Jamaica Bleeds for Our 'War on Drugs'

[AS Reasoning]

The chaos in Kingston is symptomatic of the failure of US-led cocaine prohibition. This tragic violence must force a rethink

by Ben Bowling

The tragedy unfolding in Jamaica is symptomatic of a wider crisis of organised crime, armed violence and political corruption caused by a failed "war on drugs". The tangled political and economic roots of the problem run very deep.

Caribbean nations were born from the violence of chattel slavery and rebellion, colonial domination and the struggle for liberation and self-determination. The postcolonial flight of capital and structural readjustment have been compounded by the end of transatlantic trade agreements that have led to the collapse of the region's agricultural economic base. High levels of unemployment and extreme marginality have been the result for many communities.

By accident of geography, the Caribbean islands sit uncomfortably between the Andean coca producers and the cocaine consumers of North America and Europe. Although the Caribbean routes account for only a small proportion of the cocaine traffic (estimated by the UN to be worth as much as $125bn), the islands' physical location, unprotectable coastlines and transport links to the metropolitan centres of North America and Europe make them an ideal jumping-off point for the traffickers.

The "war on drugs" was supposed to destroy coca production, stifle trafficking and eliminate cocaine use in the US and beyond. It has achieved none of these things. Instead, supply and demand are resilient, and so the "harsh medicine" of drug prohibition has created a lucrative clandestine market with entirely predictable iatrogenic side-effects of political corruption and armed violence. The collateral damage is all too evident across the region - most obviously in Jamaica, but also in Trinidad, Guyana and many other places on the Caribbean rim that have seen gunshot murders escalate to levels equivalent to a bloody civil war.

Jamaica's problems are particularly acute. Political violence can be traced back to the 1940s at least, and escalated at key moments throughout the 20th century, most notably during the 1980 election when guns were funnelled into the island from the US - allegedly by the CIA - to arm the leaders of the "garrison communities".

In the poorest Kingston constituencies, the two main political parties - the Jamaica Labour party and the People's National Party - continue to vie for power, with more than 90% of voters turning out for one or other of the parties. Local politicians and the "dons" exert control but also inspire loyalty among their constituents. In the past, the dons worked as enforcers for the politicians, but they have now accumulated an independent economic power base from drug- and gun-running, protection rackets and corrupt government contracts.

The attempt to extradite Christopher "Dudus" Coke to the US to face trafficking charges has turned from farce to tragedy. At first, the government, led by JLP Prime Minister Bruce Golding, prevaricated, no doubt mindful of Coke's connections to the party and his ability to deliver votes, but also the power of a man whom many people think of as a godfather who can deliver security and other goods. Bowing to both domestic and external political pressure, the government's attempt to execute the arrest warrant has so far left at least 44 people dead - without delivering Coke.

Sadly, loss of life at the hands of the authorities is far from rare. Last year, the Jamaican police killed more than 250 people - deaths denounced by human rights groups as extrajudicial executions.

In the short term, there is an obvious need for the authorities to work to restore peace to the affected neighbourhoods. This is going to require fortitude, but also restraint. Preservation of life and the minimal use of force in pursuit of peace and safety should be the guiding ethos, even while the situation remains volatile. Too many lives have been lost already and the danger of escalation is clear and present.

The challenge for the Jamaican people, after that, is to understand the roots of political corruption and armed violence and seek ways to disentangle organised crime from politics, business, the state and civil society more generally. Removing guns and corruption from the body politic is not going to be easy and cannot be achieved by military firepower: war on the streets of Kingston is the problem, not the solution. It will require a peace process akin to the Northern Ireland experience, perhaps with truth and reconciliation, and certainly with some means to decommission weapons and demobilise the young men in corner crews who define themselves as "soldiers" fighting on the front line of garrison communities.

There is a wider challenge facing the region and the international community. The "war on drugs" has not only failed, but positively promotes corruption and armed violence - not only in the Caribbean, but also across Central and South America, West Africa and in the inner cities of Europe and North America.

Could the tragic loss of life in Jamaica bring the world to its senses? People are sick of warfare. We should instead direct resources to building a lasting peace.

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited
Ben Bowling is professor of criminology and criminal justice at King's College, London and author of Policing the Caribbean: Transnational Security Cooperation in Practice (2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/26/jamaica-kingston-drugs-trade

[AS Reasoning]

Tivoli Speaks

A tour of Tivoli Gardens escorted by armed security forces lead The Gleaner to capture the voices of the community.

