Georgetown: After months of anticipation, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has finally set up an office here in Guyana and has already started working with local agencies to tackle the scourge of drug trafficking.
Chargé d’Affaires of the United States Embassy in Guyana, Bryan Hunt, said that the DEA was working closely with the various local law enforcement entities that have a mission in countering narcotics. He noted that the local office has been receiving support from the DEA office in Trinidad and Tobago, which is the regional office responsible for the southern part of the Caribbean.
Hunt disclosed that currently there was a regular stream of DEA agents coming into Guyana through the Embassy to provide technical support and was hopeful that they would soon have agents who would be stationed here longer than their two-year term. However, he added that this was dependent on the DEA hiring process, which can be a very lengthy one.
Asked about the number of agents here in Guyana, the Chargé d’Affaires explained that the number varied from day to day, but at most, four agents were stationed at one time and often it was as few as one.
Over the years, there have been calls for a DEA office in Guyana especially with narcotics trafficking on the rise. And in June last, outgoing Ambassador D Brent Hardt disclosed that the US Congress had approved the establishment of a local office equipped with agents who would be working along with local anti-narcotics enforcement agencies such as the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU); the Guyana Police Force’s Narcotics Branch; and the Customs and Immigration Office among others.
Curbing trafficking
Hunt underscored that the US has always subscribed to the theory that the closer to the source you can stop drugs, the more you would be able to stop them from getting to the streets. He pointed out that if drugs get to the ports of entry at New York or Miami, then a significant part of the battle would already be lost.
“We’ve lost the opportunity to stop the production; we’ve lost the opportunity to stop the refining; we’ve lost the opportunity to understand the transport networks so our first emphasis is to do everything you possibly can to stop it at the source, which in the case of cocaine is largely in Columbia or Bolivia. It’s not Guyana, you don’t grow cocaine; you unfortunately are a transit country, which means that we have to be very concerned that if we can’t stop it at the source – and it has been shown, I think fairly dramatically, that we have not been fully successful with stopping it at the source where it’s grown – we then have to look at the transit routes that people are utilising,” the US Embassy official outlined.
According to the Chargé d’Affaires, Central America used to be, and was still somewhat, a significant transit route up to the US; as such, the Central American Security Initiative has made investments over the last 10 years that have been successful in reducing the amount of drugs flowing through Central America up to Mexico and to the US.
Hunt stressed that as a result of this, traffickers have sought alternative ways to transport drugs and have settled on two essential alternative routes. One route goes through Ecuador up the West Coast bypassing Central America and moving towards Baja, California, in Mexico and then to the US. Hunt stated that this route has seen increased trafficking activities. The other route that has seen more traffic is through Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and then up through the Caribbean. Hunt outlined that there was an increased flow of cocaine along that particular routing, which was troubling.
“I think not just troubling for the United States, but for all of the countries that are involved in that (cocaine manufacturing and trafficking). One, because the traffickers don’t just move the products through, they set up operations in the countries where they are moving drugs through; they often set up criminal gangs in the countries that they are moving the drugs through. Many times, they will try to create a demand for the drug in the country that they are transiting through in order to make additional profits as they move it up to the United States,” he highlighted.
The Chargé d’Affaires further explained that the US was working tirelessly to cut off or reduce trafficking along these two routes as well as via Central America; however, it probably would never be wholly successful in stopping the drugs before they get to the ports of entry. This, according to Hunt, is where the question of what is being done domestically comes in.
“The [Barack] Obama Administration has put more drugs enforcement agents at our ports of entry. We have increased the activities of the Homeland Security investigations portion of the Department of Homeland Security to try and prevent drugs from getting through our airports and ports and onto the streets. They are also working very closely with local law enforcement agencies to try and focus on those drugs that we considered to be of greatest risks to the American public, so we have a very heavy emphasis of getting cocaine off of the streets, getting heroine off of the streets…and a renewed emphasis on synthetic drugs, some of which are manufactured in the United States and some of which are imported from other countries,” he remarked.
Hunt continued that drugs such as ecstasy and rohypnol which are referred to as “designer drugs” were making their way onto the streets and into the hands of mostly young people, and this was an area they were also focusing heavily on.
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