It was predictable that the US Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released on March 1, would be critical of the Government of Guyana’s counter-narcotics performance during 2009. It was expected, equally, that administration spokesmen would respond animatedly to the report rather than adopt its reasonable recommendations to remedy defects in local law enforcement.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon led the assault by announcing that the government’s initial reaction to the report was to call for “more walk, less talk.” Buried in the bombast, however, was his meek admission that Guyana needed “more assistance specifically as it relates to the flow of information” and greater collaboration at the bilateral and international levels. Dr Luncheon iterated the opinion that “Guyana cannot continue to bear the brunt of a one-sided burden in the fight against narco-trafficking.”
Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee joined the attack by describing the US report as “downright deceptive and misleading.” Mr Rohee went further to insist that, contrary to the report’s assertions, most of the government’s objectives in its 2005-2009 National Drug Strategy Master Plan had been achieved. His own ministerial Task Force on Narcotics and Illegal Weapons, unsurprisingly, determined that “92 per cent of the programmes under the Master Plan have been implemented.”
It seems, though, that those achievements have not had an impact. Mr Rohee, addressing the Inter-American Development Bank-sponsored National Crime Prevention Conference last November, admitted that the country and the security sector had been faced with “threats from the international and local drug trade, violence that accompanies the drug trade, escalation of violent crimes including murders and robberies, international terrorism and its negative consequences, involvement and exploitation of youth in crime and domestic violence.”
The facts are that, despite attracting a few favourable comments in the report, the country’s two existing counter-narcotic agencies − Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit and Police Narcotics Branch – do not possess the aircraft, boats, all-terrain vehicles and personnel needed to secure the country’s main international transit points and borders. They seem incapable of reaching, much less investigating, drug cartels that continue to construct huge illegal airstrips which can accommodate foreign cocaine transport aircraft.
The Master Plan might look pretty on paper but, in practice, its essential elements have never been put in place regardless of the percentages that Mr Rohee cited. At the base of the plan, for example, should be the ten Regional Anti-Drugs Units which ought to have been activated to provide raw information which the professional intelligence services can use. At the next higher levels should be the Joint Intelligence Co-ordination Centre and Joint Anti-Narcotics Committee. The National Anti-Narcotics Co-ordinating Secretariat − the plan’s bureaucracy and main administrative organ − should be the hub of the apparatus. The National Anti-Narcotics Commission chaired by the President should be at the apex of the system. Mr Rohee must explain whether these organs have actually been established and are functioning fully.
It is misleading for Dr Luncheon to call for “more assistance specifically as it relates to the flow of information” and greater international collaboration. This administration has deliberately wrecked the UK-funded Security Sector Reform Plan and dodged the establishment of a permanent office of the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Guyana. It has also chosen to affront international opinion by keeping in place several senior officials – in both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Guyana Police Force – who have had their US visas suspended by the Department of State.
How can foreign states provide security information to people like these?
