Why Tourism is no longer sustainable as the economic engine of the Caribbean.

Image: At left the CIA logo, George Bush was once the CIA director, it should be no surprise that during his tenure as “President” of the US that crack cocaine saw its debut on the streets of inner-city communities in the US, he is the original OG, of crack dealing.    

U.S. President George H. Bush holds a bag of crack cocaine as he poses for photographers in the Oval Office of the White House, Sept. 6, 1989 in Washington after delivering his first nationally televised speech. Bush outlined his $7.9 billion plan for the war on drugs.

“The station chiefs ran things in Southeast Asia,” Taylor stressed, adding that the first secretary at the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok had a private airline for smuggling drugs to Saigon, as the CIA was well aware. “I tried to catch him, but there was no assistance. In fact, the CIA actively supported the Thai Border Police, who were involved in trafficking.”

Taylor shrugged. “The CIA would do anything to achieve its goals. Valentine after giving such damning evidence against the CIA, and by association the US government, would drop a bomb of immense proportions, tacitly implying that one of his informants was murdered: “Which brings me back to Gary Webb. The CIA wasn’t happy that Poe and Young were talking. Poe was told to shut up after his chat with me, and he did. But Young sold his story to a major Hollywood studio for $100,000. And that was unforgivable.

On April Fool’s Day, 2011, Thai police found Bill Young’s corpse. It had been perfectly arranged with a pistol in his one hand and a crucifix in the other. Maybe he was depressed too?

And it is seriously depressing, the fact our utterly corrupt government, aided by its criminal co-conspirators in the mainstream media, pretends as if the CIA doesn’t deal drugs”. Douglas Valentine is the author of The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drug’s.

While working for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Michael Levine saw firsthand how the CIA and the State Department were protecting the drug trade:

“The Chang Mai factory the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam”.

“My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was charged with investigating all heroin and cocaine smuggling through the Port of New York. My unit became involved in investigating every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement. We could not avoid witnessing the CIA protecting major drug dealers. Not a single important source in Southeast Asia was ever indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it. CIA-owned airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our “allies.” CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money”. (pp. 165, 166) (Michael Levine: America’s “War on Drugs”: CIA Recruited Mercenaries and Drug-Traffickers).

Today the Latin American and Colombian problem is much more complexed than in the eighties and the effects regionally continue to be devastating. The Colombian government of late has begun to propose a peace plan which has proven to be very lucrative for the narco cartels many of which are ran by the “rebels”.

The Colombian: Peace Plan. The Colombian “peace plan” has as certain primary objectives some of which are end the civil war, repair the economy, and terminate the drug trade.

The peace plan is being coordinated with what he called the narco-rebels. Most of the funds that are to be used to achieve the perceived peace is to come from the US. After 34 years of fighting the Colombian government the Marxist Farc NLA have taken control of more than half of Colombia’s territory over 38000 people have died and more than 4 million displaced. The proposed peace to date has been unsuccessful. The Farc leadership has stated publicly that their goal is to establish a Marxist-Socialist state in Colombia, in order for them to achieve their stated goal the government must be overthrown, against such a back drop any peace plan is just that a “plan/dream”.(see Farcs:

1. Thomas B. Hunter, "FARC Proposes Anti-US Unity," Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 5, No. 6 (June 1, 1998), p. 16.

2. Ibid.

3. David Spencer, "A Lesson for Colombia," Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 9, No. 10 (October 1, 1997), p. 474.

4. Outside Colombia, the FARC has opened representative offices in Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, and Spain, and in 1998 sought unsuccessfully to open a sixth office in Brazil similar to what the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was allowed in Brazil during the early 1980s.

5. The Colombian National Police estimates that in 1997 about 3,155 guerrillas were directly involved in protecting drug crops, laboratories, and airstrips, as well as collecting war taxes from those associated with the drug business. Between 1994 and 1998, guerrillas fired over 160 times at Colombian police aircraft and helicopters on anti-drug operations, killing 44 anti-drug agents and wounding 75 others.

