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Guyana Guyana: National Security
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Member of the Guyana Defence Force
THE GUYANA DEFENCE FORCE (GDF) has been Guyana's primary defense
service since independence was achieved in 1966. In 1991 the GDF,
with a total active strength of only 1,700, was a unified service
divided into land, sea, and air elements. The land element was by
far the largest of the three with approximately 1,400 personnel.
The Air Command counted 200 personnel; the Maritime Corps, the
naval element, had 100 members. The GDF was supplemented by the
2,000 member National Guard Service, a reserve unit. Besides the
GDF, Guyana had two paramilitary organizations: the 2,000-member
Guyana People's Militia and the 1,500-member Guyana National
Service.
Heavily politicized, Guyana's defense organizations were under
the control of the leaders of the ruling People's National Congress
(PNC). Troops were required to swear public allegiance to the PNC
as well as to the nation. Guyana's racial politics affected its
armed forces as well; the military was staffed almost entirely by
Afro-Guyanese, the ethnic group most associated with the PNC.
The principal role of the armed forces since independence had
been to assure internal security, although the GDF had seen some
minor action in the course of Guyana's persistent border disputes
with two of its neighbors, Venezuela and Suriname. The internal
security role overlapped with the duties of the Guyana Police
Force, and the two organizations often worked together to
intimidate opposition political groups and the Indo-Guyanese, the
country's largest ethnic group, or to tamper with electoral counts.
The police and the military were unable, however, to control a
rising level of violent and petty crime in Georgetown, the nation's
capital.
Data as of January 1992
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