As our election campaign enters its final week, the flotilla of warships dispatched by US Pres Donald Trump will have reached its destination off Venezuela’s Caribbean waters. Three destroyers will be accompanied by 4,500 troops on amphibious vessels, surveillance planes and a submarine. This is the largest ever show of force the US has mustered against Venezuela’s Chavista Government.
The announced casus belli of the military operation, as announced by the US, is to confront drug trafficking organisations in Latin America, classified by the White House as “narco-terrorists”. In 2020, the US had classified the Cartel of the Suns as a criminal organisation, led by senior commanders of the Bolivarian Army, and on July 25 this year, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) upped the ante. They announced they had “sanctioned the Cartel of the Suns as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. (It) is a Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolas Maduro Moros and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals in the Maduro regime that provides material support to foreign terrorist organisations threatening the peace and security of the United States, namely Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel.” Ecuador, which is heavily affected by drug trafficking, also designated the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organisation. This labelling as a “terrorist group” triggers several international covenants that permit direct action to eliminate them.
On Aug 15, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had telegraphed that his Government’s impending action against the cartel (which also smuggles gold) was going to address the problem at its source – the Venezuelan Government of Nicolas Maduro: “Cartel of the Suns, the Cartel de los Soles, which is a criminal organisation that happens to masquerade as a Government. The Maduro regime is not a Government. It’s not a legitimate Government. We’ve never recognised them as such. They are a criminal enterprise that basically has taken control of a national territory, of a country, and who, by the way, are also threatening US oil companies that are operating lawfully in Guyana.”
Asked if the new operation might include the landing of troops on Venezuelan shores, White House press secretary Katerine Leavitt replied that the US was considering “using all its power” to stem the flow of drugs from Venezuela to the United States. Maduro responded by insisting he was “…launching a special plan to ensure coverage by more than 4.5 million prepared, activated, and armed militia members across the national territory.” This move might be directed more towards protecting Maduro from Venezuelans desiring to collect the US$50M bounty the US has on his head.
In Guyana we have witnessed an increased use of our national territory as a transhipment point for drugs to the US and Europe from Venezuela. The latest interdiction was on August 30, when 4.4 TONNES of cocaine, worth US$195 M, was seized in Reg 1. Following investigations, with US involvement, a senior police superintendent and three Guyanese were sanctioned by OFAC. The identification of the police officer is significant in that it signals the undermining of the state protective institutions that accompanied drug trafficking, which eventually corrupted the political directorate and civic institutions.
Apart from the Venezuelan threat to our oil, as identified by Rubio, there is, of course, their inexorable effort to annex our Essequibo through waging a hybrid warfare that would include drug and gold smuggling. So Guyana is a very interested party. The PPP Government has responded positively to the US initiatives, noting “with grave concern the threat to peace and security in the region posed by transnational organised crime and narco-terrorism, often involving criminal networks such as the Cartel de los Soles of Venezuela, designated as a terrorist organisation by some countries in the region. Such criminal networks have the capacity to overwhelm state institutions, undermine democracy, pervert the rule of law and threaten human dignity and development.” The other parties contesting the elections must declare their stance on the issue. The Maduro administration immediately accused Guyana of “being a pawn” of US corporate interests.
However, St Vincent’s Ralph Gonzalves, along with other OECS members of ALBA that receive concessionary oil debt relief from Venezuela, was part of an extraordinary meeting of the organisation, which, using an old trope, denounced, “The US military deployment in Caribbean waters, disguised as counter-drug operations, represents a threat to the peace and stability of the region and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law.”
Guyana must have Caricom declare its position.
