Guyana is sleepwalking into narco-statehood

Feb 16, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Revelations in the international media of a Guyana-Italy cocaine conspiracy are ominous. Evidence that Guyanese narco-traffickers are working hand-in-hand with Italian Mafiosi confirms fears that Guyana is sleepwalking, step by step, into narco-statehood.
This time, two dozen suspected narco-traffickers linked to the Gambino and Bonanno crime families and the Italian crime syndicate known as Ndrangheta were arrested last week in New York and Italy during the coordinated American-Italian Operation New Bridge.
The clans were in the advanced stages of plans to smuggle some 500 kg (1,102 pounds) of pure cocaine from Guyana in South America to the port of Gioia Tauro in Calabria. Italian investigators estimated the street value of the shipment to be US$1 billion.  Guyanese recall that the Malaysian news agency Bernama reported that a container from Guyana was intercepted with cocaine in coconut milk in November 2012. Two men who managed the New Sococo Enterprise on the East Coast were convicted and given light sentences for their roles.
Narcotics-trafficking has been increasing over the past twenty years. The first signal of Guyana’s involvement in ‘industrial scale’ narcotics-trafficking was the October 1998 apprehension of 3,148 kg (about 6,940 pounds) of cocaine valued at US$288M on the MV Danielsen in Port Georgetown. Another notorious event was the December 2007 ‘discovery’ of the  impressive 1,100 m-long illegal airstrip with a burnt-out Let 410 UVP-E turboprop aeroplane with a payload of 1,615 kg “ near Wanatoba, 130 km up the Corentyne River.
Guyana’s counter-narcotics enforcement agencies have been strangely incapable of identifying the criminal cocaine cartels which have been constructing illegal airstrips and coordinating the air traffic enabling the large-scale importation of illegal narcotics into the country.
Narco-trafficking has been driving this country’s high rates of money-laundering, gun-running, execution-murders and armed robberies. Violent crime is scaring foreign investors, driving away the educated élite, undermining economic growth and impeding social development. A former Crime Chief warned that ‘execution-type killings’ – many of which are suspected to be related to the narcotics-trafficking – account for about one-third of all murders.  The lucrative narco-trade is said to earn the equivalent of 20 per cent or more of Guyana’s reported GDP.
The trade, however, also spawns armed gangs which use their wealth to purchase political influence and suborn the security forces in order to protect their interests. Money-launderers associated with narcotics-traffickers also distort the domestic economy by pricing their goods and services below market rates which undermine legitimate businesses.
The annual US Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report – INCSR – has been a useful guide to the local trade. The INCSR, for the first time in 2004, cited the Guyana Government’s “lack of political will” as a contributory factor to the continuing ineffectiveness of the national counter-narcotics programme.
Reports, since then, have focused unerringly on the remarkable relationship between the inactivity of Government’s counter-narcotics agencies on the one hand and the vitality of the narco-trafficking and money-laundering cartels on the other. INCSRs suggest that, throughout Bharrat Jagdeo’s presidency, there were not any large domestic seizures of cocaine nor has any important member of a narco-trafficking cartel been punished by a court of law.
Last year’s INCSR noted: “Guyana is a transit country for cocaine destined for the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and West Africa. Cocaine originating in Colombia is smuggled to Venezuela and onward to Guyana by sea or air. Smugglers also transit land borders with Brazil, Venezuela, and Suriname. Cocaine is often concealed in legitimate commodities and smuggled via commercial maritime vessels, air transport, human couriers, or the postal services…”
The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration has not seriously confronted the challenge of narcotics-trafficking. It did launch a National Drug Strategy Master Plan nine years ago, but allowed it to peter out without being fully implemented. The Plan’s main components – the National Anti-Narcotics Co-ordinating Secretariat; National Anti-Narcotics Commission; Joint Intelligence Co-ordination Centre; Joint Anti-Narcotics Committee and Regional Anti-Drugs Units — never functioned fully.
The PPPC administration over the last decade also contrived to evade the establishment of a permanent US Drug Enforcement Administration office in Georgetown. Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon once announced that a DEA office in Guyana would be welcome, suggesting that “certain details” had to be discussed before-hand. Then, former Minister of Home Affairs Ms Gail Teixeira kept up the jape by saying that “talks are ongoing” to establish the DEA office.  When Mr Clement Rohee took over the Ministry, he could say only that he “could not pronounce definitively” on the matter.
Former Ambassador Roland Bullen who saw through the PPPC charade, told this administration frankly several years ago: “… it is demoralising to see drug shipments originating in Guyana, seized abroad, while narco-criminals roam freely here.”
The current Guyana-Italy cocaine conspiracy confirms the validity of ‘Bullen’s law.’ Guyana seems to be sleepwalking into narco-statehood.

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