A Path to Defeating the Drug Cartels  

Drug cartels have “limitless resources” and the ability to rapidly adapt to avoid interdiction, and authorities are currently playing a “game of catch-up,” says the head of a Caribbean security cooperative.

“Cooperation and collaboration” between nations is paramount to stopping the illegal flow of drugs through the Caribbean to the U.S., Europe, and Australia, said Errington Ricardo Shurland, a senior retired naval officer from Barbados who serves as the executive director of the Regional Security System in the Caribbean.

“The transnational criminal organizations, they’re not idiots, you know, if they see that they’re being stopped in a particular way, then they will find other ways” to transport narcotics, Shurland told The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration has taken an aggressive approach to fighting the criminal cartels and has carried out more than 40 kinetic strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, leading to “a reduction” of drug smuggling vessels.

“Yes, there has been a reduction on the maritime side, but that is not to say that there has been a reduction in the movement of drugs from south to north,” Shurland told The Daily Signal, explaining that he suspects the cartels are moving drugs increasingly by airplane now.

“As we press the gas, so to speak, in a particular space, then the transnational organizations will shift to another space.”

The Regional Security System exists to respond to security threats in the Caribbean and the surrounding region. Member states include Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Shurland says increased demand for drugs has led to larger drug loads moving through Caribbean waters, but he estimates authorities are only apprehending between 10% and 11% of the drugs flowing through the region.

The Regional Security System works with the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force South, as well as French, Dutch, and U.K. partners, but winning the “game” against the cartels will require greater intelligence sharing, more ships patrolling in the Caribbean, and even better relationships with West African nations where drugs are being moved overland into Europe, he explains.

Because it is impossible to check every single shipping container, “sharing of information, sharing of intelligence, really positive working … relationships between states, functional relationships between law enforcement organizations” are necessary, he said, “to put pieces of the puzzle together so that we have that common operating picture” to interdict narcotics.

Shurland said the Treaty of San Jose can serve as a tool to increase cooperation in the fight against the drug cartels. The 2003 maritime agreement “removes some of the bureaucracy in terms of being able to board and to interrogate a vessel” of a nation that is signed onto the agreement.

Right now, states across the Western Hemisphere are willing to cooperate to combat the illicit drug trade, “but in the interest of partnership you have to do a much better job of sharing information and sharing intelligence and sharing resources.”

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