The United States is concerned that drug flows through the Caribbean are on the rise, according to a top US anti-narcotics official who said Washington remains “very concerned” that high level traffickers are not being arrested and prosecuted.
“For many years now, the flow through the Caribbean has been fairly low but we have begun to see that flow begin to tick upwards again so that is an obvious concern of ours,” Richard Glenn, the Director of the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) said during an interview with several Caribbean journalists including from Stabroek News in Washington earlier this month.
The US has over the years been assisting Caribbean nations including Guyana to combat the drug trade and other transnational crimes that threaten regional security through initiatives under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI). Under the CBSI, the US, CARICOM member nations, and the Dominican Republic are improving citizen safety throughout the Caribbean by working together to substantially reduce illicit trafficking, increase public safety and security, and promote social justice.
Security is key to citizen safety and economic opportunity, Glenn pointed out. “Without security, the economic side doesn’t have room to grow,” he said. He highlighted that the INL focuses on four main areas to improve security namely law enforcement professionalisation, counter-narcotics, combatting trans-national organised crime and supporting the rule of law and human rights.
Glenn disclosed that since 2010 when the CBSI began, US$437 million has been expended under the initiative with the INL portion at US$195 million. He noted that it is a substantial investment from the US government. “We strive to help make the region more secure and more safe…so that the cycle of crime and poverty can be broken,” he asserted.
He noted that the Caribbean for a long time has been a transit zone for illegal narcotics primarily coming out of Colombia. While praising the “tremendous efforts” that Caribbean nations have made to interdict drugs and other illicit flows, he observed that these flows have begun to move upward and the US is concerned.
In response to a question from Stabroek News, he said they are “very concerned” that the big drug traffickers are not being prosecuted. According to Glenn, this is why the US government focuses much of their assistance on building strong institutions so that the police and prosecuting agencies are strong enough to resist or confront those who have the political, commercial, or other ties to be able to hide their illegal activities.
“When you can build an institution that is strong enough to resist those forces, that’s when we begin to win,” he said. However, he said, there is a long way to go. In terms of police being compromised by drug traffickers, he said that this is a concern but also highlighted the vetting process for government and police officials they would be working with to determine if they have been engaged in gross violations of human rights or whether the individual is, or has participated in illegal activity. “There is a vetting process to…attempt to make sure that we’re not providing that kind of assistance to those individuals,” he said.
As it relates to the recently established Drug Enforcement Administra-tion (DEA) unit in Guyana, Glenn said as it is new, the feedback is limited so far. However, he pointed out that in order to set up a vetted unit, there has to be a high level of confidence in the local police. “The simple fact that the unit is being set up is an expression of that confidence that we’ll be able to work effectively with the Guyanese police in that vetted unit,” he said.
Decriminalise
Meantime, as it relates to calls by some to decriminalise marijuana in some countries, Glenn pointed out that the US government fully supports the UN conventions on narcotics control and also “fully recognise that countries in those conventions are given a certain amount of flexibility especially in terms of drug use and so how countries apply those conventions and the laws that they pass to deal with the drug consumption in their countries is a matter of domestic policy.” In this regard, he observed that some US states have decriminalised marijuana but the US federal government recognises that marijuana is illegal and “it’s a harmful substance and we support the UN conventions.”
As it relates to other areas that the INL focuses on, Glenn said they are going after those who launder and smuggle money in the region, taking the revenue and the capital away from those organisations and hampering their ability to break laws and influence in the region. He also pointed out that they are working with the justice sector- courts and prosecutors – and providing assistance such as training or equipment to get those systems to work as they should so that cases are dealt with expeditiously.
It was noted that in many countries in the hemisphere, the legal framework and the authorities that are needed for police, prosecutors and judges to effectively detect, investigate and prosecute crimes such as human trafficking, need development. Partnering with the US Department of Justice, has seen legal advisers deployed to many countries and they work with ministries to draft legislation or expose persons to models of what could be legislation that could lead to more effective police work and more effective prosecutions, Glenn said.
He emphasised that human rights is a key component of the work they do and it runs through all the programmes.
Meantime, the INL director acknowledged that CBSI funding has gone down incrementally over the years but pointed out that at the beginning there was a large initial investment for capital expenditures and the follow on activities are less costly. He said they are getting to a point where they can sustain the funding that they get for the CBSI and use it effectively.
Olga Bashbush, an official in the US State Department’s Office of Caribbean Affairs said there is an ongoing dialogue with governments involved in the partnership. “As CBSI evolves, we may not always be funding the same type of programme, it depends on the need of the countries and we do it in partnership with your governments,” she said.
Glenn said US Embassies in the various countries are also very involved. “We have our big plans up here in Washington but obviously we don’t know the local conditions as well as our embassies and so we very much empower both our ambassadors and our INL directors who are there to administer our assistance programmes to work with local governments to find out not only what are the greatest needs but where does the political will exist so that the funding that we administer can be most effective. If there is no political will behind the initiative, we can spend a lot of money and we can spend a lot of money on a lot of nothing so that’s why that is so key to have both our ambassadors and our INL directors very involved in determining what are the best ways to administer those assistance funds,” he said.
