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The detection of tonnes of cocaine concealed in bunkers beside an illegal airstrip in the Barima-Waini Region in August 2024; the interception of a self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel, offshore, with a couple of tonnes of cocaine five months earlier in March 2024 and the uncovering of another SPSS on dry land in July are no longer shocking news. Added to these events, the discovery of large amounts of cocaine in shipments of commercial goods from Guyana to European ports – Antwerp, Hamburg and Rotterdam – and the clandestine landing of light aircraft in the hinterland during the past 50 months, also, have become notorious transnational crimes.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – iterated his opinion that the Shaheed syndrome can explain how these incidents have given Guyana its shameful reputation as a transit platform for cocaine which is shipped by narco-traffickers. Criminals take advantage of the long, lightly-policed borders, unmonitored airstrips and internal waterways which have been channels for transporting cocaine through Brazil and Venezuela to North America, Western Europe and West Africa over the past thirty years.
Mr. Granger recalled that, from the time that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) returned to government in August 2020, the Shaheed syndrome, once ‘in remission’, resurged. The incidence of narco-trafficking increased – 1.5 tonnes of cocaine were found in a container of rice in Hamburg, Germany in 2020; 11.5 tonnes in a container of scrap metal in Antwerp, Belgium in 2020; and 50 kg in a container of rum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2021 – all traced to Guyana. Several foreign, cocaine-laden, light aircraft have landed, illegally, since August 2020.
Granger lamented the PPP/C administration’s demolition of the National Anti-Narcotics Agency and its discarding of the National Drug Strategy Master Plan − both of which had been introduced the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition administration and were aimed at stanching the Shaheed syndrome. The PPP/C administration continues to resist the deployment of the Police Force and Anti-Narcotics Unit in sufficient strength to patrol the porous hinterland borders and coastal waters in order to secure the country’s airspace, sea space and waterways against transnational crimes. He bemoaned the weak official efforts to eradicate narco-trafficking but expressed confidence that the robust implementation of counter-measures could succeed.
Mr. Granger recalled that, although the Shaheed syndrome started in the early 1990s, it became a significant public security problem in the early 2000s during the Troubles when death squads, drug-gang warfare, execution murders and massacres made their deadly mark on the country. He felt that narco-trafficking, invariably, has been accompanied by gun-running, graft, money-laundering and execution murders. Under prevailing conditions, traffickers will continue to import cocaine into the country, will continue to find ways and means to export it to foreign markets and will continue to employ illegal measures to enforce their lucrative enterprise.
The former president warned that the PPP/C administration – in office for twenty-seven of the past thirty-two years – utterly failed to demonstrate any determination to curtail the import and export of cocaine by air, land and sea.󠄀 He cautioned that narco-trafficking will continue unless a strong National Anti-Narcotics Agency is established, an effective National Drug Strategy Master Plan is enforced and an intelligent Ministry of Public Security which understands the need to suppress transnational crime and knows the importance of human safety is appointed to bring this criminal scourge to an end and keep citizens safe from the violence. 󠄀
