T&T’s entry into US cartel coalition sparks questions

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Con­cerns, queries and calls for more in­for­ma­tion.

These were among re­ac­tions from present and past politi­cians fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to sign T&T to the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar signed an agree­ment for T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the US-led AC­CC mil­i­tary al­liance at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit held by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Sat­ur­day.

Oth­er AC­CC sig­na­to­ries were in­vit­ed for­eign lead­ers Javier Milei (Ar­genti­na), Ro­dri­go Paz Pereira (Bo­livia), José An­to­nio Kast (Pres­i­dent-elect Chile,) Ro­dri­go Chaves Rob­les (Cos­ta Ri­ca), Luis Abi­nad­er (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic), Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali (Guyana), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), Nay­ib Bukele (El Sal­vador), José Raúl Muli­no (Pana­ma), San­ti­a­go Peña (Paraguay) and Nas­ry As­fu­ra (Hon­duras).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ceived the pen used to sign the agree­ment by Trump.

Con­tact­ed on the agree­ment yes­ter­day, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne said, “We al­ways val­ue our se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships and over­all diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with the US and oth­ers. We al­so val­ue our na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.”

He added, “No is­sue should be tak­en with law­ful ac­tions that bring drug car­tels to jus­tice. The chal­lenge is to avoid us­ing the fa­cade of an al­leged war on drugs to achieve oth­er ob­jec­tives, and to avoid any pat­tern of fo­cus­ing on ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of the al­leged small run­ners whilst large­ly ig­nor­ing oth­er high­er lev­els of ‘car­tel net­works’ in both the sup­ply and the de­mand coun­tries.”

He added, “It’s up to Gov­ern­ment to con­vince cit­i­zens this new coali­tion will pro­duce re­sults at a dif­fer­ent lev­el to the mil­i­tary ac­tions of the past 10 months, much her­ald­ed and loud­ly sup­port­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, but which in 2026 land­ed T&T right back in­to a sky­rock­et­ing mur­der rate and an­oth­er SoE.”

Ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of avoid­ing me­dia con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, he said, “It’s hoped that soon af­ter her re­turn, she fi­nal­ly con­venes one to pro­vide in­sights in­to her trip’s val­ue and de­tails of the new arrange­ments en­tered in­to on T&T’s be­half ... for­mer PM Kei­th Row­ley rou­tine­ly held me­dia con­fer­ences on re­turn from mis­sions.”

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty in Cari­com’s qua­si-Cab­i­net is al­so oblig­ed to re­port to Cari­com on de­vel­op­ments.

Bharath: Will al­liance deal with T&T crime re­al­i­ty?

For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said it re­mained un­clear how this coali­tion would ad­dress the re­al­i­ties of T&T’s crime.

“Be­fore em­brac­ing grand hemi­spher­ic coali­tions, Gov­ern­ment should first an­swer how ex­act­ly does this al­liance make T&T safer?” he said.

“Un­til clear, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the US coali­tion risks look­ing less like strate­gic lead­er­ship and more like geopo­lit­i­cal the­atre. Our se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis isn’t dri­ven by large transna­tion­al car­tels op­er­at­ing open­ly with­in T&T. It’s root­ed in do­mes­tic gang vi­o­lence, il­le­gal firearms traf­fick­ing, and deeply en­trenched so­cio-eco­nom­ic prob­lems.

“Let’s hope the sym­bol­ic pen (PM was giv­en) hasn’t signed us up for a pro­duc­tion where we haven’t read the fine print. Join­ing a mil­i­tarised an­ti-car­tel frame­work risks ap­ply­ing the wrong di­ag­no­sis to T&T’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenge.”

He added, “More trou­bling is the geopo­lit­i­cal con­text. The coali­tion re­flects Wash­ing­ton’s ef­fort to re­assert hemi­spher­ic se­cu­ri­ty lead­er­ship. For large Latin Amer­i­can states bat­tling pow­er­ful car­tels, par­tic­i­pa­tion may of­fer op­er­a­tional ad­van­tages. For a small Caribbean state like ours, ben­e­fits are far less ob­vi­ous. The dan­ger is, T&T be­comes sym­bol­i­cal­ly en­list­ed in a US-led se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture that ad­vances broad­er Amer­i­can strate­gic ob­jec­tives while of­fer­ing lim­it­ed prac­ti­cal ben­e­fit to T&T’s do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty needs.”

He said such ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships should be dis­cussed trans­par­ent­ly and de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, he said there’s been no pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion of what com­mit­ments T&T has ac­tu­al­ly made un­der the Shield frame­work.

Fur­ther, Bharath said that by align­ing more close­ly with this US-dri­ven ini­tia­tive, T&T’s PM con­tin­ues dri­ving a wedge be­tween Caribbean na­tions, weak­en­ing the prin­ci­ple that “Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty should pri­mar­i­ly be shaped by Caribbean in­sti­tu­tions.”

Tewarie: High-risk for T&T

An­oth­er for­mer UNC min­is­ter, Bhoe Tewarie, said, “Strad­dling Shield of the Amer­i­c­as and Cari­com is go­ing to be fraught with ten­sions. The prime agen­das are dif­fer­ent from the Zone of Peace, to mil­i­tary so­lu­tions - guns, drugs crime and in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism.

“The sov­er­eign­ty equa­tion is be­ing rewrit­ten as we speak and we’re head­ed for a pe­ri­od in which non-align­ment isn’t a se­ri­ous propo­si­tion any­more. We’re in high-risk ter­ri­to­ry now. Courage is an as­set but longer-term con­se­quences are hard­ly pre­dictable.”

Tewarie added, “I’m sure the Prime Min­is­ter is mak­ing the best choic­es for T&T at this time, know­ing she can nev­er be in charge of mat­ters out­side of her con­trol. She can on­ly do what’s un­der her con­trol.

“I ex­pect there will be war games in­volv­ing the US and T&T mil­i­tary soon so T&T can reap oth­er ben­e­fits. The car­rot-and-stick quid pro quo is the Trumpian ap­proach in this era and T&T has things to gain - and things to lose.”

COP leader wel­comes co­op­er­a­tion

Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Prakash Ra­mad­har - whose par­ty is among Gov­ern­ment’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests, en­dorsed the move.

“The Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a very bold ef­fort but in this time, we can­not con­tin­ue deal­ing with crime with old rules - there’s a whole new game ahead of us. Crim­i­nals are very dif­fer­ent to those of the past, there­fore a deep­er look is need­ed on deal­ing with those is­sues.

“I’d be ex­treme­ly grate­ful com­ing out of the Shield sum­mit if there’s con­cert­ed ef­forts by all in­volved - law en­force­ment and coun­tries - to han­dle gun im­por­ta­tion, ex­ports, and the mon­ey that flows through our sys­tem.”

Ra­mad­har al­so sup­port­ed in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion.

“In the 1990s, the US Drug En­force­ment Agency had a very pow­er­ful T&T pres­ence and brought down many drug traf­fick­ers; Dole Chadee’s just one. I’d like to see re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of that on the ground ... we need to in­ves­ti­gate mur­ders for hire and ex­tor­tion. Many fear go­ing to court as they feel they can be killed ... there­fore the sit­u­a­tion re­quires a great force with the co-op­er­a­tion of those who may not be in­flu­enced lo­cal­ly by cor­rup­tion.”