The following is the sixth and final instalment in a series on cocaine trafficking, by one of the region's top narco-journalists, Lloyd Williams, The Gleaner's Senior Associate Editor.
SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE
BUT THERE is a significant difference between the ganja (marijuana), traffickers of yore and today's cocaine traffickers. Traditionally, ganja traffickers avoided confrontation and violence at all times. The cocaine traffickers live by a code of violence.
Violence is linked to the cocaine trade in a variety of ways. Individuals who have been abducted by armed robbers will tell you that while they were being held captive (often in their own car, sometimes in the trunk) being driven around, they heard their abductors discussing the need for crack cocaine as an urgent priority. There is the violence among factions warring over turf, over deals wrecked by cheaters or confrontation by rivals or the police. And they don't hesitate to go after high-profile targets. Case in point is that of the late Eli Matalon, Jamaica's National Security Minister from 1974-75, who missed by the skin of his teeth being blown to bits by a bomb that was placed under his car in Miami in 1975. And over the years we have seen high levels of violence becoming the trademark of the Jamaican posses in the United States and the 'Yardies' in the United Kingdom.
Guns are integral to the cocaine trade. They are used readily to protect the boat and the goods on the boat on the beach, in the stash houses and between destinations, the money, turf, the secrets. They are displayed as signs that whenever deals are not honoured, the spoilers will be ruthlessly and speedily hunted down and killed. They are sometimes presented as gifts to cement friendship, business relationship or for jobs well done.
PAYING FOR SERVICE
But invariably, the same boat or plane that takes in cocaine also takes in a quantity of guns. Regularly, the dealers pay for services with cocaine and guns. And the go-fast boats and light planes of the trade have, over the years, provided escape routes for wanted felons.
Jamaica, in terms of violence generated by the cocaine trade, has become discomfortingly similar to Colombia in recent years and in several adverse respects. "Colombia has persistently suffered a level of violence that is high by any standards. High even during peaceful times, the violence level has increased dramatically in the last decade. The proportion of violence not related to political activity has been much higher than in other countries. Common explanations for this unique problem include Colom-bians' propensity for attempting to solve problems violently, their frustrations with unequal income distribution, and their decreasing respect for prevailing power structures," Professor Francisco E. Thoumi writes in the introduction to his excellent book, Political Economy & Illegal Drugs in Colombia.
DEADLY MESSAGE
In that passage, 'Jamaica' could easily be substituted for 'Colombia'. Because of the illegality and necessarily clandestine nature of cocaine trafficking in Jamaica (also the case in Colombia, according to Prof. Thoumi) violence is a resource that is critical to its operation. In Colombia, as in Jamaica, and indeed elsewhere in the drug-trafficking underworld, whenever business deals (usually involving thousands or hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars) go sour, there is no referral to a dispute resolution tribunal or recourse to the courts of law. Swift, brutal violence is the only way to settle the problems.
By the nature of the business cocaine deals are from time to time conducted between strangers, one man's word being his bond. So the threat of certain, deadly violence is the only way to cement the deals. The devil to pay if by chance that word is broken, for whatever reason. It's a business in which explanations don't readily find receptive ears. Not only is the cocaine trade competitive, with dealers seeking always to increase their lucrative market share, but stashes of cocaine and caches of money are ever at the risk of being taken by armed robbers be they rivals or corrupt police acting in collusion with the competition.
And the execution of the violence, which more often than not involves gangland-style killings, is never merely to settle the case in point, but to send a deadly message to all and sundry.
As Mark Bowden, referring to violence in Colombia put it in his admirable book, Killing Pablo, "In Colombia it wasn't enough to hurt or even kill your enemy; there was ritual to be observed - to amplify revulsion and fear, victims were horribly mutilated and left on display." Similar crimes happen here. In December, Winston Dear, president of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce, commenting on some homicides in Montego Bay, remarked that he was appalled at the brutal nature of the gangland killings.
