A gigantic haul of cocaine last month in Britain's most forgotten West Indian British colony, the Turks and Caicos Islands, has laid bare the increasing international contradictions and tensions which exist over the US-sponsored "war on drugs".
Caresa, a trim little Honduran freighter, its holds empty, swings high at anchor at this scruffy little village, which is virtually the only human habitation on the little coral island of South Caicos.
It was arrested in Providenciales, the biggest and most prosperous island in the TCI, in February as it was delivering a cargo of South American cement for the booming construction industry there.
Among the sacks was found another, more valuable powder, more than three tons of the purest cocaine. With fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, only a handful of whom are narcotics users, the drug was clearly bound from Colombia for somewhere else, doubtless the world's largest market, the US, a few hundred miles to the north-west.
The colony's government, headed by the governor, His Excellency John P. Kelly, LVO, MBE, a Galway man from Tuam, the hundred men of the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the US drug-busters all congratulated themselves on a massive find, three times bigger than the amount seized in a year in Britain.
The 10,000 native-born Turks Islanders who share the islands with the same number of foreign settled and migrant workers were delighted that the narcotics were captured. They are fed up that the use of their islands, conveniently sited on a main route from Colombia to the US, brings them constant problems.
They are God-fearing folk. There is little crime or violence, the police are unarmed, the islanders abhor drug addiction and their only excesses seem to be spending hours and hours in the islands' innumerable churches and - in the case of the men - playing dominoes with great raucousness until late in the evening.
They drive on the left along what few pot-holed roads they have and the only casino is closed on the Lord's Day. Commonwealth Day (formerly Empire Day) was observed as a public holiday this month as it is every year. Shy, dignified, polite and friendly, they are worried that reports of drug-running will harm their tourist industry, which is virtually their only livelihood.
From the shade of a ruined warehouse which a century ago stored the sun-dried sea salt which was the sole contribution of the Turks and Caicos Islands to world trade, Mr Norman Saunders, a former chief minister, considers the latest skirmish in the "war on drugs" which the Caresa represents.
"I support those efforts wholeheartedly. Of course."
Mr Saunders, especially Mr Saunders, finds it prudent politics to support the "war" with vigour. A smartly dressed man with designer spectacles and the looks of a 1940s matinee idol, Mr Saunders was flung from power in 1985 but is still a star in the Lilliput world of TCI politics.
He and his wife Emily occupy the two South Caicos seats in the colony's 13-member Legislative Council and as we talk he keeps a sharp eye out for any constituents so as to give each a cheery wave.
In 1985, Mr Saunders, the South Caicos hero who had made it to the giddy political heights of Chief Ministership, was entrapped by the US authorities in a hotel in Miami. In the 1980s the island's airstrip, a regular staging post for light aircraft manufactured in the US being delivered to customers in South America, became popular with Colombians with light aircraft and an interest in the delivery of white power to North America.
He was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for allegedly providing fuel for Colombian aircraft. He spent three years in a US jail in Texas. His Minister of Development, Mr Stafford Missick, and their associate, one Smokey, were also jailed and the colony's tiny political structure was shattered at a blow.
Direct rule from Whitehall was imposed for a year or so on a tiny place whose only fame is that it is the world's best venue for diving and snorkelling.
Free again and acknowledged by all as a man of vision and stature, Mr Saunders helps to lead the opposition to the government of the present Chief Minister, quiet and honest Mr Derek Taylor. Mr Taylor was a Customs man, has an unimpeachably honest image and a past reputation as a good opening batsman for the TCI Titans. In opposing Mr Taylor, Mr Saunders has to try to extinguish the memory of his narcotic past and be as unyielding in the fight against drugs as anyone.
But as he does, Mr Saunders must realise that it is coming under increasing criticism in these islands and throughout the Caribbean and Latin America for being ineffective - at best, a waste of the money of poor governments which could be spent on health and education; at worst, as in Colombia, Jamaica and Mexico, the source of violence that has torn societies apart. Mr Saunders, after all, has had more experience than most.
Chief Minister Taylor, a pillar of rectitude, is also unhappy with the way the TCI government has been treated in the "drug war". He has always supported US policy and is proud that the first US astronauts splashed down in TCI waters in 1962 and were debriefed here.
"The sad part about it is our resources, which should go on giving our people a better standard of living, have to be spent on helping the US and Europe to tackle their problem. There were certain commitments the US made that they haven't lived up to fully. We've been let down."