Islamist Militancy in Trinidad & Tobago: The Incubation of Terror
Mar 08, 2018 GSSR Americas, Terrorism, The Forum 1
Islamist Militancy in Trinidad & Tobago: The Incubation of Terror
By: Xander Causwell, Columnist
Violent Islamist extremism in Trinidad & Tobago (T&T) has endured despite improbable odds and ineffectual domestic militant operations. Nonetheless, T&T extremist groups will likely continue supporting foreign jihadist operations until the former are dismantled. In 2017 the international community intensified scrutiny of the Republic of T&T’s security apparatus due to the overrepresentation of Trinidadians in the ranks of Islamic State (IS).
Predictably, global commentators reacted with facetious headlines such as “ISIS in the Caribbean.†Pundits have further quipped that T&T is the only country in the Western Hemisphere to have experienced an Islamic insurrection, harking back to an incident in 1990.[ii] Perhaps Islamic extremism in the Caribbean evokes more comedy than concern because both locals and foreigners perceive such a movement as incompatible with the region’s cultural image. Aside from the 1990 insurrection, Islamic extremist violence has remained virtually nonexistent across the region. Prior to the rise of IS, analysts believed T&T Islamist militancy to be on the decline, so the foreign fighter revelations came as a great shock.[iii] Considering the ostensibly infertile environment in which this movement exists, its sui generis origins, staying power, and proliferation are worth revisiting.
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