'Extraditing Coke'
In case you're wondering just what went down - beyond the hysteria - in Jamaica last month regarding the arrest & extradition of accused populist drug lord Christopher Coke, along with the deaths of dozens of civilians at the hands of the Jamaican state's security apparatus, Al Jazeera has put together the informative piece below.
Some crucial context that is lacking in the video was provided by The Guardian's Richard Drayton in June when he described how "strategy and tactics deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are being applied in Jamaica":
"For two weeks, the Jamaican army and police have fought gun battles in Kingston. The many allegations of human rights abuses committed by the security forces – including extrajudicial killings and the disposal of bodies – have received almost no international attention. Nor have the linkages between the Jamaican crisis, the security establishments in the US, Britain and Canada, and the mutations of the 'war on terror.'"
The headline could well have been 'From Kingston (Ontario) to Kingson, Jamaica, to Kabul," since, as Drayton points out, "For two years the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) has combined operations in Afghanistan with training the Jamaican special forces, the Ninjas. In March 2010 Jamaican newspapers reported a joint US-UK-Canada intelligence operation was being run from Kingston" (facts, of course, that did not merit any mention in the Canadian press throughout the crisis).
Importantly, for the Canadian audience, Drayton asks:
"How much of the current crisis is being driven by the need of the interlocked global security establishment to justify its existence? What price will be paid in Jamaica for the transformation of policing into counterinsurgency? What are the long-term consequences for democracy of treating the urban poor as an enemy population to be beaten into submission, of the militarisation of policing, of the expansion of intrusive surveillance of society? These questions should be asked far beyond Jamaica."
CanWest reporter David Pugliese first reported in April 2009 (no link available) that, as of at least January 2008, CSOR has been providing the Jamaica Defence Force with what the Canadian Forces "refer to as DDMA or Defence Diplomacy and Military Assistance.” That the DDMA was being held up as a model for " similar overseas missions in the future" should lend further impetus to digging into to this matter in order to determine the full extent of Canada's role in the recent debacle in Jamaica, the political fall-out from which, as the Al Jazeera piece implies, will continue to be felt for some time...