Govt silent on details after PM’s talks with US Southern Command

Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment has not dis­closed the spe­cif­ic out­comes of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s meet­ing with of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand ear­li­er this week.

How­ev­er, the De­fence Min­is­ter, in prais­ing the Prime Min­is­ter for her ef­forts to boost this coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, blamed the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s close ties to Venezuela for the degra­da­tion of the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty ca­pac­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia was pre­vi­ous­ly told that the re­cent dis­cus­sions had ac­ti­vat­ed the sec­ond phase of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s crime sup­pres­sion strat­e­gy, shift­ing fo­cus to tack­ling crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on the ground. The Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed that sev­er­al projects had been iden­ti­fied for im­ple­men­ta­tion, but no fur­ther de­tails were pro­vid­ed.

Yes­ter­day, ques­tions were sent to the Prime Min­is­ter and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, who re­cent­ly ap­peared at a counter-car­tel con­fer­ence host­ed by the US com­mand. Guardian Me­dia asked what con­crete steps would fol­low the talks, in­clud­ing the rules of en­gage­ment for Trinidad and To­ba­go troops op­er­at­ing along­side US as­sets and whether lo­cal per­son­nel could be au­tho­rised to use lethal force un­der US com­mand. The Do­ral Char­ter, signed at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit, ex­plic­it­ly com­mits sig­na­to­ries to us­ing “lethal mil­i­tary force” against nar­co-traf­fick­ers.

Fur­ther ques­tions were raised about what equip­ment or hard­ware could be pro­vid­ed to sup­port the coun­try’s crime fight, af­ter Sturge in­di­cat­ed in­ter­est in ac­cess­ing greater US mil­i­tary as­sets. The Prime Min­is­ter and her De­fence Min­is­ter were al­so asked whether any such sup­port would be used to in­ter­vene in do­mes­tic gang vi­o­lence dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency in T&T, or re­main lim­it­ed to bor­der and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty.

Nei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter nor the De­fence Min­is­ter re­spond­ed di­rect­ly. How­ev­er, Sturge is­sued a state­ment prais­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship in restor­ing what he de­scribed as the coun­try’s place in hemi­spher­ic se­cu­ri­ty dis­cus­sions.

He al­so pushed back against crit­ics ques­tion­ing the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty for sign­ing the char­ter, say­ing “a pre­req­ui­site for any cred­i­ble claim to sov­er­eign­ty is the abil­i­ty to de­fine and se­cure one’s bor­der.”

Sturge ar­gued that the coun­try’s bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ca­pac­i­ty be­gan de­clin­ing around 2017, dur­ing the strength­en­ing of ties be­tween the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion and Nicolás Maduro’s gov­ern­ment in Venezuela, which he said co­in­cid­ed with in­creased mi­gra­tion pres­sures and the degra­da­tion of naval and sur­veil­lance as­sets.

“It there­fore can­not be gain­said, that the sud­den and steady de­cline in our coun­try’s abil­i­ty to se­cure its bor­ders start­ed cir­ca 2017, around the same time of the strength­en­ing of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the last regime and the Maduro led regime, which lat­er cul­mi­nat­ed in mass mi­gra­tion from Venezuela from 2019 on­wards, a pe­ri­od which ac­cel­er­at­ed and ex­ac­er­bat­ed se­vere eco­nom­ic pres­sure on our coun­try’s econ­o­my and in­ten­si­fied the pres­sure on our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus,” he said.

“Per­haps by co­in­ci­dence or pos­si­bly by de­sign, this pe­ri­od al­so wit­nessed a degra­da­tion of our naval and oth­er as­sets nec­es­sary to sur­veil, se­cure and de­fend our bor­ders,” he added.

He fur­ther stat­ed that since June last year, the Prime Min­is­ter has been en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with US coun­ter­parts aimed at strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion on se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy. Ac­cord­ing to Sturge, the meet­ing with US South­ern Com­mand fo­cused on en­sur­ing con­tin­ued ac­cess to sur­veil­lance, en­hanced in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and the ac­qui­si­tion of “state-of-the-art equip­ment” to bol­ster bor­der and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“In her meet­ing with US South­Com the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter en­gaged in plan­ning dis­cus­sions with a view to deep­en­ing our part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, en­sur­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­tin­ued ac­cess to sur­veil­lance, en­hanced in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and hence­forth, the ac­qui­si­tion of state-of-the-art equip­ment not pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able to us in our fight against those who seek to un­der­mine our bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

He said the ini­tia­tives place the coun­try in a stronger po­si­tion to un­der­take what he de­scribed as a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­set.