T&T joins new U.S.-led military task force against cartels

GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The U.S. South­ern Com­mand on Mon­day ac­ti­vat­ed a Joint Task Force West­ern Hemi­sphere (JTF-WHEM) head­quar­ters that will syn­chro­nize U.S. mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions with al­lies and part­ners —in­clud­ing T&T—to counter threats, strength­en re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and re­spond rapid­ly to crises across the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

U.S. sources told Guardian Me­dia that al­lies and part­ners, which would be part of the pur­pose- built task force, would in­clude TT's De­fence Force.

The new en­ti­ty, which is struc­tured to main­tain sus­tained pres­sure on drug-traf­fick­ing net­works and oth­er groups that un­der­mine re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, al­so is ex­pect­ed to " im­prove co­or­di­na­tion with al­lied gov­ern­ments, ac­cel­er­ate de­ci­sion-mak­ing and in­crease the tem­po of multi­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions against crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions op­er­at­ing re­gion­al­ly."

As South­Comm's op­er­a­tional head­quar­ters for ex­e­cut­ing mis­sions across the re­gion, JTF-WHEM in­te­grates in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and re­con­nais­sance, op­er­a­tional plan­ning and multi­na­tion­al co­or­di­na­tion "to in­crease pres­sure on ne­far­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions op­er­at­ing through­out the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

The JTF-WHEM will op­er­ate with the 18 na­tion Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC)—or Shield of the Amer­i­c­as—launched by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in March in Flori­da. It in­cludes T&T, Guyana, and cer­tain South/Cen­tral Amer­i­can states

The AC­CC's aim is to strength­en in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and co-or­di­nate re­gion­al op­er­a­tions against or­gan­ised crime and drug car­tels. T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar was among lead­ers at the Flori­da launch.

The JTF-WHEM will be the new mil­i­tary head­quar­ters to co­or­di­nate op­er­a­tions against drug car­tels and oth­er transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions across the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

It re­places the Joint Task Force South­ern Spear es­tab­lished in 2025, to co-or­di­nate mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean part­ners. T&T was part of this ef­fort in which the U.S. em­ployed ki­net­ic strikes to de­stroy al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers tra­vers­ing Caribbean wa­ters

South­Comm's Pub­lic Af­fairs unit stat­ed South­Comm Com­man­der, Gen­er­al Fran­cis L. Dono­van, di­rect­ed the ac­ti­va­tion of JTF-WHEM.

Don­a­van stat­ed the JTF-WHEM is South­Comm's "ac­tion arm for con­fronting threats across the hemi­sphere ... It strength­ens our abil­i­ty to work along­side trust­ed al­lies and part­ners, syn­chro­nize mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ap­ply sus­tained pres­sure against the net­works that threat­en our col­lec­tive se­cu­ri­ty..."

FLASHBACK - United States President Donald Trump holds up the Doral Charter after signing it at the Shield of the Americas summit in Doral, Florida, on March 7, 2026. The document established a new hemispheric military alliance known as the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition. [Image by TIMOTHY CHASTEAU]

TIMOTHY CHASTEAU

The new task force is de­signed as a per­ma­nent op­er­a­tional head­quar­ters, bring­ing in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, op­er­a­tional plan­ning and multi­na­tion­al mil­i­tary co­or­di­na­tion un­der a sin­gle com­mand.

Ac­cord­ing to South­Comm, the com­mand will in­te­grate in­tel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties, sup­port mar­itime in­ter­dic­tion op­er­a­tions, over­see multi­na­tion­al plan­ning and ex­pand joint mil­i­tary train­ing with part­ner na­tions.

It is geared to pro­vide: "Uni­fied com­mand and con­trol at the tac­ti­cal and op­er­a­tional lev­els, in­te­grat­ing mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties with the 18 part­ner na­tions of the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion to in­crease op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness against threats that un­der­mine re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and im­pact the US and part­ner na­tions."

South­Comm stat­ed the cre­ation of the new task force re­in­forces its broad­er strat­e­gy of com­bin­ing mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties with multi­na­tion­al part­ner­ships to strength­en re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty while en­hanc­ing the com­mand’s abil­i­ty to re­spond rapid­ly to crises through­out the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Work in­cludes co-or­di­nat­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance and dis­as­ter re­sponse op­er­a­tions when need­ed.

Ma­rine Corps Maj. Gen. Kevin Jar­rard will lead the new head­quar­ters.

Jar­rard re­cent­ly com­mand­ed U.S. mil­i­tary sup­port for State De­part­ment-led dis­as­ter re­lief op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing June 24 earth­quakes in Venezuela.

South­Comm added:

“Pur­pose-built and task-or­ga­nized, this head­quar­ters brings to­geth­er tai­lored mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties and trust­ed part­ner­ships to in­crease to­tal sys­temic fric­tion, op­er­a­tional tem­po, im­pose sus­tained pres­sure on crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions and strength­en the se­cu­ri­ty of the US and our part­ners. To­geth­er with the 18 na­tions of A3C, we're chang­ing the way we con­front these threats.”