Police-military operation in Tivoli Gardens on Sunday, January 13, 2008. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Garrisons are arguably the biggest impediment to Jamaica's development and Jamaicans' freedom.

Beginning by dismantling a garrison in one of the constituencies controlled by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), the current Government could bring credibility to that fight.

The garrisons, as Jamaica's social scientists teach us, bring poor people security, if at a high cost.

An embryonic form of governance remade in various countries, the garrison depends on an old-fashioned paternalism - fundamental at both the level of the local leader and the patronising politician - that is inimical to democracy and is particularly hard on women.

The fact that Coke, the reputed 'President' of Tivoli Gardens, the "mother of all garrisons", is described as a 'kingpin', 'posse leader', 'businessman', 'community activist', and 'events promoter' whose concerts are 'free of violence', speaks to the contradictions between a legal system originally created to represent colonial interests and the historically unmet material needs of the poor.

It is emblematic of this gap, these primary contradictions, that so many poor people decry the prospect of Coke's seizure while a frightened middle class and Jamaican elite demand it.

'Pure Mad Head': Follow the Star

For the facts on the ground, it is critical to read the sometimes reactionary Gleaner publication, The Star, whose reporters often seem to know the temperature on the street better than anyone else.

"Look how West Kingston peaceful and now dem waah it end," a 25-year-old man, described as a "thug," told The Star recently. The context does not make clear whether it is this same man who told The Star that Tivoli had seen an influx of armed men from across the city, ready to defend Coke to the bitter end.

"Right ya now, a pure mad head from all bout, some man weh nuh have nutten fi live for," the man said eloquently. "When it done, if dem survive, dem a go have summ'n' tho." They will possess reputation, and a cause.

All this might be posturing, but Coronation Market vendors take no chances, clearing out when trouble threatens. The same source reminds the reporter of a July 2001 alleged confrontation between the police and Tivoli residents, which saw 25 people dead.

Any Way Out?

Coke and his lawyers can contest the extradition in Jamaican courts; several Jamaicans have successfully done so in recent times.

Negotiations with Coke could centre around this somewhat mollifying fact, with the accused - should he care to avert confrontation - giving himself up and later sent (if the Jamaican court gave a go-ahead) to the United States (US) from some less-explosive setting.

But without extraordinary measures - perhaps agreed by both political parties, perhaps in a revival of the Vale Royal talks. But as Claude Robinson suggests, it is hard to envision a positive outcome.

The accused is a member of the prime minister's constituency. His lawyer is a ranking party member. The attorney general, who must sign the extradition order, is a member of the party in power. The Government hangs by just a few votes.

Innocent people are likely to die in any violent confrontation and, as usual, they will be poor people, for whom neither party has acted in much good faith for quite some time, except - ironically - at the local level where politicians disburse resources, acts that reinforce the garrison construct.

A confrontation with Tivoli is not going to solve the problem of the garrison even if Coke comes peacefully, or if the Government pulls an Entebbe-like raid, worthy of the Israeli army, to take him. His successor, a relative, is said to have been long designated.

It is work, productive labour, a tall request for a Government committed to the neoliberal order and the constraints on social spending that come with it, that would bring real needed change to Kingston's poor people.

The Empire Is Receding, the Afterburn Will Linger

The extradition request takes place amid a backdrop of US decline and the tentative, necessary steps of a growing number of Caribbean countries away from US influence.

One thinks of the international airport being built in St Vincent with Cuban and Venezuelan know-how and Taiwanese (!) financing, an eerily similar project to that which brought an invasion of Grenada 20 years ago, unmentioned in the US press today.

It is a web, however, in which Jamaica remains enmeshed. All its threads, tourism, immigration, credit worthiness, can be seen straining through the Coke affair. With a delayed US ambassadorial appointment and International Monetary Fund loan in the balance, the fear of social explosion, (as in so many places in the world now) is real.

The big criminals are rarely the ones you notice. They are hiding in plain sight or landing unnoticed on private runway number three.

When the rolls are called up yonder, the dons will repose at the big dogs' feet. And the greatest criminals of our time, give credit where credit is due, will have come from Washington and Wall Street, where the cocaine use is said to be heavy, too.

There was a time when Jamaica was not a place of guns, of course, when showers still came from the sky and the man on the street could not rain anything more than blows with his machete. Yes, the guns might have arrived by now, they fill the world. But everyone in Jamaica knows where they originated: the place that Christopher Coke may be extradited to.

Nor did Jamaica create the demand for drugs that drives the trade in a country where middle-class use is common, where it is now fashionable for politicians like Mr Obama to confess to youthful use.

The notion that Coke has caused pain to people in the US and should face justice there begins to break down a little once history, a larger sense of justice, is invoked. But you cannot redress 400 years' history, or 50, through the extradition process.

Matthew Kopka is a political ecologist. He has been writing for The Gleaner since the eve of the US Iraq invasion in 2002, and has lived in Jamaica during three periods, first visiting the country in 1976.