Sturge hails Operation Southern Spear despite US drug flow concerns

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge is hail­ing the Unit­ed States-led Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear as a ma­jor suc­cess for Trinidad and To­ba­go, even as a Wash­ing­ton Post in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cludes the mil­i­tary cam­paign has failed to curb the flow of co­caine in­to the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to the news­pa­per, Drug En­force­ment Agency (DEA) an­a­lysts con­clud­ed the strikes had failed to af­fect ei­ther the sup­ply or price of co­caine in the Unit­ed States.

In­stead, it re­port­ed traf­fick­ers adapt­ed by aban­don­ing high-speed “go-fast” boats in favour of larg­er ves­sels, hug­ging coast­lines where US forces were less like­ly to strike, and in­creas­ing­ly re­ly­ing on air­craft de­part­ing clan­des­tine airstrips along the Colom­bian-Venezue­lan bor­der for Guyana and Suri­name.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Sturge seek­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s as­sess­ment of whether the US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion had re­duced the flow of il­le­gal drugs in­to T&T, whether Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear re­mained ac­tive fol­low­ing the ap­par­ent ab­sence of re­cent mil­i­tary strikes, and whether he con­sid­ered the mis­sion a suc­cess for this coun­try.

In re­sponse, Sturge said the op­er­a­tion had de­liv­ered sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits by giv­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force time to re­store its naval ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“From the dai­ly up­dates I re­ceive from the Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) and Mil­i­tary In­tel­li­gence, I can say with cer­ti­tude that in­ter­cep­tion rates of sus­pect­ed ves­sels en­ter­ing our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters is near 100 per cent,” Sturge said.

He added that the op­er­a­tion had cre­at­ed the space need­ed to strength­en the Coast Guard’s op­er­a­tional readi­ness.

“Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear gave us much-need­ed breath­ing room to get our naval as­sets up to 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty so as to im­prove in­ter­cep­tion rates.”

Sturge, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that mar­itime in­ter­dic­tion alone would not solve the coun­try’s long-stand­ing traf­fick­ing prob­lem.

“We, how­ev­er, re­main ful­ly cog­nisant of the fact that for the past two decades, most of our il­le­gal firearms and nar­cotics en­ter through ports of le­gal en­try and in that re­gard we are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to ad­dress this.”

Asked whether the op­er­a­tion had re­sult­ed in a re­duc­tion in the avail­abil­i­ty of il­le­gal drugs lo­cal­ly, Sturge did not pro­vide fig­ures, in­stead re­fer­ring Guardian Me­dia to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

On whether Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear was con­tin­u­ing, Sturge al­so de­clined to com­ment, di­rect­ing ques­tions on its sta­tus to US of­fi­cials.

The min­is­ter’s com­ments come af­ter The Wash­ing­ton Post re­port­ed that in­ter­nal as­sess­ments by the DEA found the mil­i­tary strikes had not re­duced the amount of co­caine en­ter­ing the Unit­ed States, de­spite re­peat­ed pub­lic claims by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump that mar­itime drug traf­fick­ing had fall­en by as much as 98 per cent.

One DEA of­fi­cial com­pared the sit­u­a­tion to squeez­ing a bal­loon.

“When you squeeze the bal­loon on one side, it al­ways ex­pands on the oth­er side. They al­ways find the weak spots and ex­ploit them.”

De­spite those find­ings, Pen­ta­gon spokesman Sean Par­nell de­fend­ed the cam­paign, say­ing Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear was ac­com­plish­ing ex­act­ly what it had been de­signed to do by de­tect­ing, dis­rupt­ing and dis­man­tling or­gan­i­sa­tions in­volved in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and im­pos­ing “sys­temic fric­tion” on their op­er­a­tions.