- FileThis file photo of guns and cocaine found in shoes in a police bust signifies the dangerous link between drugs and crime in Jamaica.
Bernard Headley, Contributor
UWI, MONA. "It's a cold Saturday night in January. A group of revellers, a microcosm of the Jamaican working class, which had to go abroad in order to find work, is celebrating in typical yard style the end of the working week. They are doing so in one of the new reggae hot spots that have been springing up like wild orchids amid the interstices of the 'concrete jungles' of Chicago's North Side. Between the live, on stage performances of a local reggae band, the party people are jamming to recorded soca...
"Over by the bar, some of the older men, now properly juiced on Jamaican rum and Red Stripe Beer, are engrossed in a rambling discussion on Jamaican politics.
"A group of younger men dressed in the latest styles and fashion of their hip-hop generation saunters in from off the bustling sidewalk. A couple of them begin a friendly banter over the price of admission with the woman cloistered behind the bullet-proof Plexiglas enclosure at the entranceway. They pay it and then enter the hall with a slow, deliberate gait... Across the dance floor heads, shoulders, arms, and waists are gyrating in a steady, rhythmic, pulsating roll. In striking contrast to the shivering, sub-zero temperature outside, the room is hot, steamy. Dis a seshaan, mahn!
"Then sometime between midnight and the wee hours of the breaking new day, about the time that local ordinances require that all liquor sales cease, the air is pierced by the deafening sound of what to the untrained ear seems like an earth-shattering distortion coming from one of the giant speakers which had been pumping out steady streams of thousand-odd-watt music all night long. But when the noise repeats itself in quick, rapid-fire bursts, the music for the moment uninterrupted, the revellers realise that this is no stereophonic distortion: this is the sound of gunfire. The laughter and the gaiety that only a few moments before had filled the room is replaced by the shrieks of frightened men and women, punctured by cries of 'Lawd Jesus Chris!'
"Everyone runs for cover. The tune 'Every Posse Get Flat' now suddenly takes on the literal, deadly meaning for which it must have been intended. The bartender cowers beneath the bar. One diminutive man dives into a free-standing trash can. The sound man, who only hours before had exercised extreme care in setting up his expensive gadgetry, now uses those same gadgets to barricade himself. The carnival comes to an abrupt stop.
"From their flattened positions and with both hands pressed against the backs of their heads, the petrified patrons begin cautiously, slowly, to peer into the centre of the darkened room as they try to comprehend what had 'hit' them. Standing there are two of Jamaica's 'Children of Sisyphus': a couple of uprooted, unrighteous toughs dressed in tams and designer-labelled warm-up outfits, their heavily tinted sunglasses menacingly set against the din and smoke coming from hastily discarded cigarettes. Around their necks hang half of Africa's gold reserve. Their itchy fingers are nervously coiled around the trigger mechanisms of two of civilisation's most awesome solutions for the Malthusian problem of too many people. Using converted submachine guns, the youths had just mowed down, at point-blank range, two male revellers, whose chests are torn apart by rounds of hollow point bullets. Blood oozes from their riddled, lifeless bodies like water from a broken standpipe. The scene is straight out of Dodge.
"The gunmen, in typical cowboy style, had busted their way into the hall. They had an argument to 'settle' with their victims. That argument, over either drug turf or drug money, was now settled in a decisive way. Their mission of waste and destruction accomplished, the marauders, still clutching the smoking instruments of death with firm, sinewy hands, stealthily back away from the carnage and out through the swinging doors. They speed off into the winter night in a shiny, vanity-license-plated silver BMW." [From Bernard Headley, The Jamaican Crime Scene, 1996]
KIND OF CRIME
I retell the above story because in its unfolding are the central dynamics of what fundamentally characterise the kind of crime from which the Jamaican Government's latest crime proposals seek to give us relief. Within the same timeframe of that Chicago incident (1987 through 1992), the American authorities recorded an additional 1,400 such killings. That is, brutal, horrific slayings, committed by Jamaican gang enforcers (either living in or passing through the United States) of others with whom they'd had disagreements over drug turf or drug money. Vigorous engagement of all the forces at its command against that kind of crime, the Government has embarked upon under the rubric of a war against "narco-terrorism."
But hardly does unequivocal evidence exist that support a narco-terrorist assessment of the Jamaican situation, certainly not in the immense body of intelligence information that international law enforcement has collected over the years on drug-related activities of Jamaican gangs, at home and abroad. Close examination of typical Jamaican involvement in the illegal drug trade reveals certain standard items, none of which bears tangible resemblance to what constitutes terrorism, or narco-terrorism (both discussed in the two previous pieces). The items are:
The arena of operation is exclusively in trafficking, as both wholesalers and distributors; doing so in lucrative direct street sales of crack cocaine in Brooklyn and in appropriating as payment substantial layers of transhipped powdered cocaine coming through Jamaica on its way to the U.S. (and increasingly Great Britain).
Unlike Colombia and Peru's narcotrafficantes, Jamaica's drug gangs have zero interest in owning or controlling "politically liberated" zones. More important is gaining access to shipping containers and on-shore warehouses.
The business of narcotics' trafficking among Jamaican entities is unencumbered by extraneous politically organised forces. There are no interlocking directorships or super-ordinate terrorist echelons dictating to or extorting from the Jamaican posses, as the FARC and M-19 outfits have for years been doing to the Colombian cartels.
With the absence of any form of organised terrorist intrusion, there is, therefore, in Jamaican drug trafficking no hint of a larger political or ideological intent, such as overthrowing the Government or bringing down any of its institutions. Illegal gain is the only game, and moving and selling dope the only agenda. The objective, straight up, is to own, or at least be able to control, as much as possible aspects of the trade.
Present political arrangements are just fine, particularly since a high level of well-nurtured cosiness exists between local drug "kingpins" (such as there are), select senior political operatives and agents of the state, particularly within the top tiers of the security forces. These all make for non-antagonistic working relationships. This notwithstanding the gangs from time to time coming under surprise, rear guard police liquidating missions.
Within Jamaican drug gangs there is, indeed, reflexive readiness to resort to a type of violence that is undeniably "terrorist-like." But that violent mode of conduct is still not terrorism. Unlike the violence of known terrorist groups like the Irish Republic Army or Hamas' suicide bombers, whose violence more often than not is "wasted" on things like blowing up buses filled with schoolchildren, merely to "send a message" or "make a point," the violence that is characteristic of Jamaican drug gangs is ruthlessly utilitarian, expedient; it "takes care of business."
It represents an approach and a mindset that for generations gestated in the belly of the Jamaican beast. So, in the end, mobilising to fight narco-terrorists in Jamaica not only misses the mark, it's a war against a non-existent enemy, like dogs barking at shadows in the dark. Peace came eventually to Central America when ruling regimes there sat down and negotiated with the region's "terrorist" organisations, including finding ways to include them in national elections.
The same will have to happen (and in a sense is happening) in Colombia, Peru and Ireland. It's unimaginable this occurring with our drug gangs, simply because they are not terrorists motivated by abstruse political ends. They are, instead, motivated by the terrible human condition called greed. But our ganglords also come from a population of alienated youth who, if nothing else, are fearlessly enterprising.
They'd move into the heart of Wall Street, if there were a market there for the kidnapped windshield washers off the corner of Hope and Waterloo Roads. Continuously reproducing criminally available populations like this is not a problem we can solve with militaristic, anti-narco-terrorism measures.
Bernard Headley is professor of Criminology at the UWI, Mona.|