[gman]

Amazing gall from both Bruce "scumbag" Golding and Edward "even bigger scumbag" CIAga after this state terrorism, MASS MURDER of UNARMED PEOPLE whose only crime is to be poor and black and living in a "garrison" that THEY (CIAga and co) created... Golding is accusing journalists who point out his well documented and completely undeniable links to "Dudus" of being part of a "conspiracy to undermine the JA gov't"... Pope Ratzinger and Benjamin Netanyahu would be proud of his "spinning" abilities... while CIAga is posing as some kind of defender of human rights and condemning the army operation, as if he wouldn't have done the exact same thing were he still in power... as if he didn't have "Dudus"'s dad burned alive to stop him testifying about his links to the JLP...
Only so much pressure people can take... JA, TnT, GT... how long before the explosion? I only hope the minimum of innocents and the maximum of guilty parties get hurt...

[nomo8]

the farce here is the bi line of the article atributing this turkey shoot to USA "prohibition" of COCAINE.  Here is a sucker play enticing reaction so that there will be association of resistance to amphetemine/cocaine organized crime mafias!!!.



  These drugs DO destroy communities and the lead organizers and beneficiaries were documented by Gary Webb (dead) and others (T. Williams executed before he could talk). REmember Nation of Islam trying to get rid of the crack and heroin dealers in community only to be thwarted by paid off po-lice?   Do the neighborhoods attacked in Jamaica look like south florida  millionaire estates, tel aviv billionaire exctasy compounds or netherlands, not to mention the real drug coke kingpins of carribbean and south america? The issue is in part cannabis culture and medical cannabis replacing hard drug culture so profitable to the usual suspects.  .  Ciggarettes most destructive drug on planet, yet his highness B. Ob. reserves right to target "drug kingpins" in any country he wants to target.  Take a look in the mirror.  We have a man of dubious character and background jonesing from ciggy withdrawal, admitted cocaine user with finger on button?  There has not been a ciggy smoker in white house since Johnson I beleive.  This article is a mixed bag op, another internet tar baby designed to confuse issue and pollute the information stream. 

[gman]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/14/jamaica-tactics-army-afghanistan

From Kabul to KingstonArmy tactics in Jamaica resemble those used in Afghanistan – and it's no mere coincidence
 
Richard Drayton The Guardian, Monday 14 June 2010
For two weeks, the Jamaican army and police have fought gun battles in Kingston. The many allegations of human rights abuses committed by the security forces – including extrajudicial killings and the disposal of bodies – have received almost no international attention. Nor have the linkages between the Jamaican crisis, the security establishments in the US, Britain and Canada, and the mutations of the "war on terror".

But strategy and tactics deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are being applied in Jamaica. Drones fly over Kingston, and were used in the 24 May assault to select targets. On 7 June, Tivoli residents discovered that to enter or leave the area they had to produce "passes" issued by the police (revised, after protests, to restrictions on movement after dark). There is blanket surveillance of electronic communications in breach of Jamaican privacy protections – indeed, it was the illegal provenance of some of the evidence against Christopher "Dudus" Coke that initially held up extradition proceedings.

Propaganda "information operations" are at full tilt: while the army guides the Jamaican press on tours in which soldiers pat the heads of children, and in which criminal "torture chambers" are revealed, abroad we are told this is just about breaking drug gangs.

That Kingston today resembles aspects of Kabul is not by chance. In 2008, the Jamaican army's Major Wayne Robinson submitted a master's thesis to the US Marine Corps University: Eradicating Organised Criminal Gangs in Jamaica: Can Lessons be Learned from a Successful Counterinsurgency?.

In October 2009, the manual on counterinsurgency operations of the US joint chiefs of staff equated police action against "criminal organisations" with counterinsurgency, and described key tactics – including aerial and electronic intelligence and targeting, the use of "passes" to restrict movement, and information management. For two years the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) has combined operations in Afghanistan with training the Jamaican special forces, the Ninjas. In March 2010 Jamaican newspapers reported a joint US-UK-Canada intelligence operation was being run from Kingston.

Advisers from all three Nato powers are active in Jamaica. The Jamaican army has been tightly integrated with the US military since the early 1980s. The irony is that the criminals the army now fights were also, in substantial part, created by the US and the Jamaican Labour party (the JLP, which now governs) in the 70s and 80s.

