Army joins US fight against cartels

Gail Alexan­der & Ryan Ba­choo

The Unit­ed States’ new­ly launched Joint Task Force West­ern Hemi­sphere (JTF-WHEM) “ac­tion arm” will syn­chro­nise mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions with trust­ed al­lies and part­ners—in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go—against drug car­tels and oth­er transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

US sources con­firmed yes­ter­day that the T&T De­fence Force will be part of the pur­pose-built task force.

But Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was mum on the ini­tia­tive, which some US and hemi­spher­ic stake­hold­ers be­lieve could as­sist in fur­ther­ing re­gion­al and hemi­spher­ic se­cu­ri­ty.

The US South­ern Com­mand (South­com) on Mon­day ac­ti­vat­ed the task force, which will op­er­ate with the 18-na­tion Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion (A3C) “Shield of the Amer­i­c­as” launched by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in March in Flori­da. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was among lead­ers at the March launch.

The A3C aims to strength­en in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing re­gion­al op­er­a­tions against or­gan­ised crime and drug car­tels.

South­com Com­man­der Gen­er­al Fran­cis L. Dono­van, who di­rect­ed the ac­ti­va­tion of JTF-WHEM, stat­ed that the task force is South­com’s “... ac­tion arm for con­fronting threats across the hemi­sphere ... It strength­ens our abil­i­ty to work along­side trust­ed al­lies and part­ners, syn­chro­nise mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ap­ply sus­tained pres­sure against the net­works that threat­en our col­lec­tive se­cu­ri­ty ...”

Mas­ter Gun­nery Sgt Michael Ci­fuentes told Guardian Me­dia, “This or­gan­i­sa­tion is pur­pose-built with tai­lored forces which will take the fight to the en­e­my.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia queries on how the unit may as­sist T&T, when or if the ini­tia­tive was dis­cussed in her re­cent talks with US of­fi­cials.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge didn’t re­ply to queries on the ini­tia­tive.

While sev­er­al oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials didn’t de­ny that the de­vel­op­ment could hold pos­i­tives for T&T’s ef­forts to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty, one se­nior min­is­ter lament­ed, “Gail, T&T me­dia is not in­ter­est­ed in print­ing pos­i­tive news with re­gards to this coun­try.”

South­com said the JTF-WHEM will be led by Ma­rine Corps Ma­jor Gen­er­al Kevin Jar­rard, who re­cent­ly com­mand­ed US mil­i­tary sup­port for the US State De­part­ment-led dis­as­ter re­lief op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing June 24 earth­quakes in Venezuela.

South­com said the task force is struc­tured to main­tain sus­tained pres­sure on drug-traf­fick­ing net­works and oth­er groups that un­der­mine re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and is al­so ex­pect­ed “to im­prove co­or­di­na­tion with al­lied gov­ern­ments, ac­cel­er­ate de­ci­sion-mak­ing and in­crease the tem­po of multi­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions against crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ing re­gion­al­ly.”

As South­com’s op­er­a­tional head­quar­ters for ex­e­cut­ing mis­sions across the re­gion, it said the JTF-WHEM will in­te­grate in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and re­con­nais­sance, op­er­a­tional plan­ning and multi­na­tion­al co­or­di­na­tion “to in­crease pres­sure on ne­far­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ing through­out the West­ern Hemi­sphere.”

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, it said the JTF-WHEM will be­come the new mil­i­tary head­quar­ters to co­or­di­nate op­er­a­tions against drug car­tels and oth­er transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions across this area, re­plac­ing the Joint Task Force South­ern Spear (JTF­SS) es­tab­lished in 2025.

The JTF­SS had co­or­di­nat­ed mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean part­ners. T&T sup­port­ed this ef­fort, in which the US used ki­net­ic strikes to de­stroy al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers tra­vers­ing Caribbean wa­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to South­com, the JTF-WHEM 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.”

South­com said work will in­clude co-or­di­nat­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance and dis­as­ter re­sponse op­er­a­tions when need­ed.

The ac­ti­va­tion of the task force drew sup­port from se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, who say clos­er co­op­er­a­tion with the US could strength­en the coun­try’s fight against transna­tion­al crime. How­ev­er, they cau­tioned that the part­ner­ship must not come at the ex­pense of re­gion­al uni­ty.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith de­scribed the unit as a long-over­due op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­hance the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties. He said the ini­tia­tive was an at­tempt “to work good against bad,” with in­tel­li­gence shar­ing ex­pect­ed to im­prove ef­forts to tack­le drug traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and the il­le­gal move­ment of firearms through­out the Caribbean.

Grif­fith said, “With the US hav­ing the ca­pac­i­ty with the type of as­sets that they have, it is of val­ue for T&T to work hand in hand with the US in such an op­er­a­tion,” he said.

He added that par­tic­i­pat­ing in multi­na­tion­al ex­er­cis­es would strength­en the De­fence Force’s train­ing, im­prove its un­der­stand­ing of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and in­crease its ex­pe­ri­ence in con­duct­ing in­ter­na­tion­al joint op­er­a­tions.

“As I said, this is long over­due,” Grif­fith said.

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah al­so sup­port­ed T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion, say­ing transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime had evolved be­yond the ca­pac­i­ty of any one na­tion to con­front alone.

He said stronger in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, joint train­ing ex­er­cis­es and co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tions of­fered clear ad­van­tages in ad­dress­ing drug traf­fick­ing and the flow of il­le­gal firearms through­out the re­gion.

How­ev­er, Heer­ah stressed that any par­tic­i­pa­tion must re­main firm­ly ground­ed in T&T’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

He al­so warned that in­volve­ment in the US-led al­liance should not un­der­mine the coun­try’s long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ships with­in Cari­com or cre­ate un­nec­es­sary ten­sions among re­gion­al neigh­bours.

“The ob­jec­tive should be to strength­en our se­cu­ri­ty while pre­serv­ing re­gion­al uni­ty,” Heer­ah said.

He added that the part­ner­ship should de­liv­er tan­gi­ble strate­gic, op­er­a­tional and tech­no­log­i­cal ben­e­fits for T&T and, ul­ti­mate­ly, the wider Caribbean.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les said it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine how ef­fec­tive the new arrange­ment would be with­out know­ing the full de­tails.

He said the Gov­ern­ment ap­peared to be seek­ing US as­sis­tance in con­fronting or­gan­ised crime and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works.

“I think the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to get Amer­i­can as­sis­tance in the se­cu­ri­ty area,” Gon­za­les said.

He added that the ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­peared to be­lieve ex­ter­nal sup­port was nec­es­sary to com­bat or­gan­ised crime and transna­tion­al car­tels, with the Unit­ed States pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance through the new se­cu­ri­ty frame­work.