Historical border conflict impedes development of former colonial states.
The conflict has two different origins. The first is a territorial conflict over the judicial status of the New River, which Suriname calls the Upper-Corentyne. Basing its position on an agreement signed with British Guyana in 1799, Suriname maintains the Upper-Corentyne is the source of the Corentyne and that the Corentyne river’s left bank forms Suriname’s border. Guyana — basing its arguments on a map drawn by a German explorer appointed in 1835 to mark the boundaries of British Guyana — disputes this.
The second part of the conflict — the only part cited by Guyana in its case before UNCLOS — dates back to 1913. Both Guyana and Holland agreed that the left bank of the Corentyne is the border between Suriname and Guyana. Later, this border line was continued along the left side up to the territorial waters and the EEZ. Suriname states that the border runs 10 degrees east of 90 degrees north, whereas Guyana states that the coast line is 28 degrees east of 90 degrees north.
The Surinamese military evicted a Canadian oilrig from a drilling site claimed by both Guyana and Suriname in early June. The Eagle site is believed to have 1 billion barrels of oil. The Canadian company CGX said it would begin drilling on the Horseshoe site, its second choice, with estimated reserves of 255 million barrels of oil. The second-choice site is also in disputed territory.
Guayana granted a 6,100-square-mile concession to CGX two years ago, but Suriname has granted licenses since then to various other transnational oil companies, including Burlington of Texas, Shell of The Netherlands, Total of France, and Korean National Oil. Efforts at mediation of the territorial dispute failed on June 18. The dispute dates back to the 1770s.
Syndicate
Suriname reaffirmed a claim to an area in southeastern Guyana, the New River Triangle, after achieving independence from the Netherlands in November 1975. Despite renewed efforts by Guyana and Suriname to reach an agreement, border incidents occurred repeatedly in the late 1970s. In September 1977, Guyana seized a Surinamese trawler for fishing illegally in Guyana's 200-nauticalmile Exclusive Economic Zone. Suriname retaliated in January 1978 when it withdrew licenses from Guyanese fisherman who worked the Courantyne River, which formed the border between the two nations. Allegations were made that Suriname also used gunboats to harass Guyanese loggers on the river. Renewed talks in 1978 resolved the fishery dispute and led to the Surinamese trawler's return.
In 1979 Guyana's prime minister, Linden Forbes Burnham, and Suriname's prime minister, Henck Arron, signed an agreement establishing fishing rights and reopening the border. However, in 1980 a military coup overthrew Arron's government and relations deteriorated. Although tensions between Guyana and Suriname improved slightly after Hugh Desmond Hoyte became Guyana's president in 1985, the border dispute remained unresolved in mid1991 .
In 1992 the GDF remained a small politicized force concerned primarily with internal security. As the border dispute with Venezuela edged closer to resolution, Guyana's principal external threat and the defensive role of the GDF diminished. The problems facing the GDF in the 1990s were more internal organizational dilemmas: to define a new mission in a world less ideologically divided and with less belligerent neighbors, and to deal with the legacy of ethnic polarization that two and a half decades of PNC rule bequeathed to the GDF and to Guyana.