The origins of Coke's Shower Posse lie in the cold war. In 1972 Michael Manley, of the People's National party, was elected prime minister. He increased the taxes paid by US and Canadian mining companies, while leading third world demands for new international economic and information orders. Jamaica opened relations with Cuba, and defended Havana's sending troops to defend the Angolan government exactly when the US and apartheid South Africa were arming rebels against it. What had happened in Chile in 1971-73 came to Jamaica, except that in the Caribbean the US also used crime and terrorism to destabilise the regime.

As the CIA station in Kingston became one of the largest in the world in the mid-70s, weapons flooded in to political gangs. A campaign of arson and bombings, allegedly organised by anti-Castro Cubans, spread chaos: one old people's home burnt to the ground with the death of 150 women. Critically, the transshipment of cocaine from South America began in the late 70s. At the centre of this unrest were the gangs of Tivoli, of which Lester Coke (Dudus's father) was a key leader. These criminals were enforcers for the JLP and gave help in the 80s to the covert allies of the Nicaraguan Contras through the cocaine and arms trades.

Perhaps the west, belatedly, wants to clean up some of the mess it made in Jamaica. But in 2009, the CSOR's commanding officer admitted the Jamaican operation helped his unit compete in the "resource-scarce environment" of Canada's defence ministry.

How much of the current crisis is being driven by the need of the interlocked global security establishment to justify its existence? What price will be paid in Jamaica for the transformation of policing into counterinsurgency? What are the long-term consequences for democracy of treating the urban poor as an enemy population to be beaten into submission, of the militarisation of policing, of the expansion of intrusive surveillance of society? These questions should be asked far beyond Jamaica.

[gman]

To Nomo8: I disagree. I think the article is on point, more or less. To say that this is tied to US prohibition of cocaine is not an "internet tar baby", it's the truth. The prohibition of it is exactly what makes it so profitable and so hence so attractive to both governmental and non-governmental players as a source of "unofficial" money. No one is arguing that cocaine is a good thing or should be encouraged - this is a Rasta-dominated board, who is going to argue that? Everyone knows we are against cocaine and everything to do with it (not against indigenous people using the coca plant they've been using for thousands of years though). But banning things has never worked and never will. Ordering people to do or not do things has never worked and never will. People should be free to make decisions for themselves, includings self-destructive ones, once they are adults. It's up to us who know better to PERSUADE people to make better decisions, not force them to.

[nomo8]

Sir: I respectfully take your point about prohibition very seriously but only to a degree.  We have a situation where huge pharmaceutical firms design chemicals that are "legal" and sold to women and children as panaceas for mental disorder.  These poisons are as bad or worse than cocaine and heroin in many respects. Who pays the penalty for this outrage to prevent it in the near future?  We prohibit and discriminate as part of normal sentient awareness that allows us to survive in a hungry universe, even at times to prosper.  Perhaps no law of any kind ?  Then what?  Organize ourselves into groups again to prohibit and discrimante against what is perceived as harmful? 

The SEC prohibits actions of people like Maddoff, would one say that it is buyer beware and that no law should aver to prohibit his activities because we should all have the option or right to injest or partake of fraudulent financial products that are aimed at pure banditry?  Muslim countries have been successful in prohibiting alchohol and to some extent usury.  Is it anyone's business but their own to batter their wives and children and make ready for endless crusader war as a byproduct of alcohol consumption and usury?

 If you would see the exctasy and crystal meth problem in the state of hawaii (combined with alcohol addiction), you might have a different view, how the police are lax and likely paid off regarding enforcement against israeli and brazillian drug gangs that  supply and distribute, buying up distressed properties of hawaiians and pacific islanders and basically taking over there.  Libertarianism has its flaws?

Dioxin based 2-4-d herbicide is prohibited for use in USA because it is a deadly poison.  It was used against the people of viet nam and south america. But it kills weeds great!  I suffer  from exposure to dioxin poisoning , part of the reason I use cannabis from time to time to halt the internal inflammation that is said to last a life time and eventually kill you.  Cocaine extacy and methamphetamin permanantly disfigure the mind, kill bodies slowly and result in communities such as we have now in many places.  These communities persecute, harm and kill others trying to live a clean life.  If exctacy, cocaine and meth amphetamine were legal, a corporation would mass produce  it and sell it like ciggarrettes. In a sense they already do (see above) Just the kind of self destructive slave society "they" want might well come to fruition.  Where would you and I go then to find refuge?  the monster would just follow us, I know from witnessing the deadly thing .

Not trying here to provide any "answer". I respect your reasoning.

