KINGSTON GANG WARS ROB JAMAICANS OF SECURITY

KINGSTON, Jamaica -- Inside the high walls of Admiral Town police
station, tired women and children, refugees of Kingston's latest gang
wars, begged for food from visitors and wondered when they could go
home.

"I came here last night," said Tanisha Vassel, 20, balancing her
year-old son on her hip. "I'm afraid of gunmen out there, killing and
burning and looting."

Hundreds of people have fled escalating violence in poor neighborhoods
of Jamaica's capital in recent weeks, taking refuge with friends and
relatives and creating makeshift camps inside police stations.

Some 500 people have been killed in Jamaica this year, including 71 in
the past three weeks -- prompting Prime Minister P.J. Patterson to
declare war on what he called "a spate of criminal madness."

On Monday, Patterson gave the military wide authority to crack down on
crime, saying soldiers would become "a permanent fixture" in the most
troubled inner-city neighborhoods of Kingston.

"They are there to find the guns, those who carry the guns and those
who control the guns," Patterson said, authorizing broad powers that
include imposing spot checks, cordons, searches and curfews.

Opposition leader Edward Seaga criticized the security measures
Tuesday, saying the government was focusing on the "same old failed
solution" instead of looking to resolve the roots of the violence --
poverty and joblessness.

While gang violence is rampant in the poor neighborhoods of Kingston,
it has had little impact on tourism in Jamaica's tony beach resorts,
located far from the capital.

However, the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica, a group of
business people, warned the violence could hurt business, including
the island's vital import and export industries, and called on the
government to bring it under control.

Most of the shootings stem from unrelated disputes. In Admiral Town,
for example, fighting began after one man slapped the mother of the
neighborhood's gang leaders. Another gang feud, in the Park Lane
neighborhood, began with the theft of a video camera.

But the roots of Kingston's violent gang culture can be traced back
decades -- to the very political establishment now trying to stop it.

In the 1970s, the two main political parties, Seaga's Jamaica Labor
Party and Patterson's People's National Party, helped organize and arm
residents, producing rival "garrison communities" where armed gangs
controlled the streets at the behest of local politicians and
intimidated voters at election time.

By the early 1980s, many gangs became involved in cocaine and
marijuana smuggling. With money of their own, they no longer needed
the patronage of politicians and began to operate independently.

In the last decade, many of Jamaica's most notorious gang leaders were
killed or sentenced to long prison terms, mainly in the United States,
for drug trafficking.

But the gangs still operate, fighting over turf and bolstered by a
steady flow of guns from the United States and new recruits of poor
young men who come from the countryside in search of work.

For the violence to end, residents must disassociate themselves from
the gangsters, Patterson said. "It is clear for all to see that the
gunman who is your so-called protector or don ... becomes your worst
terrorist tomorrow," he said.

Residents of Admiral Town say they doubt that.

"Once the police and the army go, the bad men come back," said Novlet
Smith, who was breast-feeding her baby a few blocks from the police
station. "They have nowhere else to go."