­er ef­fec­tive­ly as the se­cu­ri­ty an­chor in the south­ern Caribbean, we re­quire as­sets that would equip us with the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to dis­rupt the car­tels in the trans­ship­ment cor­ri­dors and to pro­tect our shared eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests in the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

The De­fence Min­is­ter did not tell Sec­re­tary Hegseth ex­act­ly what “as­sets” the coun­try needs.

That ques­tion was put to the Prime Min­is­ter; how­ev­er, she did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond.

The De­fence Min­is­ter lament­ed that T&T’s econ­o­my lim­its how much help it can get from in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

Sturge, how­ev­er, pledged T&T’s sup­port for the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion.

“We are not ob­servers in this fight. We are on the front line with you. We have lost law en­force­ment of­fi­cers in this fight, in­clud­ing one of our sailors dur­ing the in­ter­cep­tion of a se­mi-sub­mersible, which was trans­port­ing a cou­ple tonnes of co­caine. We have lost thou­sands of cit­i­zens over the last two decades to vi­o­lent crime, fu­elled main­ly by the ac­tions of the new nar­co-ter­ror net­works.”

He added, “Our doc­trine aligns with yours.”

The De­fence Min­is­ter and those in at­ten­dance signed a Joint Se­cu­ri­ty De­c­la­ra­tion at the con­fer­ence.

It pro­vides for co­or­di­nat­ed mar­itime and aer­i­al pa­trols across the Caribbean and East­ern Pa­cif­ic, while al­so back­ing the use of US lethal force against car­tel ves­sels un­der the so-called Trump Corol­lary.

It fur­ther al­lows for the de­ploy­ment of US mil­i­tary ad­vis­ers to as­sist lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty forces in land-based op­er­a­tions, fol­low­ing a mod­el re­cent­ly im­ple­ment­ed in Ecuador.

US De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth yes­ter­day urged in­vi­tees to adopt a more ag­gres­sive ap­proach in con­fronting drug car­tels, warn­ing that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is pre­pared to act in­de­pen­dent­ly if re­gion­al part­ners fail to ef­fec­tive­ly counter crim­i­nal net­works threat­en­ing the Unit­ed States and its bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

Mean­while, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia that while na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships with the US are noth­ing new, this seems to be some­thing dif­fer­ent that the coun­try needs to know about.

Gon­za­les said, “It ap­pears as though he’s al­lud­ing to new arrange­ments and new align­ments that we as a coun­try do not know of, be­cause the gov­ern­ment has con­sis­tent­ly not been trans­par­ent with us on cer­tain arrange­ments that they would have made, and agree­ments that they would have made with oth­er coun­tries and oth­er gov­ern­ments.”

The for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter added, “The Min­is­ter of De­fence is no­to­ri­ous for in­vok­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tion for him not to be trans­par­ent in the par­lia­ment, as well as the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, and so we, quite frankly, don’t ex­pect any­thing dif­fer­ent from him, but we con­tin­ue to make the call for the gov­ern­ment to be very trans­par­ent on these very, very im­por­tant mat­ters, be­cause they all im­pact up­on the sov­er­eign­ty of T&T.”

But for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith dis­agreed. Grif­fith said it would be un­fea­si­ble for Gov­ern­ment to di­vulge every as­pect of this part­ner­ship.

“It is go­ing to be vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble, im­prac­ti­cal, if not to­tal­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble, for any gov­ern­ment to open­ly state ex­act­ly what are the terms and con­di­tions put in­to this mu­tu­al arrange­ment that has been made. It def­i­nite­ly will not be any­thing about tak­ing away part of our sov­er­eign rights. What it would be is a mat­ter of two hands clap­ping, and for the ben­e­fit of the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of both coun­tries,” Grif­fith said.

He said the US has of­fered T&T mil­i­tary as­sets in the past.

“When I was min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the same thing was be­ing done. I would be lead­ing di­rect­ly with the rel­e­vant rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the DEA, the FBI, the CIA in the US Em­bassy it­self here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And they ac­tu­al­ly promised that they want­ed to give us two US de­stroy­ers, al­beit over 20 years old. And in re­turn, they want­ed to make sure that they will have some de­gree of sup­port to as­sist the Unit­ed States in deal­ing with the erad­i­ca­tion of drugs in the South­ern Caribbean.”