Ever llived next to crank freaks?, their eyeballs withdrawn back into their skulls because the brain has shrunk and the optic nerve is literally pulling the eye backwards into the skull as a result, the lost hair, the days of debauchery and the days of dead sleep,fits of screaming and yelling, violence against family and friends, an endless cycle, hopelessly addicted, the drug cheap and plentiful (cannabis probaly a way to get out of it, but it's now expensive in hawaii!)).  We should not discriminate against this, or even to attempt to prohibit the manufacture and sale of it? 

 all criminals profit by whatever is "illegal". It is true criminals infest governments and pass certain laws so that criminal associates may profit! I suppose we should be willing to discuss authentic anarchy, I am open to it, just fight it out, or at least diminish by 90 percent all laws and do away with judiciary, lawyers courts, maybe the net result would be better, who knows and there's the rub, we want to be protected to some extent by authority figures and structures? Where do we draw the line? At least we could get away from prison  for non violent offenders of various laws.  Personally, I  am for caning and even worse, one time, that's it.  NO jail.  Theives steal your life away, bit by bit. 

  I mentioned Webb and Williams due to the paradox of government law to prevent and then the same hand obscenely profit from the artificial shortage that illegality provides, therefore we have a cyclical process set up, it is not simply "prohibition "causes" these excesses, it is a more complex process?.  The goverment also profits tremendously through the corrupt judicial and legal system/prison system supported by taxes.  I am sure you see this too.  Certainly, no one should be put in prison for using drugs of any kind, it's a medical and spiritual issue.  what about the peopel Webb talked about and Willliams dealt with?  The mass poisoning of whole communities.  step 1. Now step 2?  the money has been made (obscene profits funding shadow govt projects), the communities destroyed and now mass produced anything goes soma society?  Then while everyone is soma'd, mass extemination of undesirables who cannot fight back anymore (step 3). The profits are only slightly less obscene under  "legal" status.

It's not easy to figure out what to do about it or what to support in the way of helping people away from artificial realities (internet and video games too).  Part of the problem I see is the just plain ugliness of what we have created in so called modern industrial society that people feel need to flee from by whatever means available.  If we emphasized creating beauty on this planet,  retreive anceint values placing art at the highest pinnacle of human endeavor (Giza plateau), stewardship of gardens of heavanly delight and all that, why would a healthy vigerous person need any artificial stimulation?  Medicinal plants, that is another issue  regarding prohibtion of another kind.

 the article referenced has as its main theme in the bi line cocaine prohibition, associating the defense of the communities in jamaica with that.  One just cannot get around it.  What is the intent of constructing the article in such a way with such a base singularity?  My mind probably is not as clean as yours, you decently assume good intentions on the face of it (the article).  Neal Perrochet

[Alafia87]

I think that marijuana and alcohol should be legal and all other
drugs should be decriminalized. There should be harsh penalties
for drug dealers, though, and those who drive under the influence.

To Nommo8, when you say you are for caning and worse, what
do you mean?

[nomo8]

My name is Neal Perrochet, I live in Japan at present, I have posted on this site for many years. I appreciate the opportunity and from time to time print my name on a blog or two so there is no confusion.  Here I am.  I am not trying to trick or delude anyone under a false banner.  I don't think much of false identity  blogging, yet I've done it.  this is my last for a long time to come.  These posts are meant primarily for certrain players outside the trivial blogoshpere, who, however, monitor these sites to see what some may, from time to time, say to "them".

 I suggest at least six months of no emails, no going on the internet, only communicating through telephone, written "snail mails" or person to person conversations.  See if you can manage that and engage life with your friends, enemies, colleagues, etc.  Move about. In fact, boycott completely the internet, TV, newspapers, radio until such time as a cleansing of these mediums is possible.

The present reality is not freer, more robust, more life nourishing as a consequence of the sit your ass down internet playground.  It's exactly the opposite.  While we are deluded into thinking that we do great things by talking at each other over this monitored medium, we slip evermore into slavery.  We have been conditioned to abondon our privacy and reveal ourselves perhaps too much.  So you think you can hide by a false identity on such a site as this, then the words spoken have little merit or meaning relative to honorable, carefully considered speech. We all do it, I am no better than you.  Try to think more deeply about what I posted that you responded to.  Say who you are and where you live. I will not read it, as I am going into a visceral "cleanse" regimen.  Sincerely, Good luck NP

[Alafia87]

What is really the point of talking to people like you?