Analysts sceptical about impact of Counter-Cartel Coalition on T&T crime woes

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert re­tired lieu­tenant com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al says the US-led Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC) is not need­ed to ad­dress the drug prob­lem in the coun­try.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Din­di­al said bomb­ing drug deal­ers will not have the ef­fect the Prime Min­is­ter would like it to.

Last week­end, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was one of two Caribbean lead­ers to sign off on the AC­CC dur­ing the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as sum­mit in Flori­da.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, in his procla­ma­tion on the an­ti-drug car­tel mech­a­nism, had said his Sec­re­tary of War Pe­ter Hegseth had es­tab­lished the AC­CC, say­ing it was “… a pledge from mil­i­tary lead­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 17 coun­tries demon­strat­ing that the re­gion is ready to op­er­a­tionalise hard pow­er to de­feat these threats.”

Din­di­al said, “You can­not shoot and bomb or­gan­ised crime out of ex­is­tence. Even if you cap­ture or kill the big fish, dis­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties and sup­ply chains, de­stroy drug labs, and kill drug mules and smug­glers, any thought­ful mil­i­tary of­fi­cer or in­tel­li­gence an­a­lyst can tell you that it achieves tru­ly lit­tle to­wards the larg­er goal of elim­i­nat­ing or­gan­ised crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

Din­di­al, who is al­so the in­ter­im leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, said the coun­try’s true en­e­mies are in­ter­wo­ven in the gov­ern­ment at all lev­els, in­clud­ing the jus­tice sys­tem, and the le­gal econ­o­my, adding that these re­la­tion­ships are not the job of the mil­i­tary but of in­ves­ti­ga­tors, pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and the po­lice.

“There is no need for a mil­i­tary al­liance to com­bat car­tels. The re­al­i­ty is, T&T does not have sig­nif­i­cant drug car­tels like oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, so the fo­cus should be on strength­en­ing law en­force­ment, ev­i­dence gath­er­ing, and pros­e­cu­tion to tack­le lo­cal is­sues like mur­ders, ex­tor­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal min­ing, and gang vi­o­lence.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the AC­CC was in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert and lec­tur­er at the UWI, Dr Keron Niles, who warned that sup­port­ing such mil­i­tary ac­tions has a neg­a­tive long-term im­pact both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly for the coun­try.

He ref­er­enced the US airstrikes in the re­gion against al­leged drug smug­glers, lead­ing up to the US de­tain­ing Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, say­ing some 150 peo­ple were killed with­out due process.

That, he said, along with the in­tend­ed at­tack against car­tels, is go­ing to ex­pose the coun­try to risks.

“For every per­son that you kill, you may in­deed leave be­hind three, four per­sons who have an in­cen­tive to take re­venge, who have an in­cen­tive to re­spond. And car­tels are not small or­gan­i­sa­tions. The like­li­hood that these or­gan­i­sa­tions are just go­ing to sim­ply for­get what hap­pened is small.”

Niles added that af­ter the US bombs car­tels, with the as­sis­tance of small Caribbean coun­tries such as T&T, car­tels, which “may have longer mem­o­ries than politi­cians,” may seek re­venge on “soft­er tar­gets” in­stead of at­tack­ing the US.