We had better grow up quickly

Lloyd Goodleigh, Guest Columnist

There are mixed views about the fact-finding commission of enquiry into the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips affair. Some see great merit in the proceedings, and some see it as an exercise in sophistry by some individuals. Whatever the view, what is becoming increasingly apparent is that it is really a discussion about Jamaica's national security and the fact that Jamaica is unprepared for the terrorist/criminal challenges posed by a globalised world.

Just in case 'you can't see the forest for the trees', or your party colours act as your blinkers, this is how we are viewed outside Jamaica.

The Economist of January 2011, in an article titled 'The Rot Spreads', reads:

"Battlefields aside, the countries known as the Northern Triangle of the Central American isthmus form what is now the most violent region on Earth. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, along with Jamaica and Venezuela, suffer the world's highest murder rates ... . Organised crime is now the main cause of the bloodshed."

The article points out that El Salvador has 71 murders per hundred thousand people, per year. Honduras has 67, and Jamaica has 53. These figures must be contrasted with 32 in Colombia, 15 in Mexico, 12 in Costa Rica, and 13 in Nicaragua. These are Jamaica's realities: Terrorism/criminality contributes to the stagnation of the Jamaican economy and its social development. Historically, total factor productivity in Jamaica has declined on average by 1.74 each year since 1973.

Shrinking Jamaican economy

Currently, the Jamaican economy has been shrinking for the last 31/2 years. In the Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011, Jamaica's competitiveness moved from 91 out of 133 countries in 2009 to 95 out of 139 countries in 2010. All the indicators of health and primary education, goods-market efficiency, labour-market efficiency, technological readiness, and innovation are moving in the wrong direction. In the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report of 2006, Jamaica was placed 104th out of 177 countries, below most of the Caribbean countries measured on the index. Barbados, the highest-placed Caribbean country, was 31st, Cuba was at 51, St Kitts, 51, The Bahamas, 52, and Trinidad and Tobago, 57.

Beyond those social and economic factors, terrorism/criminality infects the normal transactions of everyday life; they breed fear and suspicion, induce depression, and help to shatter the social trust, the glue which binds civilised societies together.

It helps to account for the fact that in a poll conducted by the University of the West Indies, 84 per cent of Jamaicans do not believe that most people in society are trustworthy. This has to be contrasted with the United States, 41 per cent; Venezuela, 48 per cent; Egypt, 40 per cent; the Palestinian Territories, 58 per cent; and Nigeria, 66 per cent. All these circumstances are fed by the terrorist/criminal element in our society.

If power is the ability to get individuals to alter their behaviour, that element in Jamaica seems to have enormous power in our society. Almost every aspect of our society has been tainted by 'the rot' as the disease grows. The crime problem has elicited a traditional response from the State that further erodes the social trust. It is an overemphasis based on sweeps, curfews, the use of force, suspension of habeas corpus. These measures, in the long run, swell the pool of sympathisers in communities as it is a form of collective punishment, where the good suffer for the bad. They also allow the terrorist/criminal who does not reside in these communities to hide behind the mask of respectability, and remain undetected and unpunished.

What we need is verifiable, actionable information about terrorism and criminality in our society. The best way to accomplish this is an intelligence service that is secret. Intelligence services rely on human capabilities and technological capabilities. It seems that the current Government's position is that those technological capabilities should not be secret and should be openly discussed, even at press conferences, but human capabilities should remain secret. This is an astounding assertion in a world that is in the middle of mankind's fourth technological revolution, which has been called the Information Age.

The stark fact is if our technological capabilities for the interception of communications is common knowledge, sophisticated terrorist/criminal groupings would adapt a policy of communication discipline by abstinence from the air using one-time keypads, land phones, couriers, and runners. Whether we like it or not, it is impossible to understand complex organisations or arrangements by an isolated intercept or by reliance on unisource human information.

National Intelligence Service

One must weave a blanket of facts, communications, events, and people together in order to understand both modern terrorism and criminality. Therefore, our intelligence technological capabilities and our human capabilities must remain secret. Jamaica needs a funded National Intelligence Service that is secret, circumscribed by law, and answerable to a bipartisan committee of Parliament whose members have had their backgrounds checked and are cleared to have access to information that has been labelled secret.

In the real world, foreign governments run intelligence-gathering operations in Jamaica for the protection of their own interests. This includes eavesdropping, microwave interception, etc. That is their job. It would be naive of anyone to think that in weaving a blanket of information in any given circumstance, they would rely solely on Jamaica law-enforcement intercepts.

Capturing the high ground in both warfare and intelligence-gathering has to do with more than the view. Look up and get real! This is 2011 in a globalised world.

Lloyd Goodleigh is a veteran trade unionist.