Drug Lords Are Single Most Threat to Guyana’s Security After Venezuela

During the past week, the Government of Guyana has spent an unprecedented amount of time responding to the elevated level of aggression by Venezuela, which is now armed with a new decree to illegally annex a sizable part of Guyana’s oil-rich territorial sea.

The threat to Guyana’s sovereign territory posed by Venezuela has seen the President of Guyana, David Granger, taking his country’s protests to the CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting in Barbados – the highest political forum in the English-speaking Caribbean. As a graduate of international relations, I can state categorically that the number one role of a government is to protect its country’s territorial integrity.

With that said, the second most important role of a government is to maintain internal security, which, in the case of Guyana, is under threat with the high level of crime, mainly because drug lords have flooded the streets with a mind-boggling number of illegal guns smuggled from overseas.

Quoting verbatim from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s ‘Guyana 2014 Crime and Safety Report’:

“Drug trafficking organizations are prevalent and pose the biggest challenge to law enforcement in Georgetown. Airport security and customs officials frequently detain and arrest individuals attempting to smuggle drugs to the United States or other destinations. Apprehensions of drug "mules," often U.S. citizens perceived to be able to travel easily with their U.S. passport, have increased this past year... The most recent information from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime lists Guyana’s 2010 homicide rate as 18.4 per 100,000 people -- the fourth highest murder rate in South America behind Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. Guyana’s murder rate is three times higher than the United States... Defendants linked to drug organization often use attorneys, who are effective in getting cases dismissed or postponed until they seem no longer active. As a result, criminals go free on a regular basis.”

                                 
                                 This illegal submarine recently was found in Guyana.

While crime in Guyana is nothing new, over the last two decades it has changed in character with guns being the first choice of criminals. Many Guyanese can remember the days of 'choke and rob' when bandits would give you two slaps and two kicks, rob you at knife point and be on their way. 

Although Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, recently announced his intention to implement an amnesty for illegal guns, he needs to also urgently and aggressively attack this scourge at its source – the Guyanese drug lords who import the guns.

Guyana’s vulnerability to be swamped with illegal guns on the streets is extremely high because of the country's status as a preferred transshipment point for cocaine and other illegal drugs from Colombia. South America’s porous borders, its web of rivers and creeks, and the challenges security forces face patrolling the harsh rain forest, allow drug cartels to transport cocaine across the continent virtually undetected.

Cocaine in lumber for transshipment.

There are a number of reasons why there is a direct link between the transshipment of drugs and a rise in the number of illegal guns. Guyanese drug lords who successfully facilitate the shipment of South American cocaine to Canada, the United States and Europe, receive payment in cash, cocaine and guns. It is easy to bank or invest the cash or to ship the cocaine they receive in fish, logs, shrimp or in suitcases through the international airport, but there is only one way to convert the guns to cash and that is to sell them in the streets of Guyana. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the average street criminal in Guyana does not have the means to smuggle guns and ammunition into the country. Gun smuggling is organized crime, which is directly linked to drug trafficking.

There have been instances of drugs entering Guyana in the bumpers of vehicles shipped from Miami, in shipping barrels, and smuggled across the borders from Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname. One thing I am certain of is that where there are drugs, there are guns; it’s like smoke and fire. 

One of the illegal guns and ammunition.

This point in Guyana’s history is an opportune time to cleanse the country of known drug lords who have over the past decades been operating openly and flaunting wealth which goes unquestioned by the Guyana Revenue Authority.  Chargé d' Affaires of the United States Embassy in Guyana, Bryan Hunt, has signaled his government’s intention to work with the recently elected APNU+AFC coalition government on a number or areas including drug trafficking.

For too long the judicial system in Guyana has acted as the refuge of well-known drug lords by stalling deportation proceedings on outdated legal grounds. The laws need to be changed immediately to allow for speedy extraditions of drug lords. The Minister of Public Security should only have power to appeal a decision of the court, but not power to block an extradition once the courts have decided that there is sufficient evidence for an extradition. The point here is, let the courts decide.

While the U.S. and Guyana are said to be working on several key amendments to their extradition agreement, perhaps of equal importance is for the Government of Guyana, through an Act of Parliament, to grant the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) powers to independently intercept drug shipments on Guyana soil and make arrests of drug lords only in cases where extradition is warranted.

This proposal might come in for some criticism, so any drug lord arrested should be handed over to Guyanese authorities within 12 hours because the government still has an obligation to protect all its citizens at home and abroad. Allowing the DEA to arrest drug lords on Guyana soil would put a huge dent in the drug trade and thus reduce the number of illegal guns on the streets.