Casualties of war

It was the garrison paramilitaries, confident in their strength and desperate in their cause, which opened hostilities in the Coke War. But to the dead in this latest round of what at its root is political violence, it does not matter. They, scores and counting in Kingston plus two dozen or more in St Catherine, have joined the rolling roster of the dead in the conflicts rooted in the country's dirty politics. Most of the dead do not even have the dignity of identity; some have rotted in the streets.

Among the anonymous is the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldier killed in the Tivoli assault. At least I have not heard or seen his name in the media up to the time of writing. The two policemen killed on Mountain View Avenue have identities. They are Sgt Wayne Henriques and Constable Jason Davis of the Motorised Patrol Division who were members of a police team courageously responding in the dead of night to a citizen's cry for help after her vehicle was fired on by gunmen. Sgt Henriques was killed on his wedding anniversary leaving a wife and four young children behind. He had patriotically given up his day-off and responded to the call to report for duty.

Other young men, on the side of the garrison fighters, have been cut down.

Women and children are numbered among the dead. Combatants, some who have refused to fight for the Coke cause, and unengaged bystanders have been cut down. Dozens have been injured, some unable to get to medical help which requires traversing death streets. Thousands, both in the battle zone and away from it, have been traumatised. Patients in the public hospital, already battling illness, have had to take to the floors of the wards for some safety. Medical staff have quite literally been under fire in unprecedented attacks upon life-preserving health services, including the lives of gunmen themselves. Each category of the casualties of war is a metaphor for some element of the devastating disease which has invaded our land.

early casualty

My heart has always bled for the members of the security forces facing armed gunmen in hostile enclaves in an unwinnable asymmetric war. The garrison warriors can use human shields, can trample on every human right, can kill informers at will, and can meld into the community which has often embraced them as heroes, defenders and providers. The security forces are bound by rules of engagement and must face death and injury under those restraints.

Recognising that truth is always an early casualty in war and that we had not been able to see much behind the barricades at the height of the fight, I, nonetheless, join Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) in commending the conduct of the security forces. JFJ, not often a friend of the security forces or displaying reasonable sensitivity to the enormously difficult conditions under which they must deal with armed and dangerous hostile forces, has noted that: "The professionalism and restraint displayed thus far by the Jamaica Constabulary Force is extremely commendable. It is also heartening for the signal it sends of a new, higher level of policing practice under the leadership of Commissioner Ellington." Several civic organisations and persons have been supplying the defenders of the state with rations and water.

The security forces in stock in trade raids since the 1970s, for which they have taken a lot of flak and through which they have delivered a great deal of abuse to citizens in those areas, have had to face gunmen who were in the first instance armed as political enforcers, however, they might have morphed afterwards. Killing armed and dangerous gangsters have only created vacancies for more to arise in an unending cycle; and the security forces too have paid a heavy price in death, injury and trauma.

Something has been wrong at a deep and fundamental level when the political parties, the governments which they have alternately formed and, by extension, the state, have tolerated - and facilitated - the rise and maintenance of these dangerous, unpoliceable communities with their well-armed paramilitary forces and then send in members of the security forces, some to their deaths and debilitating injuries, just to prune back lawlessness and crime and violence but never to crush it. And no one is responsible?

a losing game

The security forces have taken too long to learn that they are pawns in this losing game. They are learning now in the heat of battle and must push the fight to the bitter end, on behalf of the state and its citizens they are sworn to defend and to protect. The communities of war all across the land must be pacified and cleansed in a relentless operation flowing on from Tivoli, and then rehabilitated through structured interventions by other arms of the state and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The paramilitaries have never had the capacity in numbers, resources, coordination and, most of all, in training and discipline, to be any serious match for a determined and unfettered security forces and have seriously overreached themselves this time.

The deaths of Sgt Henriques, Constable Davis, the unnamed soldier and any other security forces officer engaged in this fight should be the last deaths of sacrificial lambs.

It is a matter of intense curiosity to find out whether the Minister of Defence [and prime minister] announced on media that the extradition order would be signed, ahead of notifying the security forces of the state to take pre-emptive action to minimise any escalation of hostilities. And, if so, why?

And why would hundreds of young men place their lives and freedom on the line, and dozens of them dying, to defend a leader who is prepared to sacrifice them and everything else in a can't-win confrontation with superior forces? These men have displayed extraordinary, indeed commendable, courage and organisational capacity which could have been put to far better use in nation building.

We see at work desperation, deep anti-state hostility, the demonic domination of the culture of death, the powerful lure of the gang, and ruthless coercion at work. Among the tragic deaths were that of two anonymous young men shot and tagged to indicate that they had been killed for refusing to participate in the fight to defend Coke. With what courage and conviction did these young inner-city men die with their protective state out of reach? How many conscripts are in this fight?

Before hostilities erupted, the women, with a handful of men of no interest to the police, came pouring out of Tivoli in protest supportive of Coke. And the security forces missed a golden opportunity to take human shields into protective custody, if not on grounds of seeking to obstruct justice. How many of these women were conscripts? In the ensuing siege and battle of Tivoli and the accompanying sufferation and death, many have begun, finally, to count the cost of loyalty to those not really loyal to them but merely using them as soft pawns in their deadly power game.

Women hold an important key to success in the fight against crime, gangsterism and garrisons. If only women could be made to rise up against collaboration in crime, the game would be all over. This cause needs a strong and bold leader. And I can think of no one better than Portia Simpson Miller, now in a sombre mood for radical transformative change, to orchestrate a women's uprising against guns, gangsterism and garrisons which are at the heart of the violence and social dysfunction wracking the nation and deeply affecting women and their children.

large debt

A large debt of national gratitude and an illustrious place in the nation's history, unmatched by anything in her past, awaits the hugely influential and charismatic Sister P, should she undertake this atoning redemptive task. She can begin in her own constituency of South-West St Andrew and neighbouring West Kingston.

Young men need to be oriented away from gangs and the domination of dons sending them, sometimes under coercion, to their deaths for precious little. Is Andrew Holness the man? Himself a youth and the holder of the tough inner-city West St Andrew constituency, and a rising political star. Holness has declared his break with the politics of the past which has brought us to where we now are in this shameful garrison war. We need a real man for this fight. There is no education project which can beat this.

The inner-city students battling on with their CXC exams, their ticket to a better life, to the sound of gunfire, the hospital staff bussing to work in military convoy and facing gunfire directed on to the hospital, the ordinary women and men soldiering on with life, some making extraordinary sacrifices for their loved ones as the battle rages, these are metaphors of hope in this whole sordid affair.

The members of Parliament, black-bedecked for mourning and atonement, sombre and respectful, meeting on the edge of the main battlefield, albeit behind a security cordon not afforded ordinary citizens some of whom have lived without the protection of the state for years, can choose to return to being part of the problem or can lead the solution. They have betrayed us in the past.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com