6. Jamie Dettmer, "Drug War on U.S. Streets Is Fought in Colombia," Insight on the News, November 24, 1997, p. 36).

With the Caribbean basin being so close to Colombia as this map shows, the use of the Caribbean as a drug trans-shipment point,  to Europe and North America, has increased as international pressure continues to ramp up against Mexican drug cartels. William Brownfield, an assistant U.S. Secretary of State in charge of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs said: “We see this crisis coming we even have some sense as to when it will arrive”. The crisis is being fuelled by Mexican drug cartels who are responding to increased police pressure along their northern border with the United States. But there is also an element of state-supported help as countries antagonistic to the United States, such as Venezuela, work closer with drug cartels, the analysts warned.

These sentiments were underscored during a Dec. 15 hearing in front of a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on drug trafficking, by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, who said there seems to be a lack of urgency as violence continues to grow in the Caribbean basin.

The problem is becoming so dire in the Dominican Republic, Menendez said, that a presidential candidate in that country recently warned that his country is close to becoming “a narco-state.”

“He said that the government is incapable of stopping drug traffickers,”

Analysts with the state department say Colombian narco cartels are increasingly using Caribbean countries as trans-shipment points for drugs headed to the United States and Europe. These routes were highly popular during the 1980s when Colombian cartels made Miami and southern Florida hugely popular entry points for illicit cocaine shipments, the analysts said. “I have observed with great concern the security situation in this region,” said Liliana Ayalde, deputy administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development and a former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay “Over the last ten years, there’s been an alarming escalation of homicides in the region,” she said.

In the 1980s law enforcement began choking off maritime trafficking at the same time that Colombian cartels were being dismantled because of international pressure, according to analysts.

Brownfield said this served to shift major drug trafficking activity to Mexico where home-grown cartels used age-old smuggling routes along the porous overland border. But the explosion of violence over the last six years in Mexico has drawn international pressure on the cartels, who are shifting operations further south in neighbouring Latin American countries.

He predicted that recent intervention efforts, targeting Central America, will begin to take hold this year, at which time the cartels are predicted to shift the smuggling routes into the waters of the Caribbean, where tiny island nations, are vulnerable and not equipped to deal the volume of money and violence, that the cartels bring with them.

“I am neither satisfied with the progress being made on the ground, nor the news and information I am receiving from the region,” Menendez said. He noted that in the Bahamas, the murder of 104 people last year set a new homicide record for that island nation that had been set only a year earlier. “But that pales in comparison to Jamaica, which has become the murder capital of the Caribbean,” Menendez said, with more than 1,400 people murdered last year.

Early signs support Brownfield’s prediction. Rodney Benson, an assistant administrator with the DEA, described an operation last July in which the DEA helped the Dominican Republic arrest a member of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, who had been coordinating cocaine shipments by air from Venezuela to the Dominican Republic.

And while the arrest was counted as a successful operation, Benson said, the Dominican Republic was unprepared for the ensuing violence of reprisal that wracked the country.

Menendez said that despite this spike in violence, there are troubling signs of the drug cartels staying one step ahead of law enforcement. One example is the amount of money the U.S. government is allotting to this fight. While the focus and the funds are on Mexico and Central America, Menendez noted that funding for anti-drug efforts in the Caribbean are actually expected to drop to $73 million from $77 million a year earlier.

“If we don’t pay attention to the Caribbean,” Menendez warned, “we’re going to repeat history.”

The information and statistics above offers well documented proof of a highly organized sophisticated thrust by Narco Cartels, out of Mexico in Collusion with Colombians and other South American countries and most recently Caribbean islands, like Belize,Venezuela,the Dominican Republic and others as transhipment point for drugs destined for Europe and America.

I indicated since 2003 that the Mara Salvatuchra or MS 13 , and the Trinitarios (the Dominicano gang active throughout the US , St Thomas, St Croix, Belize and peripherally through proxies in some Antillean islands), are the proxies of some powerful Mexican “narco-cartels” . Increasingly Caribbean gangs are as I have stated previously,   displaying certain characteristics most often associated with terrorist organizations i.e. kidnappings used as a political bargaining chip whilst simultaneously using a kidnapping as a revenue stream, their use of highly sophisticated military grade weapons, tactics of dismemberment of rivals and even civilians as a means of sowing terror and fear in their opposition, local populations and the elite within the state apparatus.  One of the most recent contemporary examples of a narco-state in the making is Sint Maarten, a former Dutch colony and formerly part of the now non-existent Netherlands Antilles.

