- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 04/Sep 09:29

‘Zone of peace’ no longer

WHEN, in 2023, Kamla Persad-Bissessar advised homeowners besieged by criminals to, “light them up and empty the clip,” her rhetoric was shocking, coming from a former prime minister and the leader of a government-in-waiting and from a politician whose branding centers on “love” and “care.” But we now know that was no mere blip. “The slaughter of our people is fuelled by evil cartel traffickers. The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers, the US military should kill them all violently,” Ms Persad-Bissessar, 73, said on September 2 after Donald Trump claimed the US military had carried out an operation targeting members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Eleven people were apparently killed, but for the TT prime minister, it was a cause for celebration. She remarked without irony, “The restriction of illegal guns, drugs and human trafficking will decrease the violence in the region.” Fight fire with fire – that seems to be the new policy of the UNC administration. Thrown out of the boat is any semblance of due process. Willing to do anything to rid TT of the scourge of crime, Ms Persad-Bissessar might feel her scorched earth approach justified as a deterrent. She’s dead wrong. When America’s own intelligence community advised Mr Trump that he was mistaken in his claims about Nicolás Maduro and a purported “invasion” by Tren de Aragua, the US president’s director of intelligence simply fired the officials who issued the report. And then, suddenly, it was not Tren de Aragua that was of concern, but rather, the Cartel de los Soles – an entity whose very existence has been questioned by experts. Now, Tren de Aragua is back. To this tenuous and sinister backdrop, Ms Persad-Bissessar, a lawyer and senior counsel, wishes to hitch her wagon apparently without an iota of care. The rule of law be damned. Evidence and facts — who needs them? On its face, the notion of America engaging in a “war on drugs” within the Caribbean, international waters or not, is bad enough. Mr Trump would end what Richard Nixon began and Ronald Reagan significantly expanded. But much like America’s “war on terror,” the drug war never finishes; it’s dragged on and on, with Bill Clinton in 2012 conceding the effort had not worked. The Caribbean “zone of peace” might have been doomed long ago, but the White House and an obeisant TT prime minister have thus supplied its death knell. History shows US military misadventures rarely end well for locals. But as bad will be the moral stain of a local leader, days after the independence holiday, unquestioningly acceding to the whims of a flailing US administration. The post ‘Zone of peace’ no longer appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.