Making headlines for the wrong reasons

Feb 13, 2014 Editorial

Guyana has been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Of course, some of the headlines have been about good things like the environmental preservation and for reaching some of the Millennium Development Goals but for the greater part people are only made aware of Guyana when something horrible happens.
In the international community, this country is differentiated from the African country of Ghana by the Jonestown Affair. When we say Guyana people hear Ghana until we explain that we are a South American country and the only English-speaking one at that, on the mainland. Indeed, we are trying desperately to lose even that status because our grasp of the language is fast diminishing.
At the start of the week there was a report that a flight out of Guyana was under the threat of sabotage. The airline owned and operated by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Airlines, reported that it got a credible threat out of Barbados. Later, the authorities said that the person phoning in the threat spoke with a Trinidadian accent.
Immediately Guyana got international exposure. Every major newscast turned its attention to Guyana, and many rushed to their archives to dust off material that many of us had consigned to the pages of history. For example not many of us paid any great attention to the fact that at least three heads of state were overthrown shortly after they visited Guyana. One of them was Yakubu Gowan of Nigeria.
Indira Gandhi visited and a few years after she was assassinated. King Moshoeshoe of Lesotho came and was sent into exile.
Guyana made headlines for being the so-called country of one of the most wanted men in the world, Adnan al Shukrijuma. This individual’s claim to Guyana rested with his father who was a Moulvi in Florida and who has since died. This name helped put Guyana in the map even as the international broadcasters remembered that two Guyanese men are now languishing in American jails for plotting to blow up the fuel pipelines at the John F Kennedy International Airport.
The dust had scarcely settled on that issue when news came that the Italian Mafia was involved in the local drug trade and were working with the Mexican cartel. The fact that just a few short years ago many young men were dying because of the drug trade must have meant nothing. Things had reached the stage where the capital had almost become a ghost town.
There were killings and vendettas and all because of a rampant drug trade. The now jailed Shaheed Roger Khan was quoted that it took millions of dollars a month to just keep his men.
The reality is that knowing that Guyana has its porous borders which the authorities cannot effectively patrol just about everyone who has contact with the cocaine trade knows that it is easy to get drugs in and out of Guyana. But reading about the cruelty that passes in Mexico, where judges and policemen are killed, and knowing about the brutality of the Mafia one must now ask whether the people involved were really aware of what they were doing to the country.
All day yesterday there was nothing other than talk of the smashing of the drug ring. But for all the talk the country has allowed the world to see exactly how much respect the international community has for Guyana.
Neither the Federal authorities in the United States nor those in Italy said a word to Guyana. Our investigators were left in the dark. And there is a reason for this. Everybody outside of Guyana feels that our anti-drug enforcers consort with people who feed information to the underworld.
Even before this drug bust the Americans were openly saying that they would not share information with Guyana. We were angry but the fact remained that we simply did not appear to be serious to halt the drug trade.
Brigadier David Granger said, on Wednesday, that the government would only arrest the small people with a few grams, and ignore those who deal in tons of cocaine. The international drug fighters believe this.

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