Sint Maarten, sit's high up in the bow of the Smaragades Belt, the half circle of Caribbean islands that stretches to the coast of Miami. The uninitiated on first sight may see Sint Maarten as one of the most precious pearls of the Caribbean, with its panoramic light green lush hill's during the rainy season, juxtaposed by countless bone-white beaches, that slowly taper off into, majestic, crystal clear, infinite variants, of Azure blue seas, that are literally natural reservoirs of therapeutic healing, for both visitor and locals alike.  The shores of Sint Maarten are in a word breathtaking; nature saw fit to grace the island with disconcerting ease, a seemingly infinite ecosystem of idyllic settings, suited to endless bliss and perfect serenity.

Sint Maarten is known for its pot-pouri of gastronomic delights on a global scale. It is also known for its eclectic nightlife. And yet the pristine virgin that was once Sint Maarten conceals within her bosom, many glaring inequities, some outright diabolical and inhumane. Amid the luxury, there is also abject poverty and squalor as is attested to, by a visit to the many "shanty towns" and depressed areas. This is not the tale of, the wonderful tourist resort; this telling is a "reality" tale, a tale of a weird and wonderful island, home to many, patrimony to few. For only the true indigent can trace their lineage on Sint Maarten to the builders of the "slave wall's", those who can trace their lineage to the ancestors who built the rock wall's, found throughout the island, are the real heirs of the rich oral and  spiritual values of "Soualiga/Oualichie", today called Sint Maarten.

Sint Maarten has become known for its traffic in exotic and beautiful women from all over the globe, Eastern Europeans to Colombians and Dominicana's, the island is a literal fleshpot that attracts some of the biggest names in the international entertainment industry to its shores. Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, Kanye West and most recently Drake have all been known to vacation here and in some instances own homes in the many exclusive and gated communities here on the island. The drug and prostitution sub-sector's fuels and feeds off of each other. John van den Heuvel the ultimate insider, a former detective in the Netherlnds, turned journalist, wrote in chapter 10 (Pirates Nest or Bounty Island), 0f his book   "Snow over Curacao that": "The Dutch half of Sint Maarten, has intrepid narco-gangs that use the Dutch/French island as a springboard, for multiton cocaine transports to Europe". He reported that: "according to a confidential report of the Core team North and Eastern Netherlands on Sint Maarten the situation, is extremely alarming. There are high ranking figureheads of the Russian and Turkish mafia's respectively on Sint Maarten". No wonder that, suddenly an influx of Eastern European and Russian "exotic" dancer's, have been flocking to Sint Maarten. Van den Heuvel through documented evidence named Sint Maarten and Aruba, as "extremely important" bases for the money laundering operations of La Cosa Nostra, the infamous Sicilian mafia outfit that held sway over Sicily for centuries.   

Consequently the fully and semi-automatic American made guns flooding the streets of Sint Maarten, will have to be sought at its source, which is within the so called upper classes, nestled comfortably in the grasp of the so called “businessmen” aided and abetted by their political stooges and lackeys. The following is from the eminent Caribbean criminologist Darius Figueria, thye situation in Trinidad and Tobago is a mirror of what is happening throughout the region and is excerpted herein for context.  From Figueira: “The fact of the matter is that in Trinidad and Tobago, the archetypal criminal is a young African male living in the urban sprawl of the East-West Corridor, between the ages of 15 and 25, with three-quarter pants, a basketball shoes and a vest. That's the archetypal criminal that everybody beats on and looks for. But the fact of the matter is there is a structure, a hierarchy. And on top of the archetypal criminal in Trinidad is a non-African, decent, respectable, upstanding pillar of civil society”. “They are machines of criminality and they want to stick them with that curse of being criminogenic areas—they call them hot spots. But the reality is the hottest spots in Trinidad are those areas where reputedly upper-class, decent and

respectable citizens of Trinidad and Tobago sit down and make their multi-million dollar drug deals.

