The army that never saw combat

Jun 03, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Guyana Defence Force has never fought a war. It has been training its officers and ranks for fifty years to prepare for the eventuality of conflict in which it may be required to be deployed, but the military has never had an opportunity in over fifty years to put its training into use.
The Guyana Police Force has over the same period had to battle with crime. It has been in a constant struggle to overcome crime.
The perception has always been that the Guyana Defence Force has been favoured over the Guyana Police Force. The perception has been that its members enjoy better benefits and working conditions than those of the Guyana Police Force, whose lives are put at risk every day. The Guyana Defence Force is seen as a ‘sitting’ army while the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Prison Service are seen as ‘active’ forces.
The Guyana Prison Service is perceived as the least favoured of the three Disciplined Services. The Guyana Prison Service is understaffed. It does not have enough personnel to effectively man the prisons in Guyana. Recently, after the prison riots and the deaths of seventeen prisoners, prison wardens reported ill. It was believed that this action was taken out of fear of reprisals from the prisoners.
The government has indicated that it will be recruiting increased prison officers to improve the security of the prisons. But the government ought to know that it has not been easy for both the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Prison Service to attract recruits.
On the other hand, the Guyana Defence Force has only been constrained in its recruitment by the lack of finance. The army has no problems in finding persons interested in joining it. This is because the army has better salaries and working conditions, and because the job is seen as one in which you receive training but really never have to be engaged in any conflict. In other words, you receive training but never have to put that training to use.
The government will find problems in recruiting adequate numbers of prison officers. The best and brightest tend to prefer the Guyana Defence Force first, and then the Guyana Police Force.
Yet if our prisons are not secure, the entire system of law enforcement suffers. If the prisons are not secure, those who are sentenced to incarceration can escape, thereby compromising the principle that criminal activity should be punishable. If prisoners escape then the security of the society is threatened.
Unless the members of the Guyana Prison Service are carefully vetted, it could compromise the security of prisons. The wrong persons may be employed, and they could be in cahoots with the prisoners. The process of weeding out the ‘bad eggs’ is therefore going to reduce the pool of persons from which recruits can be drawn.
The only way to increase this pool is to try to discourage recruitment into the army, and to instead favour both the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Prison Service, both ‘active’ forces, over that of a ‘sitting’ army.
This may be asking too much of a government in which a number of senior personnel are ex-army officials, and in which veterans are being constantly appointed to public office.
If the security of the State is as important as is claimed, then something has to be done to encourage greater recruitment into the Prison Service and the police force, and less into the military, which has never fought a war and which will probably never ever see combat.

2 thoughts on “The army that never saw combat”

JuanMcLeland June 3, 2016 at 6:45 am

The Peeper needs to seriously research the history of combat and other operations and missions carried out by the GDF since its formation. What about the Rupununi rebellion , the New River Triangle and the use of it military intelligence in internal security operations against the WPA .
1. 19CAGriffith48 June 17, 2016 at 9:17 pm
  
  Foundation of the GDF by Lt.Col (Ret’d) Compton Hartley Liverpool addresses your questions and a topic Peeping Tom is too ill informed to address as his above captioned heading shows ,he is out to lunch and clueless about the GDF.