Robert Buddan, Contributor

When CARICOM Prime Ministers meet with President Bush and administration officials in mid-June, they will have plenty to talk about. One of the main talking points will be about a post-Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) after the present one expires this year. But the World Bank/UN report on crime in the Caribbean should put this subject squarely on the table as well.

Further to this, the discovery of a plot against the JFK airport in New York, allegedly involving four men from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago suspected of trying to blow up a fuel supply line that might have killed hundreds, has put the Caribbean in the spotlight of the war against terrorism, something of obsessive interest to the United States.

Guyanese and Trinidadian suspects in the JFK plot, along with long-standing surveillance of the Jamaat al Muslimeem (JAM) in Trinidad, have raised the profile of the Caribbean on the terrorist radar screen. The immediate reaction from the American side ranges from alarm to concern. The more alarmist perspective is that the plot indicates a trend where the Caribbean is becoming a hotbed of terrorism.

Hezbollah influence

The influence of Hezbollah in certain countries of South America could therefore spread to the Caribbean. It further argues that while there is no proliferation of terrorist groups in the region, there is a loose confederation of extremists who are using the soft points of open tourism economies and unstable countries like Haiti to fund or plot violence against Americans.

The more cautious perspective accepts that the Caribbean has never been a major source of terrorism. The activities of the controversial Trinidad group, JAM, are localised with no evidence that it has influence in the rest of the Caribbean. Counterterrorist analysts in the CIA say they have had the group under surveillance since the 1980s and that its political role has actually faded. They admit that neither the JAM nor the plot against the JFK airport has any known connection with al-Qaida.

American investigation suggests a link between the JFK plotters andthe JAM. However, the JAM's leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, denies knowing anything about it and says that his organisation is a religious one. American counterterrorists analysts nonetheless say that the discovered plot should be treated as a wake-up call for the U.S. and that it should take a closer look at the potential for terrorism in the Caribbean.

American-Caribbean wars

The CBI (1983) marked a turning point in two respects. It was the first Caribbean-Central American trade and investment treaty with the United States; and its motivation was as much ideological and military as economic since it was part of the American war against communism.

After this, the war on communism was replaced by the war on drugs, and the American initiative shifted to the Shiprider agreement by the mid-1990s. But at the same time, the Americans started deporting criminals to the region and failed to do enough to stop gun trafficking and drug consumption. Then came the war on terrorism after 9/11, and the American-Caribbean Third Border Initiative (2004).

The Third Border Initiative, like the CBI, was premised on the importance of trade and investments to provide the growth that would make the Caribbean more secure against crime and violence and satisfy American national security interests at the same time. The U.S. has come up with very little for its part because it turned its attention away from the region to Iraq. In the meantime, crime and violence have got worse in the Caribbean.

In fact, in Jamaica's case, new foreign investments have come from the Spanish, Venezuelans, and others, while new American investments have been disappointing, and all around the Caribbean countries have been turning to new partners in Europe and Asia. Jamaica seems to have the most diverse source of foreign investments in CARICOM. Of course, remittances from Jamaicans overseas make up our single largest source of foreign capital.

National security and free trade

What has gone wrong? US-Caribbean economic agreements have tendedto be linked with American national security interests. Those interests have been expressed in the war on communism, the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism. They have not been directed to the war on poverty. Yet, there is consensus on both sides that poverty breeds anger and frustration and these can result in extremism.

Even now, according to Newsweek (June 4 edition), the current proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements is motivated by politics. The United States, China, Japan and Europe are using FTAs to form strategic alliances with neighbouring countries to contain or balance the influence of each other and others with a vision of a world order.

In the Americas, the United States wants, by this logic, to balance the influence of Cuba and Venezuela who oppose neoliberal FTAs and propose to unite the Americas around thei The Bolivaria for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA). American officials have tried (unsuccessfully) to paint Cuba as part of an axis of evil that sponsors international terrorism. It sees Venezuela as another such country because of its ties with Cuba, Iran, and Libya. It is against this background that trade agreements have a political objective. The association of Caribbean nationals with the JFK plot onl this relationship. Some American officials even claim that there is a link between Hugo Chavez and Abu Bakr. This completes the circle.

Caribbean perspective

The Caribbean response must be to keep things in their right perspective. The fact that the Americans conceive of the Caribbean as a 'third border' means that the region is seen to pose a border problem to national security (immigration, human trafficking, drug trafficking, terrorism). But the Caribbean is more than just somebody else's border. It is a zone of peace, cooperation, and development and this must be brought home to the Americans.

Furthermore, the threat of terrorism must not detract from the real and known enemy of drug and gun trafficking, which the World Bank/UN study confirmed.One can speculate about terrorism in the Caribbean, but drug and gun trafficking are the real and present danger. Caribbean leaders and the Caribbean diaspora must also make sure that the United States does not generalise about Muslim populations in Guyana, Trinidad and elsewhere, causing Caribbean Muslims to be equated with Caribbean terrorists.

This is, in fact, Caribbean Heritage Month in the United States and the June Conference on the Caribbean must reaffirm the peaceful heritage of the Caribbean multi-cultural region. American immigration officials must be told not to harass Caribbean travellers to the U.S.

Finally, Caribbean hoteliers must take a realistic perspective on the security benefits of the CARICOM Single Domestic Space. If fear of the Caribbean is allowed to lodge in the minds of American travellers, hoteliers will suffer. Ease and convenience of travel are ideal, but porous borders are insecure borders and travellers need to know that they will be safe and secure wherever they go.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, Mona, UWI. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.