But surely they don't have to take those risks anymore when there are construction contracts passing around?

What you must understand is that a vast majority of businesses are fronts. So you're not going to catch them in anything—there will be a flow of money, but that's it. Where you catching them with their hand on the product? And then what are you going to do?

Let me give you a salient example of the reality. In the second half of the 1990s, with the collapse of Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, and the collapse of the Cali cartel, a cartel arose in Colombia called Valle Norte, or North Valley. In the second half of the 1990s, this was the cartel with which a significant proportion of Caribbean drug traffickers traded. In fact, it is the Valle Norte cartel that made them super-rich.

Do you know the United States of America has dismantled the Valle Norte cartel and has a significant proportion of its leadership locked up? They are making jail right now or awaiting trial. Do you know that it is therefore a highly likely scenario that the US has the evidence from these members of Valle Norte with which they can come now to the Caribbean and request certain significant civil society leaders be extradited?

They're not going to do that.

If America does that—what is likely to happen to the political stability of the Caribbean? Because as you start to dig and you get linkages to the judiciary, and to the politicians and to the financial sector—America then is in a mess. America is collecting extraditable evidence but America's use of it is geopolitical”.

  

The Syrian, Indian, Anglo Saxon, French Creole and Chinese illicit drug traffickers became traffickers of renown when they became employees of the Medellin cartel led by Pablo Escobar.

With the destruction of the Medellin cartel, the Trinbagonian race cartels attached themselves to a fledgling Colombian cartel, named the Valle Norte cartel that grew into the dominant cartel of the Colombian illicit drug trade.

As the fortunes of the Valle Norte cartel grew, so did the size, resources and power of the local employees of the Valle Norte cartel. The Syrians became a trans-Caribbean trafficking cartel with operations spanning the Caribbean Basin including Central America. The trans-Caribbean Syrian cartel would absorb the local and Caribbean operations of the Anglo Saxon cartel effectively forming the most formidable crime family in the Caribbean Basin.

The trans-Caribbean Syrian cartel effectively operates in the DR, Trinbago, Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Maarten, Curacao, Aruba and the French Departments.

You have to understand, the oligarchs who dominate the trade also dominate the politics and they're already maximizing profits. The problem is they don't want to share. And the next thing you have to understand is that the oligarchs in the Caribbean are not Africans. So they have a race agenda. Because they want to ensure their domination of societies in which Africans are the majority.

The level of violence we have been seeing has been an outpouring of the fact that black urban males now insist: Get rich or die trying. They're not willing to settle for 10 days and CEPEP. So people feel that dem boy on badness. There is a core that drives the engagement for turf and dominance that wants to be rich. They don't want to live in no ghetto. So when they riding in their cars and they see all the multi-storey apartment blocks with one apartment for $1million-plus, they want Bimmas! They want multi-million dollar apartment and condo and house.

They want bling! So people feel they on badness and they stupid and just killing each other mindlessly. And they brain dead. They not stupid and brain-dead. They want to be rich and the problem the society have is that you [black man] want to get out of the position and place we put you in! Yuh fast! Yuh is a upstart.

So how come the big players are still immune to this resistance movement?

Because it have a certain elite...you go up against them and you will die [he laughs soundlessly]. So the ones who could be predated are being predated—it is a very conscious, deliberate programme. The basis of the programme is to get rich. They tell you flat: I want the nice things; I want to get out of here.

(but) When they get their money they are coming from groups of people who are locked out of the traditional legal structures.

What is going to happen in the Caribbean is that these African entrepreneurs who are locked out, they are going to be the willing allies, militia and foot soldiers of Latin American drug cartels muscling in on local turf.

Executions. Missing limbs. Hundreds of young men mysteriously shot, mutilated, missing… Illicit drug trafficking. Expert Daurius Figueira explains how this country's many "crime waves" are linked to our location in the belly of the international drug trade 

Illicit drug trafficking through the Caribbean Basin to the US started in the second half of '60s. Since then it has evolved in distinct stages. In 2013, trafficking through the Caribbean Basin now extends to placing "product" in North America, Europe and Asia through far-distant trafficking transition points such as West Africa, the Sahel region of Africa and East Africa, all under the hegemony of the infamous Mexican cartels. The Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas are the two dominant Mexican cartels present in the Caribbean island chain today.

