I knew him as a child: now he is committed to armed revolutionary struggle

Last month, Clive Lancelot Small, a Muslim who goes by the name Olive Enyahooma-El, and who also carries the lifelong alias "Fire Small", was extradited from Trinidad and Tobago to the United States. He faces charges of conspiring to possess 60 AK-47 assault rifles, ten Mac-10 machine pistols and ten silencers, all of which were to be exported from Florida to Trinidad. The US applied for the extradition order in April this year. Though Trinidadian law did not cover extradition on such charges, parliament amended the law so that it would.

I have known Small since I was ten years old. He lived at the top of the street on which I grew up. He went to the US long after I left Trinidad for England. He was an ace hustler, a street-fighting man, and he read comics assiduously. He was self-contained in personality and I did not associate him with any political principles at all. But behind the placid exterior, I always felt, lay a smouldering force. He took to Islam in the US and commuted between New York and Port of Spain. I continued to meet him in both cities.

Then came the Islamic insurgency in Trinidad in July 1990. Nearly 200 young men, armed with rifles, stormed Port of Spain's parliament during a sitting, shot the prime minister in the foot, bombed the police headquarters, distributed arms to young men in the deprived areas around the capital, and demanded a reconstitution of the government. Small was involved in this affair.

The capital went up in flames while the army engaged the insurgents. After negotiations, an amnesty was agreed. The government went back on its word, claiming that, because a significant number of government ministers and MPs had been taken hostage, it had negotiated the deal under duress. The matter went to the law lords in London, sitting as the Privy Council. The law lords decided in favour of the insurgents and they were released.

There remains an unbridled hostility from the educated and moneyed middle classes against the Muslims, whose political organisation is known as the Jamaat al-Muslimeen, while the poor and deprived held the insurgents in great admiration. Fire Small, now 69, seems still to be a revolutionary committed to the armed struggle.

How many more like them are there in the Caribbean, pregnant with dissatisfaction?

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website