Another dimension to US-Jamaica security relations

When Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of state met in Barbados last week with Caribbean Community (Caricom) foreign ministers, including Jamaica's Dr Ken Baugh, there was a sense, she noted, that while the United States (US) remained a friend, it had been somewhat absent from the region.

Clinton publicly pledged that the US would return to being a visible and active partner in the Caribbean. "The United States is back," she said.

Much of Clinton's May 10 discussion with her Caricom counterparts was taken up with matters of security, particularly the dangers posed by "transnational criminal organisations and drug cartels (and) their attempts to distort and weaken our economies and democratic systems".

A fortnight earlier, Jamaica's Dwight Nelson was among Caribbean security ministers who attended an inter-agency dialogue with US officials, where the security vulnerabilities of the Caribbean was the major matter on the agenda. The Washington meeting, ironically, was at a time when Jamaican security forces were still battling terrorists in the west Kingston enclave of Tivoli Gardens, who were seeking to prevent the arrest of reputed drug boss Christopher Coke and his extradition to the US.

A direct challenge

Although Coke remains a fugitive, the Jamaican security forces were able to beat back his armed irregulars, whose insurrection - and it was no less than that - represented a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Jamaican state. That, of course, is a difficult idea for many people to embrace or accept, given what it would mean if Coke's Tivoli Gardens militia, and their supporters elsewhere in the capital, had prevailed and matters were then taken to their logical conclusion.

The Coke extradition affair and the Tivoli Gardens uprising, in that regard, have helped to concentrate not only Jamaican minds, but those of policymakers in Washington. The Obama administra-tion must be clear while security in the Caribbean will rest ultimately on sound economies, fair and efficient justice systems and less skewed social relationships, these will be unsustainable, if not impossible, without mechanisms to ensure the sanctity of regional states. These are urgent.

Take the matter of guns. The Jamaican security forces have recovered nearly 100 since the launch of their Tivoli Gardens operations as well as seized several thousand rounds of ammunition. Guns are used in over 80 per cent of the nearly 1,700 murders committed in Jamaica annually.

Determined

In 1997, in the Bridgetown Declaration of Principles, the Americans acknowledged the US as "a significant country of origin for firearms illegally diverted to other nations" and said they were "determined to rid the Caribbean region of the scourge of this traffic by adopting strategies and measures which have the highest possible legal status and enforceability".

Perhaps Washington has tried, but not hard enough. Maybe in the face of Clinton's latest commitment, the Washington dialogue and the framework agreement and cooperation action plan signed by the security ministers, things will now improve.

The United States has promised US$37 million this year and a further US$79 million in 2011 to support a regional security cooperation initiative, which will go primarily to technical support. We are thankful for this.

But as Tivoli Gardens demonstrated, Jamaica additionally needs on-the-ground hardware and support equipment to defend the state against narco and other terrorists. That is an urgent discussion to be engaged.

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