GUYANA, VENEZUELA, SURINAME SERVE AS COCAINE AIR-BRIDGE TO HISPANIOLA
- - LA TIMES

Guyana has been identified among those countries that serve as an
"air bridge" to facilitate the direct flow of cocaine from Colombia
to the Caribbean.

According to an article in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times, US action
to combat the flow of drugs has denied Colombia's traffickers a once
thriving route to Central America and Mexico, but a new air bridge
linking airports and airstrips in Venezuela, Suriname and Guyana to
Hispaniola - the Dominican Republic and Haiti - has been created.
Twin-engine Beechcraft King Air business planes are used, since, with
the passenger seats removed, they can ferry three-quarters of a ton
of cocaine per flight.

The article points to corruption in Venezuela as well as Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez's decision to sever anti-drug ties with the US
as being a new cause for concern about the US's ability to win its
war on drugs in Colombia. It noted that at a Caribbean drug summit
last Friday in the Dominican Republic, Vene-zuelan officials
acknowledged the drug problem and said they would use Chinese
satellite technology and newly purchased Russian aircraft to combat
traffick-ers. Haitian and Dominican leaders have already issued pleas
for help in recent months to stem the flow of drugs from Venezuela,
but to little avail. The US has criticized the Guyana government for
its failure to go after major drug traffickers, but President Bharrat
Jagdeo has said that assistance from Washington has not been enough,
and nowhere near the scale of assistance given to Colombia. "We need
help," he told a military officer's conference recently, while giving
the assurance that "even with our limited resources we have been
fighting drug dealers."

In its International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the US State
Department has noted that Guyana is a trans-shipment point for
cocaine destined for North America, Europe, and the Caribbean. In
fact, for 2006, domestic seizures of cocaine were found to be
insignificant, owing, among other things, to the government's
inability to control its borders, a lack of a law enforcement
presence, and a lack of aircraft and patrol boats. As a consequence
traffickers can move drug shipments via sea, river, and air with
little resistance.

The report also noted that the Guyana government is yet to implement
the substantive initiatives of its $600M National Drug Strategy
Mas-ter Plan, which was launched almost two years ago.

The Los Angeles Times article cites US and Latin American
investigators as alleging that Venezuela has become a sieve through
which a soaring amount of Colombian cocaine moves annually by air and
sea. "Venezuela's permissive and corrupt environment led to more
trafficking, fewer seizures and an increase in suspected drug flights
over the past 12 months," Anne Patterson, Assistant Secretary of
State for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, was
quoted as saying in the article. "There is systematic corruption.
Maiquetia is wide open," a foreign counter-narcotics official added,
referring to the airport. Close behind are smaller airports and
airstrips in Vene-zuela's Apure, Portuguesa and Sucre states, and sea
ports such as La Guaira and Puerto Cabello, where tons of cocaine
leave in containers or amid bulk cargo.

The US Embassy in Caracas estimates that the amount of Colombian
cocaine passing through Venezuela en route to the United States,
Europe and elsewhere has quintupled to 250 tons a year since 2001.
Depending on whose total cocaine production figures one accepts, a
quarter to half of all Colombian drug exports use this country as a
"trampoline."

Venezuela has always been a conduit for Colombian drugs because it
shares a porous 1,300-mile border with the neighbour where most of
the world's cocaine is manufactured. But a US-funded crackdown in
Colombia has forced traffickers to seek new routes and international alliances.

US and Colombian officials also cite escalating corruption in the
Venezuelan security forces and Washing-ton's deteriorating relations
with Chavez, a vocal foe of the United States.

In August 2005, Chavez announced an end to a 17-year anti-drug
agreement with the United States. He forbade Venezuelan officials
from sharing any information or mounting joint operations with the US
Drug Enforce-ment Administration, whose agents he describes as spies.
In 2006, the amount of cocaine seized in Venezuela dropped by about
40% after having increased every year since 1999, according to the
State Department.

Cocaine seizures by Venezuelan authorities in the last two months
totalled 4.8 tons, a number that critics find suspiciously low, given
the size of single shipments seized elsewhere.

"Twenty-two percent of announced cocaine seizures last year, which
totalled 55 tons, came as a result of luck - drugs discovered at the
border or checkpoints," said one former high-level Vene-zuelan
counter-narcotics official who asked not to be named. "As much
movement as there is, the percentage should be much smaller. It shows
the lack of investigation."

The State Department worries its successes in Colombia are coming
undone. Since 2000, the US, through Plan Colombia, has spent $4
billion fighting drug trafficking in Colombia. "We want to work with
the Venezuelans," said Patterson, the Assistant Secretary of State.
"But we haven't gotten very far in recent years, and their problem is
increasing. That's the worrisome thing about this. Success in
Colombia has basically led to a migration of some of this into Venezuela."