IN DEPTH

THE HUNT FOR FINEMAN AND HIS CHILD SOLDIERS

The operation to capture Guyana’s most wanted Rondell "Fineman" Rawlings and a handful of what seems like child soldiers who are loyal to him, created more chaos and unease than success. Rawlings is said to be the leader of a notorious gang that is spreading mayhem.

Launched almost a month prior to the date of this article, the mission has failed to capture the country’s most wanted. According to the police in Guyana, the last time "Fineman" was seen was the day the mission was launched. The Joint Services claim that after an initial exchange of gunfire, ‘Fineman’ disappeared like a ghost in the jungle, and it seems he has no footprints or trail that the country’s special forces could use to track him.

The drama unfolding in the dense forest of Guyana seems to have been poorly scripted and directed, and the cast has left much to be desired. It was supposed to be an action packed drama with the good guys prevailing over the bad guys but it is almost 30 days into the flicks and the bad guys are nowhere to be found.

It seems the author and director of this drama are producing a folklore. So far they made a fugitive seem mystical and invincible. If this drama does not deliver an ironic twist in a hurry, soon a folk hero will be born and that will be a major public relations and cultural disaster.

The hunt for Fineman is unfolding with narrations that are baffling, disturbing, and mind boggling. On day one, the Joint Services, playing the role of narrator, tells a story of less than a handful of men trapped in a dense jungle with countless special forces and elite police swat teams closing in on them. In the Joint Services’ narrations it sounded like nowhere to run, but in time, the handful of what the Joint Services described as half-naked and barefooted men made it seem more like no retreat, no surrender.

Sounding like a naïve first grader the Joint Services narrator stated that the fugitives were without food, water, barefooted, half-naked, and without guns and ammunition. They made this claim because the men were seen fleeing their camp in such a state. This narration failed to recognize the location that the drama was unfolding in. The location is a forest not a desert.

Which man in his right senses would say that a group of men in a jungle are without water in the land of many waters? Which man in his right senses would say that a group of armed men in a forest is destined to starvation? It seems city life has clogged a few brains.

With no real firefight, and a manhunt that was going nowhere, the author and director of The Hunt for Fineman and His Child Soldiers turned to narrations to sustain interest and contain outrage. The narrator told us that the fugitives were without arms be-cause they fled without their weapons when the assault was launched.

Someone must tell me how the writer and director of this real- life drama ignored the basic logic that heavily armed and dangerous fugitives who set up camp in a dense forest would explore escape routes before making themselves comfortable. It should be expected that if the fugitives have the guts to set camp in the forest they would have the foresight to stash weapons, ammunitions, and survival kits along various escape routes and at different points, so that in the event of an unexpected raid they would find supplies along their chosen route.

There is an interesting subtext to this drama that is punctuated with flaws. The narrator tells us that the Hunt for Fineman and his Child Soldiers is the product of careful and sustained intelligence. We are told that the actors were acting on intelligence but the script doesn’t leave the audience with the impression that an operational plan was developed from the intelligence gathered.

A handful of police launched the assault or at least so we have been told. Then we heard the narrator saying that the army was not involved initially because the police didn’t want to compromise the operation. Now imagine the police saying that the army would have compromised the operation and no head has been made to roll for a major blunder followed by an absurd explanation.

From day one the narrator painted a picture of an area that was fully cordoned off and escape routes fully cut off. Two discoveries shattered this picture of what was happening in Guyana’s forest. Some of the fugitives were discovered 90 miles away from the location of the operation and there was clear indication that they eluded the Joint Services with the greatest ease.

The terrain was described as rough and the possibility for survival was said to be almost zero. The Joint Services narrator had said: "If we don’t get them the wild life will get them." Yet child soldiers made what was described a perilous adventure into the wild forest seem like child’s play. How did this happen? No one seems to know.

What is even more disturbing is the discovery of the skulls and bones of eight miners at the Lindo mining camp that was in the heart of the location where the hunt for Fineman and his child soldiers was taking place.

The miners were tortured, shot and their bodies cremated. There is no explanation of how this happened without being noticed by the Joint Services. If such a huge fire could have gone unnoticed then it seems the whole forest could have eluded the Joint Services.

The murder of the miners has resulted in calls for an independent investigation into how they were killed. One would hope that such investigation should offer an explanation of how the Joint Services failed to notice the massacre of the miners.

Someone should also say whether the army was aware of the location of the Lindo mining camp. It is unbelievable that the Guyana Defence Force did not know the precise location of this mining concession. One would expect the army would have maps with the precise location of all mining and other concessions in the uninhabited forest, of Guyana. The failure to have this information readily available and to monitor the activities of these camps presents a serious national security threat.

The story that was narrated before the discovery of skulls and bones at the Lindo camp was that there is no economic activity in the area. Then the police shamelessly sought a civilian escort to take them to the Lindo camp after the gruesome discovery was made. The fact that the security forces needed a layman to guide them is damning evidence that they do not have a clue of where concessions for economic activities have been granted in the forests. This is evidence that the forests are not being properly monitored.

Faced with mounting public pressure, Police Com-missioner Henry Greene sought to point a finger at the owner of the mining camp. He asked why the owner of the mining camp failed to evacuate his employees after the operation was launched. This is an absurd question. If there is a manhunt for a gang of men it would more prudent for miners in camps remain in-doors. If they leave their camp they put themselves at risk of being caught in the cross fire and in fact, if miners from various camps were parading the forest the Joint Services operation would have been compromised.

The evacuation Police Commissioner Greene is talking about should have been coordinated by the security forces. The camp should have been either secured by the security forces or evacuated by the security forces from the inception of the operation. To ask owners of these mining camps to have their workers running around the forest in an uncoordinated manner while a major security operation is taking place is absurd. The security forces must take blame for not securing the camps of evacuating them.

The massacre at Lindo camp will leave clouds of suspicion hanging over the security forces. It has lead to wide spread belief that the members of the Joint Services executed the miners.

At this point ballistic tests of spent shells found at the scene of the mass execution will not erase the accusations being made against the service men. The problem with this unfolding drama is that too many parts seem unrealistic and illogical. People are filling in the blanks where there seem to be missing pieces of the puzzle or where the story just doesn’t add up.

The way things are going with the Hunt for Fineman it seems the producers of the drama should stop shooting for a while and hire a new scriptwriter, director, and narrator.