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The GDF has never been battle-tested

Jan 27, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

On January 24, 2019, the Department of Public Information (DPI) carried on its Facebook page, a press release about President’s Granger address of the same day to the Guyana Defence Force. Without question, the President’s presentation is the best and most comprehensive articulation ever of Guyana’s defence policy.
No previous President, living or dead, could point to such a clear and detailed explanation of the defence policy of the government. Not Burnham, not Hoyte, and certainly none of the PPP Presidents, from Jagan to Ramotar.
The government is belatedly making an attempt to demonstrate that it does have sector policies, and that the country is not being run on automatic pilot. If every Minister did what the President did last week – outline their respective sector policies – then the public approval ratings of the government would improve.
But it is suspected that this cannot be done, simply because policy formulation is at best undeveloped within the APNU+AFC administration. This, however, is an issue for another day.
Venezuela’s actions of recent, in what Guyana says is its territorial waters, remind us that a country’s defence policy is best assessed, not simply in terms of what is on paper, but the extent to which it can be implemented. The APNU+AFC defence policy, so well-sounding and no doubt well-meaning, was not able to deter the Venezuelans from chasing away a seismic exploration vessel just before Christmas.
In other words, there was an intrusion into Guyana’s waters and there was nothing which the nation could do about it other than complain to the international community. It is in this regard that while the President’s presentation was highly impressive, it did burnish some incidents involving Guyana’s territorial integrity.
The GDF’s suppression of the Rupununi uprising in 1969 and the chasing out of a surveying team from the New River Triangle have been painted by PNC governments, including the present APNU+AFC administration, as acts of heroism on the part of the Guyana Defence Force. Yet, there remains concerns over the GDF’s response in the former, and more than exaggeration in the latter.
The Rupununi incident was never an uprising in the true sense of the word. And the actions of the GDF in that operation are still today being debated. At least one individual has a special weblog which makes biting criticisms of the disproportionate response by the defence force in that operation.
In the case of the Surinamese operations, these can hardly be deemed as battles. Yet many Guyanese have accepted the idea that the Guyana Defence Force defeated the Surinamese military in those incidents. The fact remains that the Guyana Defence Force has never been battle-tested. The above incidents can best be described as skirmishes.
The one time when the possibility of a true battle presented itself to the government of the day was in 1967, when the Venezuelans took over Guyana’s half of Ankoko Island. The PNC government declined to deploy the Guyana Defence Force.
And despite all of today’s hullabaloo about defending the territorial integrity of Guyana, Venezuela still remains in full control, after more than fifty years, of a part of Guyana’s territory. As the GDF looks on haplessly.
Dave Martins sang the popular local anthem “Not a Blade of Grass”. The song should have been titled “Not Another Blade of Grass” because there is a lot of Guyanese grass which is still being occupied by Venezuela. And the GDF cannot do anything about it.

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