VICIOUS
Like posse members of the past, cocaine traffickers can be vicious, turning to violence and torture at the slightest provocation. Victims in some cases are shot in the ankles, knees and hips before being taken out of their misery with bullets to their heads. And this senseless violence is often directed to anyone who they regard as enemy - workers who they deem to be traitorous, members of rival group, individuals who trespass on their drug turf, who know too much, or people who reveal their secrets.
Tackling the international cocaine trade is indeed a hard row to hoe as relentless as it is painstaking. As INCSR reminds us, it is a complex, dynamic process that doesn't get easier over time. "The drug trade is nothing if not resilient. It learns quickly from its mistakes. Every year, natural selection leaves us with a slightly more astute adversary. Our successes force it to become smarter and more sophisticated in order to survive. We have seen this already in the difficulty of targeting the hundreds of small, hard-to-target drug syndicates that filled the void left by the destruction of Colombia's two dominant
cartels."
NOT INVINCIBLE
But with all of that, the cocaine trade, with all the corruption its tempting big money can buy, with all the fear that its murderers use to frighten the citizenry, it is not invincible.
As powerful as it is, it has its Achilles heel. It needs raw materials to produce drugs, it has to plan complex logistics arrangement to move them to their points of sale, it needs communications, financial and other specialists to run its operations and the means to launder the millions of dollars it earns in profits.
But we have seen what has happened to the Medellin and the Cali syndicates. Closer to home we have seen the U.S. law enforcement agencies, led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, bring down in 1982, the ganja empire of the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church that had its 'embassy' on Star Island, Miami Beach, South Florida, headed by Thomas F. Reilly, Jr. (Brother Louv), and its headquarters on Shenstone Drive, Beverly Hills, St. Andrew, headed by Chief Elder Keith Gordon, better known as 'Nyah' or 'The King', since deceased.
In its heyday the Coptics operated in Kingston a container haulage company, a service station, a supermarket, a furniture store, and owned an aircraft, deep-sea fishing boats, a wrecking service and heavy equipment including tractors, lowboys, forklifts and front-end loaders which they hired out. In addition, they operated several farms in Trelawny, St. Thomas, St. Mary and St. Elizabeth, choice properties in Beverly Hills and other posh residential areas in Kingston and Mandeville, Manchester, and elsewhere and were regarded as the island's largest private landowners. And in addition it provided many a respectable businessman with scarce foreign exchange. It would be interesting to know who owns all those properties these days.
But as big and as rich and as powerful as these cocaine-ganja syndicates are, with their millions of American dollars, their sicarios, drive-by shooters and other hitmen, they are not
invincible.
Who among them is bigger and richer and more powerful and more ruthless than Pablo Escobar, dubbed in his time, "the world's greatest outlaw"?
PABLO ESCOBAR
As Mark Bowden says in Killing Pablo, "Of course, killing Pablo had not primarily been about drugs. His violence was his death sentence. His violence and his ambition."
U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft, DEA administrator Karen Tandy and U.S. National Drug Control policy director John Walters announced in Washington, D.C. on June 23 this year, the indictment and arrest of Colombian drug trafficker Elias Cobos-Munoz, the reputed head of one of the largest drug trafficking and drug transportation organisations based in Colombia and Jamaica, and more than 50 other high-level traffickers. Over the previous several weeks, agents of the DEA, assisted by their foreign law enforcement counterparts, executed arrest warrants for the members of the Cobos organisation in Colombia, Panama, Jamaica, the Bahamas, the United States and Canada, the DEA said.
This series of indictments and related arrests represented the successful culmination of the DEA's 'Caribbean Initiative', a multi-faceted attack on all levels of certain major trafficking organisations operating in the Caribbean corridor. Operations 'Busted Manatee' and 'Double Talk' are the result of a 29-month-long international Organised Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation into cocaine and marijuana trafficking, conducted by the DEA and other federal, state and local law enforcement, working with partners in six foreign countries.
In October 2003, Elias Cobos-Munoz was placed on the Consolidated Priority Organisation Target (CPOT) List, a list that identifies those most responsible for the nation's drug supply, and the most significant drug and money laundering organisations threatening the United States.
The DEA points out that the charges contained in the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
