US soldiers depart Tobago

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The with­draw­al of Unit­ed States mil­i­tary per­son­nel from To­ba­go con­tin­ued yes­ter­day with the de­par­ture of a large con­tin­gent aboard an At­las Air air­craft.

The plane ar­rived at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point on Sun­day night and de­part­ed at 8.01 am yes­ter­day and head­ed for Cu­ba. The air­craft lat­er touched down at Guan­tanamo Bay, Cu­ba, where the US has op­er­at­ed a mil­i­tary base for 123 years.

The ex­it of the US Marines came six days af­ter a US mil­i­tary car­go plane re­moved the mil­i­tary-grade radar sys­tem which had been sta­tioned at the air­port since last No­vem­ber. The radar had been dis­man­tled a few days ear­li­er, a move which sur­prised many, con­sid­er­ing that De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said last month that it would be there in­def­i­nite­ly.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said the radar and ac­com­pa­ny­ing US troops were al­so on the is­land to help fight drug traf­fick­ing.

In De­cem­ber, the po­lice claimed the radar was in­stru­men­tal in a mas­sive $171 mil­lion drug bust in the Ca­roni Swamp.

US sol­diers had been reg­u­lar­ly spot­ted at the Grafton Beach Re­sort in Black Rock, where they were housed for their stay, with ac­cess re­strict­ed, ac­cord­ing to se­cu­ri­ty at the ho­tel.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly gave the radar a pos­i­tive rat­ing for its use­ful­ness dur­ing the four months it was in To­ba­go.

The pres­ence of the US troops in T&T fol­lowed a build-up of US mil­i­tary as­sets in the South­ern Caribbean since Au­gust, af­ter ten­sions height­ened be­tween the North Amer­i­cans and Venezuela. As the rift widened be­tween US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and then Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with the US grew stronger.

Maduro was de­posed in a US op­er­a­tion in Cara­cas on Jan­u­ary 3 and is now fac­ing drug traf­fick­ing charges in the US.

On March 7, Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tend­ed the Shield of Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit in the Unit­ed States, where T&T joined a US-led mil­i­tary al­liance.

Guardian Me­dia asked the PM whether she was pleased with what the US troops had been able to achieve since ar­riv­ing in No­vem­ber, but she did not re­spond up to press time.