The product mix offered under the Mexican cartels has also changed; their illicit drug of choice is methamphetamine, known as "meth", "ice", "crystal" and "glass". It is manufactured in offshore factories in Africa and Central America, eventually ending up in the Caribbean island chain. The Mexican cartels control their own cocaine production units in Peru and Bolivia and move cocaine from there to North America, Europe and Asia via the Caribbean Basin and other trafficking routes.

The Mexican cartels are exercising hegemonic control over the illicit drug trade of the Caribbean island chain and changes to the order of the illicit trade in the Caribbean Basin are evident, mainly: (a) the embrace of Caribbean "gangland" by the Mexican cartels and the evolution of gangs of young men from underprivileged areas that resulted, (b) the evolution of other illicit trades such as human smuggling and small arms trafficking has been impacted (c) the social order of narco-trafficking states has been usurped by the Mexicans' use of drugs to pay locals for their services and as "currency".

Caribbean gangland must be noted for its unique operational characteristics, i.e. Caribbean gangland does not wear ink, colours, represent or tag as North American gangland is not Caribbean gangland. In addition Caribbean gangland has an order/hierarchy and the apex/players are rooted in illicit drug trafficking. Caribbean gangland has now been embraced by the Mexican cartels; in exchange for services to the cartels Caribbean gangland are given franchises to traffic product to consumer markets in Europe and North America and be involved in the wholesaling and retailing of Mexican-sourced product. The Mexican cartels are deliberately creating a new division of labour and a new social order in the illicit trades of the Caribbean Basin. The "law lords" of Caribbean gangland are, as a result, becoming globalised players in the illicit trades, cemented in their alliance to the Mexican cartels. This reality is impacting the lowest echelons of Caribbean gangland as the feeding frenzy spreads and intensifies, driven by the quest to get in on the new action unleashed by the Mexican cartels throughout the Caribbean Basin. All vacancies are filled in this new illicit enterprise and the wannabes prey on each other and launch ill-conceived predatory attempts to topple the "dons", which evoke acts of graphic violence with the intent of sending messages, which are never heard or internalized. Hence the cycle of graphic gun violence.

This is as clear an indicator of the impotence of narcotrafficking states of the Caribbean Basin as any. The State is powerless against this level of organised crime. Caribbean gangland, in its operational alliance with the Mexican cartels, has now evolved to being a global player in a number of illicit trades ranging from drug trafficking, human smuggling, small arms trafficking, identity theft and lotto scams to the smuggling of counterfeit goods. The lucrative nature of the illicit trades of the Caribbean Basin is illustrated by the operational presence of gangs formed in the US, such as Mara Salvatrucha, Los Trinitarios and Zoe Pound. They have linked their US operations to Caribbean Basin activities – all in service to the Mexican cartels.

What Caribbean gangland is today, in its evolutionary stage brought about by the nexus with the Mexican cartels, will not be eradicated by draconian, knee-jerk anti-gang legislation premised on US models. US reality has no relevance to Caribbean gangland; it is part of the problem – not the solution. Draconian, knee-jerk anti-gang legislation will fill the prisons, thereby ensuring that Caribbean gangland takes control of these same prisons, where foot soldiers can be recruited and schooled in the hard discipline of prison gang life, then unleashed on the unarmed public. The most powerful organisation in Caribbean gangland today, Association Neta, was formed in the prisons of Puerto Rico then spread to the US. Today, Association Neta is an apex player in the illicit drug trade of Puerto Rico, the murder capital of the Caribbean island chain. Learn well from this reality. The abiding reality today is that Caribbean gangland is the foot soldiers and enforcers of the Mexican cartels in the Caribbean Basin.

In the Caribbean Basin the illicit drug traffickers dominate the illicit trade in small arms and human smuggling. The dominance of the Mexican cartels has diametrically changed the expanse and nature of the trafficking of small arms and human smuggling in the Caribbean Basin. Mexican human smuggling organisations have set up shop on the island of Hispaniola, other islands in the Caribbean and in several Central American nations, moving migrants such as Cubans and extra-Caribbean migrants to the US, and Haitians to Brazil. Small arms shipments supplied by Mexican cartels are now leaving Honduras for sale in the Caribbean island chain, in response to the drying up of the traditionally abundant supply from Venezuela.

