U.S boat strikes in the Caribbean raise tensions and questions : NPR
U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean this year have sparked fear and concern in places like Trinidad and Tobago, where residents wonder who is being targeted.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump said he was ending all subsidies to Colombia and promised to add new tariffs after the Colombian president said Trump’s attacks on boats from Venezuela amounted to murder.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
US forces destroyed boats in open waters in what the US government describes as a counter-narcotics operation.
FADEL: NPR’s Eyder Peralta is in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago to report this story. Hello, Eyder.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey. Hello, Leila.
FADEL: Okay. So catch up with us. What do we know so far about the Trump administration’s ship strikes in the Caribbean?
PERALTA: I mean, Leila, these strikes – they happened in open waters, so there were no independent witnesses. Much of what we know comes from the United States. And what they’re saying is that they hit at least seven ships, which they believe were loaded with drugs coming into the United States. Last week, US forces attacked a semi-submersible. A U.S. official told NPR it appeared to be headed toward Europe. Two were killed and two others were taken into custody during the incident. The two survivors were sent home to Colombia and Ecuador.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said another strike took place Friday and that boat belonged to a left-wing Colombian guerrilla group. Three were killed in that attack, and the Colombian president said what the United States had blown up was a fishing boat. I think the big picture here is that it’s been decades since the U.S. military took this kind of posture in the Americas, and so the region is tense.
FADEL: Okay. So you are in Trinidad on land, not far from where the United States says strikes are taking place. How is it there?
PERALTA: It’s tense. Over the weekend, the U.S. Embassy issued a warning for U.S. citizens to stay away from U.S. facilities due to a threat they did not elaborate on. I was here in a fishing village and the fishermen are afraid. I spoke to Renute Roberts. And he says when he goes out at night, he can hear the drones circling, so he just goes back to shore. He told me his daughter was dating one of the young men allegedly killed in one of those strikes, and he said he was just a fisherman. I asked him what he would say to President Trump if he could talk to him.
RENUTE ROBERTS: He’s trying to do something good because drugs are such a problem. But the way he goes about it, where he bombs the ships and others – and we know he could do better than that.
FADEL: So what he says, right? – is that he knows the United States can do better than bombing boats out of the water.
PERALTA: Yeah. I mean, and these guys… they’ve spent their whole lives in the water. They know what drug boats look like. And he says some of the videos of the strikes released by the United States don’t look like drug boats. He says these boats carry no more than three people. They have bigger engines. And he says what scares him is that sometimes they travel to Venezuela with medicine, food and toiletries. And when you package it all up, the packages can look like drugs.
FADEL: What did you hear about the people on those boats that were hit?
PERALTA: You know, I talked to Chad Joseph’s family. He is 26 years old and his family says he is a fisherman and went to work in Venezuela about six months ago. He had told his family he would return to Trinidad the same day as the US attack, and since then they have had no contact with him. I spoke to his grandmother, who says she hopes one day the phone will ring and it will be him. But in her heart, you know, she knows that he’s most likely dead, so much so that they’re going to have a funeral without a body on Wednesday.
It’s worth noting that the government claims no Trinidadians died in any US attack, but I think that’s the hardest part of this story. These boats and these attacks take place in open waters. And the United States has released limited information, leaving all of these families filling in the details. The only thing they know is that their family members went to the Caribbean and never came back.
FADEL: This is NPR’s Eyder Peralta reporting from Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. THANKS.
PERALTA: Thank you, Leila.
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