Yet another senseless murder of a Belizean in Belize has occurred in what appears to be a sinister and violent attack on a Belizean Muslim citizen, Brother Fareed Ahmad, whose family has been through hell in terms of a cloud of suspicion that has continued to engulf Belize in its cooperation in the United States government’s so-called, “War on Drugs,” and now its global “War on Terror”.
Belize came under the watchful eye of the U.S. president Ronald Reagan after the dictator, Anastacio Somoza, as the Cold War intensified in Central America.
Belize, once a peaceful country and the only English-speaking nation in the region, was pressured for it to be uses as a strategic geographical location in the balance of power between the U.S.-backed so-called freedom fighters, the “Contras”, and the communist-backed “Sandinistas” of Nicaragua.
Because Belize could not maintain its neutrality under such considerable regional pressure, its national security was breached many times through the infiltration of American intelligence in the region, mainly the Voice of America that was broadcasting its propaganda into Cuba through the VOA network stationed in Belize’s Toledo District. This geopolitical period that was a crossover from the Price government to the Esquivel government of Belize from 1984-1989, saw the Belizean nation-state changing radically with the arrival of Belize as a player in the geopolitics of Central America and the Caribbean.
The Belizean people did not ask for such a dark period of, “getting caught in the middle”, so to speak, to come upon it. But though its governments could not resist, it was dragged into these conflicts between two competing global powers, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union at the time, now Russia. And as Belize’s body count of casualties because of these covert and overt wars piled up across the nation even up to today, the cries of Belizean parents echo loudly, those whose children have been killed in the “War on Drugs” and now the “War on Terror” in Central America.
As the new phase of U.S. foreign policy and its covert and overt wars in Central America against the stubborn and armed-to-the- teeth drug cartels intensify with the election of U.S. president Donald Trump, the Belizean nation-state has come under considerable pressure to control its emigration to the U.S. as well as its raging gangs in a bloody 25-year-old gang war that has taken the lives of thousands of Belizean black men. Now, it appears that Belize is beginning to see casualties in its cooperation with the U.S.-backed “War on Terror”, that has apparently trained Belize’s security forces to eliminate any threat to its national security and therefore the national security of the U.S. itself.
And as Belize struggles in what appears to be an ambush in the night from its arch-enemy, the Guatemalan military oligarchy, at its southern and western borders in what seems to be a full court press to annex the Belizean nation-state once and for all. We recall the murder of late of Belizean national security personnel, Special Constable Danny Conorquie, and the violent attack on BDF Staff Sergeant Richard Lambey, at the hands of Guatemalan paramilitary forces operating illegally within the confines of Belize’s borders. U.S. foreign policy dictates to Belize how its national security is to operate in teamwork with Guatemala at these porous borders between Belize and Guatemala, and so the Belize Coast Guard and the Belize Defence Force (BDF) are restrained in terms of defending themselves against Guatemalan aggression that has occupied and annexed the Belize Sarstoon River and Island in 2016, at the southern border in the southern district of Toledo.
As the Barrow administration tries to comply with its domestic security problems that are defined by a high crime rate, the proliferation of guns, and the ability to protect its citizens both from rogue levels of police harassment that have accounted for state-sanctioned killings and from criminal elements operating with impunity within its borders, its image has been tarnished by a corrupted judiciary that have failed to deliver justice. Plagued by rampant corruption in almost every facet of its governance, the present government will have to find a way to eradicate this Trojan Horse of conspiracies and suspicions against its citizens that appears to be the design of foreign rather than domestic forces.
How the Government of Belize will deliver justice to its screaming citizens already fed up with the murders of innocent civilians, in addition to the attacks on its security forces that are employed to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity from the vultures of rogue nations around it, is left to be seen. The Belizean government will have to find a way to build resistance against both domestic and foreign exploitation that have used and abused Belize’s national security.