Mexican cartels have indicated a preference for two operational strategies for the narco-trafficking states in which they have chosen to locate their trafficking operations. One strategy calls for the recruiting of members of the military of the state by extending trafficking franchises to recruited military personnel. In this strategy there is a preference for members of elite units of the military establishment. Mexican cartels prefer to corrupt and recruit members of the military as politicians are transitory. Secondly, Mexican cartels enter a narcotrafficking state by forming alliances with the narcotrafficking elites of the said state. They offer these elites lucrative deals that are much better than those offered by the Colombians and Venezuelans. Some members of these elites have made the fatal mistake of treating the Mexicans as inferiors. The Mexican cartels, once they have established their links with gangland and others, then move to physically eliminate the local elites with deliberate violence (one can literally lose one's head). This is how the Mexican cartels radically change the social order of the illicit trades in a narco-trafficking state, instilling a new order in which the State is forced to perpetually battle for its survival because it has lost its capacity to maintain law and order.

Daurius Figueira is a lecturer in sociology at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. His latest book, 'Cocaine Trafficking in the Caribbean and West Africa in the Era of the Mexican Cartels' (released November 2012), is now available at leading bookshops and online at amazon.com. He is also the author of 'Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking in the Caribbean: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana Vol.1' (2004) and 'Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking in the Caribbean: The Case of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela Vol.2' (2006).

The same year of the 9/11 catastrophe, the Bush administration released the following statement on drug interdiction efforts of the US government: “Hundreds of tons of cocaine enter the US every year, by land, air and sea despite stringent USG control measures.Even the 200 metric tons or so of Cocaine that the USG and it’s western hemisphere partnerstypically seize in a year have little discernible effect on price or availability “. (INCSR 2001)

Daurius Figueira wrote in his 'Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking in the Caribbean: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana Vol.1' (2004) that: “from 1996 to 2003 the price of cocaine and heroine have in fact fallen and the purity of the retail product has risen. More importyantly the network of illicit drug trafficking has expanded in the Caribbean and drug prices on the wholesale and retail markets of the Caribbean have fallen.  Extradition has failed to impact upon the structure of the trafficking enterprises and endeavours to result in a collapse of the trafficking enterprise. Drug trafficking is now a sustainable globalised capitalist enterprise. In fact trafficking in drugs, guns, and humans is an integrated enterprise with a multi-product mix that ensures its sustainability”.  These trafficking enterprises now dwarf state policing agencies with resolve, material and organizational acumen”. Figueira further wrote that: “Two illicit drug trafficking hot spots are just a short run across the gulf of Paria and the Columbus Channel to Trinidad’s coastline Sucre and Delta Amacuro and it is from both states that the cocaine, guns, ammunition, heroin and wild animals are smuggled into Trinidad and now Tobago.

