By Nigel Williams
Declaring drug trafficking one of the greatest threats to public order in the region, Commander of the US Liaison Office in Guyana, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stanley, has posited that stronger civil-military relations is the lodestone for progress in the security/ defence sector here.
He expressed the belief that progress would come by the creation of the right venue and environment where those who are knowledgeable on matters of security and defence could come to the table and offer alternatives and solutions to the security challenges the country faces. His views have come at a time when Guyana’s security forces seem unable to stem the tide of gang violence and stop the flow of guns and drugs crossing the borders.
In an interview with this newspaper on Tuesday, Stanley disclosed that the US Southern Command (USSC) whose head, Admiral Jim Stavridis, he represented believed that partnerships and shared capacity were what were needed in the fight against crime here. He said the US government would continue to help Guyana to build up its capacity while at the same time better deal with its threats.
Asked what appeared to be the biggest threats to security here, Stanley said the US had its perspectives on what that threat was, but its perspective might not be Guyana’s. “So what we have to do is to work to find common ground,” he told this newspaper.
Stanley said that the US had embarked on a programme to facilitate civil-military dialogue and a conference to this effect was held at the Grand Coastal Inn last year. Another conference, he said, was planned for August this year. “We need a variety of voices because security and defence belong to all Guyanese,” Stanley asserted.
Asked why the US was so interested in facilitating civil-military dialogue in this country, Stanley said because Washington and Georgetown were partners. “We share the same threats and challenges and we cannot do it alone we need to partner,” he added.
He said this policy of partnership was not only reflected in security cooperation, but in the areas of health, governance, human rights and other initiatives.
Biggest threat
Speaking directly to the issue of security, Stanley quoted from the US Southern Command 2008 posture statement, which said that there exists no conventional military threat to the US developing in the region, nor does it see any major military conflict between nations in Latin America or the Caribbean. Stanley said that although some historical competition and occasional tension between neighbours existed, the US was confident that any disagreements would be resolved through dialogue — strength in the region and not through state-on-state violence. “However, public security threats such as crime, gangs and drug trafficking and [drug] use pose the principal near-term security challenges to the region,” Stanley quoted the Southern Command posture statement as saying.
He said given the depth of the linkages in the Americas these ills pose a threat to the US as well, noting that the US State Department of Justice National Drug Intelligence Centre reports that there were an estimated 5,500 US deaths that listed cocaine poisoning as a factor in 2004 — a 43% increase from 1999. In the area of drugs, Stanley said trafficking was one of the greatest threats to public order in the hemisphere, noting that the Andean Ridge in South America was the world’s only significant source of coca cultivation.
He said cocaine was the fuel that fed many public security ills in Latin America and the Caribbean from criminal violence, to corruption, to political instability. “But the drugs trade toxic effects are not isolated to our south for it is estimated that several thousand people will die this year due to cocaine-related events that can be traced to illicit drugs from this region,” Stanley said.
He added that the global business of illegal production, distribution and consumption was devastating societies in Latin America and the Caribbean, noting that narco-traffickers continuously adjusted their operations to adapt to law enforcement efforts by developing new trafficking routes and consumer markets. Consequently, Stanley said, nations that were once isolated from the illicit drug trade were now experiencing its corrosive effects. He mentioned that most of the countries in the Caribbean were now struggling to counteract the drug trade’s destabilizing and corrupting influence.
Crime and violence
As regards crime and violence, Stanley mentioned that these have become major threats to the security of many nations, not least Guyana. He noted that murder was now one of the five major causes of death in the region, with the annual homicide rate for Latin America and the Caribbean being one of the highest in the world at 27.5 murders per 100,000 people. “This murder rate stands in stark contrast to 5.5 in the US and one in Western Europe,” Stanley said quoting from the USSC posture statement.
He added that recent surveys in Central America report that two-thirds of the respondents cite crime as the number one problem facing their countries. Stanley pointed out that the crime rate trends were exacerbated by the growing influence of gangs and were severely challenging security and civil society throughout Latin America, with some gang population estimates reaching over 100,000 in Central America alone. He mentioned that primarily these were urban gangs consisting of disenfranchised youths, thus creating a challenging long-term and generational aspect of this threat. Further, Stanley noted that in recognition of the need for broader interagency involvement on crime and the gangs issue in the region, the USSC has worked with counterparts in the intelligence community, in federal development agencies and in domestic US law enforcement organisations to improve mutual understanding of these complex social issues. He said too that gang challenges and the need to address broad rule of law issues regionally have also led in part to expanded personnel representation at USSC by the Federal Bureau of Investi-gation, the US Agency for International Development, the State Department and the Drug Enforcement Adminis-tration. Last year, USSC hosted a major interagency coordination group conference on gangs in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The conference, Stanley said, underscored the pivotal role the US law enforcement and development agencies play in countering the regional criminal threat and linked disparate US agency and law enforcement representatives among other issues.
