Sturge backs US Navy SEAL presence in T&T: Sovereignty not under threat

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has thrown his sup­port be­hind the de­ploy­ment of US Navy SEAL per­son­nel to Trinidad and To­ba­go, dis­miss­ing con­cerns that the move could un­der­mine the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Sturge agreed that the SEALs’ de­ploy­ment can as­sist T&T in com­bat­ing crime through spe­cialised train­ing.

Asked for de­tails about the cur­rent num­ber of Navy SEALs in the coun­try and how many more are ex­pect­ed to as­sist with train­ing, Sturge ques­tioned if such dis­clo­sures were in the best in­ter­est of the pub­lic.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly re­vealed that mem­bers of the US Navy SEALs are al­ready in the coun­try han­dling lo­gis­tics ahead of a larg­er de­ploy­ment. She said the teams will work along­side lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty forces to pro­vide train­ing and sup­port in bor­der pro­tec­tion, drug in­ter­dic­tion and in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty.

Her an­nounce­ment came as the US Em­bassy and SOC­SOUTH re­vealed that US Army Civ­il Af­fairs Sol­diers as­signed to the 98th Civ­il Af­fairs Bat­tal­ion (Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) joined De­fence Force mem­bers for tac­ti­cal com­bat ca­su­al­ty care and jun­gle tech­ni­cal ex­change from June 15 to 18 at Teteron Bar­racks.

Asked yes­ter­day whether he was con­cerned about the im­pli­ca­tions of for­eign mil­i­tary per­son­nel op­er­at­ing in the coun­try, Sturge firm­ly re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty was un­der threat.

“I have no con­cerns re­gard­ing sov­er­eign­ty as their pres­ence en­sures that our sov­er­eign­ty is as­sured and not un­der­mined by the well-fi­nanced nar­co-ter­ror em­pires whose ac­tions in the last few years caused us no end of wor­ry,” the De­fence Min­is­ter said.

“Their pres­ence strength­ens our part­ner­ship in achiev­ing a shared goal and can on­ly be ben­e­fi­cial to our ef­forts to dis­rupt the ac­tiv­i­ties of the nar­co-ter­ror net­works.”

How­ev­er, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has sharply crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar over the re­port­ed pres­ence of US Navy SEALs in T&T, ac­cus­ing her of act­ing with­out trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty on a mat­ter of na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.

Yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment as “reck­less” and ques­tioned the le­gal ba­sis un­der which the elite Amer­i­can mil­i­tary unit was in­vit­ed in­to the coun­try.

He ar­gued that Navy SEALs are mil­i­tary per­son­nel rather than law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and said the Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain what agree­ments or in­ter­na­tion­al arrange­ments gov­ern their pres­ence.

“The Prime Min­is­ter must ex­plain un­der which law or in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols Navy SEALs were in­vit­ed on­to our shores,” Gon­za­les said.

The Op­po­si­tion MP al­so raised con­cerns about sov­er­eign­ty, ac­cus­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar of fail­ing to ad­e­quate­ly in­form the pub­lic about the na­ture and scope of the de­ploy­ment.

Gon­za­les fur­ther ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s ra­tio­nale for seek­ing for­eign mil­i­tary as­sis­tance while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly claim­ing that crime is un­der con­trol, in­sist­ing that cit­i­zens de­serve full dis­clo­sure on any se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments in­volv­ing for­eign forces op­er­at­ing with­in the coun­try.

While some se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts have wel­comed the move, oth­ers have ques­tioned the ra­tio­nale for de­ploy­ment.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figuera ar­gued that Navy SEALs are tra­di­tion­al­ly used for high-lev­el strate­gic op­er­a­tions rather than con­ven­tion­al law en­force­ment train­ing.

He ques­tioned whether there were broad­er ob­jec­tives be­hind the de­ploy­ment.

“The SEAL team, you’re in the crème de la crème of the US mil­i­tary struc­ture,” he said. “To have them in the coun­try train­ing is one thing.”

Figuera sug­gest­ed the pub­lic should seek clar­i­ty on whether spe­cif­ic threats have been iden­ti­fied that war­rant the SEALs’ pres­ence in T&T.

“So I ask the ques­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter: who are the des­ig­nat­ed threats that the SEAL team is here to take out?” he said.

Figuera point­ed to pre­vi­ous US-sup­port­ed op­er­a­tions tar­get­ing transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions and ques­tioned whether sim­i­lar ob­jec­tives could be in­flu­enc­ing the de­ploy­ment.

“They are the most ef­fi­cient tip of a mil­i­tary es­tab­lish­ment,” he said. “So you’re go­ing to take the most ef­fi­cient tip of your spear and send them to Trinidad and To­ba­go to train peo­ple how to in­ter­dict drugs?”

For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, Gary Grif­fith, how­ev­er, sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that the SEALs will not be con­duct­ing op­er­a­tions lo­cal­ly.

“There is a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion by mem­bers of the pub­lic to be­lieve that the SEALs are com­ing here to be in­volved in joint op­er­a­tions. That is not true,” Grif­fith said.

He ex­plained that for­eign mil­i­tary per­son­nel would not have pow­ers of ar­rest or op­er­a­tional au­thor­i­ty with­in T&T and there­fore could not par­tic­i­pate in crime-fight­ing ex­er­cis­es along­side lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, the most like­ly role of the SEALs would be to pro­vide ad­vanced tac­ti­cal train­ing to spe­cialised units with­in the coun­try’s pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

“They can ar­rive here to be in­volved in train­ing of our elite units such as the Spe­cial Naval Unit of the Coast Guard, the Spe­cial Forces in the Army, and prob­a­bly tac­ti­cal elite units in the Po­lice Ser­vice,” he said.

Such train­ing, Grif­fith not­ed, could fo­cus on counter-ter­ror­ism op­er­a­tions, hostage res­cue sce­nar­ios, ex­trac­tion mis­sions and oth­er spe­cialised se­cu­ri­ty func­tions.

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and in­tel­li­gence ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah con­tend­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion is in­creas­ing­ly nec­es­sary to ad­dress evolv­ing se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Heer­ah said mod­ern crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try ex­tends far be­yond tra­di­tion­al do­mes­tic polic­ing chal­lenges.

“The coun­try is in­creas­ing­ly con­front­ed by so­phis­ti­cat­ed transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works in­volved in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, firearms smug­gling, hu­man traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing, cy­ber-en­abled crime, gang op­er­a­tions and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es that op­er­ate across mul­ti­ple ju­ris­dic­tions si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly,” he stat­ed.

Heer­ah ar­gued that crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­ploit mar­itime routes, porous bor­ders, and tech­no­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, mak­ing re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion es­sen­tial.

“The in­volve­ment of US Navy SEAL per­son­nel should there­fore not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be in­ter­pret­ed as a for­eign force com­ing to po­lice Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Rather, he sug­gest­ed such part­ner­ships are typ­i­cal­ly fo­cused on spe­cialised train­ing, in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, op­er­a­tional plan­ning and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.