On Haiti Figueira said the following: “The civil war in Haiti that was used to remove President Aristide was among other things a war for drug turf funded by drug money.The militias that engaged with Aristide’s with Aristides militia’s for hegemony were led by drug traffickers displaced by aristide’s elite wielding state power who took over the trafficking enterprises in joint ventures with agents of the Colombian cartels resident in Haiti. The best kept secret of the Haitian illicit drug trade is the involvement of the non-African elite, especially the Syrian Arabs in the illicit drug trade in Haiti and the wider Caribbean. Figueira further noted that in the case of Trinidad: “Successive governments had within their cabinet’s minions and vassals of the illicit drug trade. The NAR government of 1986 to 1991 would be the first government in the history of Trinbago in which members of the government would not only be involved in illicit drug running, providing services to the drug lords but would utilise but would use the state to intervene in the war between the Syrian/Lebanese cartel and it’s perceived enemies, firstly the Jamaat al Muslimeen and then the Zimmern Beharry/Dole Chadee gang. This action would not only pave the way for the attempted coup d’etat of July 27th 1990, but would also precipitate a war between cartels in the 1990’s that would be the catalyst in the formation of an economy of crime predicated on gun violence, murder and kidnappings.  Figueira further drew linkage, between the global trade in illicit narcotics and how it impacts western states and in particular the Caribbean. He also elucidated the clear and present threat of al-Qaeda to western interest’s, using the geographic area of the Caribbean, as a means of aiding the organisation in it’s bid to launch terrorist attacks on western soil: “Possibly one weapon in the arsenal of the war with the west is cheap, abundant, high purity Opium base to be processed to be processed into Heroine for consumption in the West, particularly Europe. The single potent reality for the West is that the desire of the West for illicit drugs and the complicity of the powered elites of the West with the illicit drug trade has afforded the al-Qaeda network access to the finances, material and the means to penetrate the borders of the West, in order to execute their military engagement with the West. The Madrid bombings of 2004 bear salient, potent testimony to this reality. Since the events of 9/11 the complicity of the illicit drug trade in Colombia, Venezuela and Trinbago with al-Qaeda is now being granted voice in the western media. Over the years proponents of the discourse of the greater kufr have won adherents in the Indo-Muslim communities in Trinidad and Guyana. Males sent to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for schooling return as bearers of the discourse for its propagation. In addition Pakistani males have migrated to Trinidad marrying Trinidadian Muslim wives and are residents of Trinidad. Al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers in Trinidad and Guyana are involved in the illicit drug trade and the trafficking of guns, ammunition, explosives and detonators from Venezuela. Multi product shipments now regularly cross the Gulf of Paria, the Columbus Channel and the Atlantic Ocean to Trinidad. Al-Qaeda operatives have well developed links to Colombian illicit drug suppliers. The al-Qaeda attack in Madrid Spain was facillitated by Spain’s central importance to drug trafficking across the Caribbean to Europe.Riding these trafficking networks are al-Qaeda operatives who profit from the trade, source material from the illicit trade, and utilise operational bases of the illegal trade. The al-Qaeda sleeping assets in Trinidad with their coven of sympathisers are in Trinidad only to amass wealth and material via the illicit drug trade. But as the largest single supplier of LNG to the US is Atlantic LNG at point Fortin, Trinidad how can Trinbagonian political elites and state agencies in complicity with the drug trade protect US interest’s in Trinidad? A military strike at Atlantic LNG is the most potent strike against US interests in the western hemisphere outside of the USA. The untrammelled trade in precursor chemicals between Trinidad, Venezuela and Colombia is but another indication of the porosity of the borders of Trinidad and the high propensity of an attack on US interests in Trinidad. Equally disturbing is the announced intention of a Syrian owned Caribbean conglomerate to manufacture urea ammonium nitrate in Trinidad for the export market. Ammonium nitrate is the poor man’s weapon of mass destruction used in the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA. To manufacture urea ammonium nitrate in Trinidad ammonium nitrate has to be manufactured and then combined with urea. Given the trade in precursor chemicals what assurances are there that ammonium nitrate manufactured at Union Estate La Brea would not be diverted to the illicit drug trade for use as weapons of mass destruction on an LNG tanker or LNG train at Point Fortin?  A suicide bomber breaking security at Atlantic LNG with a panel van loaded with plastic explosives, ammonium nitrate in solution and the necessary detonators.  The plastique and detonators remote controlled or otherwise are widely available in the product mix of the illegal drug trade at present. What about an attack on a loaded LNG tanker in the stream or a tanker being loaded at the pier a la the attack on the USS Cole in South Yemen? 

As I have shown using evidence presented by an imminent Caribbean scholar who is uniquely suited to elucidate on the malaise plaguing the region.  Tourism in its present guise, which is part and parcel of the regional narco-economy, will all but cease to exist in this 21^st century reality.

The new Caribbean reality will be one characterized by intra-regional cooperation and agricultural trade regionally. There is literally no other viable option left to the region given the facts on the ground. The new Caribbean reality is in fact a blessing in disguise since real leaders can then free the regional economies from the death grip of the narco cartels and usher in a truly prosperous Caribbean age.

More on the 21^st century Caribbean economy will be forthcoming stay  tuned.