Drug transit nations

The White House has named four Caribbean counties as major drug points for international cocaine trafficking but Guyana and neighboring Suriname, which have had their own problems with the illicit trade in the past escaped the rogues list unscathed.

The Bahamas, Jamaica, Belize and Haiti are the four which made the list issued by Washington on Monday with officials there saying that these are significant sources of precursor chemicals used in then production of certain drugs which affect the US. The designation is linked to the fiscal year 2024-25.

“The list is not a sanction or penalty,” the White House quoted President Joe Biden as saying, noting that the presence of a country on the list is not a reflection of a government’s efforts to eradicate the scourge or of its level if cooperation with the US.

The four named have indeed been battling organized drug trafficking in recent years but authorities in Guyan and Suriname on the South American continent have also had serious headaches with illegal airstrips and the discovery of semi submersibles being built to fetch drugs to the US mainland. Both countries have in the past acknowledged their mited abilities to patrol large areas of un-monitored jungle and huge rivers running for hundreds of miles.

And not surprisingly, Venezuela and Boliva also made the rogues list with Biden saying that “I hereby designate Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as having failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to both adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements and to take the measures required by section 489(a)(1) of the FAA.”