September 9 2010
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Tragedy of Jamaica's lethal cocktail of crime and politics

 

Tragedy of Jamaica's lethal cocktail of crime and politics
Fidelis Onyedikam
As thousands of heavily armed Jamaican soldiers and police descend on Kingston to arrest ‘the peoples’ president’, Christopher “Dudus” Coke with the view to extraditing him to America to face charges of conspiring to supply marijuana, cocaine and firearms, what is happening on the ground wouldn’t have been unpredicted.
According to the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Bruce Golding, who imposed a state of emergency in his country, the national forces are winning, three days on.  The situation will soon be brought under control, clean up of the country will commence and the suspected drug baron captured and handed over to American authorities for prosecution.  But “Dudus” is still at large as Kingston burns and flood with blood.   
The reality is:  Over 60 citizens have been killed by their national forces, who are supposed to defend them against any aggression, shops are being looted, hundreds of people have been injured, tourism is suspended, hospitals are running out of blood, schools are closed, western countries have stopped issuing visas to Jamaican citizens until further notice while advising their nationals to avoid visiting Kingston.  Good.
Information escaping from the Kingston war zone, from those who managed to ring their relations in the UK, said that many people, probably known to the armed forces have been allegedly deliberately and systematically targeted in the shootout, men randomly seized by the forces and taken away to unknown destinations ‘naked’, and people’s mobile phones were being confiscated by the police.  
A source, whose update is being awaited, warned that she may not be contacted if her mobile phone was confiscated.
 The facts are that Washington and Kingston have bilateral agreement on extradition.  And Christopher Coke had been implicated in connection with the alleged offences in America, whose government reserve every right to formerly request his arrest and trial in New York.   Jamaica may be obliged to comply with the extradition request after exhausting unsuccessfully all avenues to negate the protocol. 
The question is: Why is the Prime Minister so impatient to capture Mr. Coke after holding out against the move for over nine months?  Would it not be conceivably thought that sending in thousands of armed forces will escalate the already tense situation?  Think about the scare his move would leave permanently on his country and people.  And the chances are that even if Mr. Coke was eventually captured or killed, another baron will emerge from the ruins of Kingston, if not already in place.
If the Golding administration had taken a softly-softly approach, Coke may eventually be arrested without such a huge casualty and ruining of the country’s infrastructure and economy.  It is a different scenario if the PM decided to carry out war against drug and firearm trafficking in a tagged operation.  
What is happening now will lead to the distrust of the government by its people, who may accuse it of slavishly following American orders at a time when Washington is trying to win the trust and friendship of its neighbours.             
There is also a sensitive problem of diversity – an area rife with teenage pregnancy and high unemployment v affluent neighbourhood and political elite – bearing in mind that Coke had triumphed in the former  while the PM failed and desperately needed Coke’s army of followers to keep himself rooted as a local MP for the enclave.  The PM’s offer to resign should be welcomed and the political stalwarts flirting secretly with drug kingdoms probed.    
If politics in Jamaica is cleaned up, it will be easier to clean up Kingston’s underworld of crime and drug havens.      If the elites’ hands are tainted with drug money, they will not rest now the war is on until the marijuana empire is wiped out otherwise more of the country’s blood will continue to be shed in this fashion.
As America battles the drugs trade from all frontiers – as close enough to home as on its Mexican borders, for which President Obama had requested $500m to combat, to Columbia, Jamaica, and as far away from home as Afghanistan, the home of opium manufacturing – knowing that its elite citizens are hooking up in droves to illegal narcotics, Washington will not stop short of preventing the substances entering its soil and even the soils of its ‘area of influence’.
If Kingston wants to wipe itself out of the world map for Washington to be drug free, so be it.  By now, many nations would have realised that using overwhelming force to crush a minority does not produce a lasting solution.  You can take out the ring leaders or scatter the entire group in the immediate; they will regroup and resurface, and probably become faceless.  This was the case when America took on Sadam Hussein’s Iraq and Taliban’s Afghanistan without providing viable alternative to take over the vacuum thus created by taking out the main men and scattering their followers who later engaged in suicide warfare. 
The best way to tackle the situation like that of Jamaica is to make the masses gainfully employed without them resorting to daily bread from drug barons such that an attack on the godfathers will not be an attack on the masses.     

Fidelis Onyedikam

Troops on the streets of KingstonTroops on the streets of KingstonAs thousands of heavily armed Jamaican soldiers and police fought pitched battles for the past three days in a impoverished part of Kingston to arrest the gangland "people's president", the tragedy, including the deaths of more than 60 people, was not predicted.

submitted by Editor on May 26th 2010

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