By Pacific Island Times News Staff
The United States and the Pacific island states have rolled out a regional initiative to boost maritime patrol and curb criminal activities around the region, which has gained notoriety as a “drug highway.”
The Palau-led Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police, along with Todd D. Robinson, assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, announced the Aumoana Regional Law Enforcement Initiative or ARLEI during the first U.S.-PICP Dialogue today in Nuku’alofa, Tonga.
According to the Office of the Spokesperson at the State Department, the initiative will provide training and support to help the Pacific island governments “bolster law enforcement response to illicit maritime activities.”
The program seeks to beef up regional efforts to curb drug smuggling, human and wildlife trafficking, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing among other illicit activities.
“Under ARLEI, the United States will continue the tradition of supporting the needs of our Pacific partners by ensuring that solutions are ‘by the Pacific, for the Pacific’ and in coordination with our friends and allies in the region,” the State Department said.
The Washington-based think U.S. Institute of Peace noted that the Pacific “drug highway” has become the main transit route for drugs and chemical precursors being trafficked from Asia and South America to lucrative markets in Australia and New Zealand.
“Drug trafficking and other transnational crimes are enabled by the region’s vast and porous maritime borders, weak jurisdictions and inadequate legislation, corruption and limited enforcement capabilities,” the USIP states in a report released on March 9 and authored by Jose Sousa-Santos.
Sousa-Santos, a visiting fellow at the University of Canterbury’s Macmillan Brown Pacific Studies Center, recalled the seizure of 3.5 tons of crystal methamphetamine followed by another 1.1 tons in Fiji earlier this year.
The quick succession of the Fiji drug busts underscored the threat that the illicit drug trade and narco-corruption pose to the Pacific region’s stability and security," Sousa-Santos wrote.
“A recent report by the National Research Institute in Papua New Guinea cited weak governance, corruption, improved technology, poverty and geography as key factors contributing to the growth of transnational crime in the Pacific’s most populous state,” Sousa-Santos said.
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