And restraint is also what the BDF showed this morning on the Sarstoon when border tensions flared slightly between the Guatemalan Armed Forces and the BDF. It happened at 7:30 at the mouth of the Sarstoon when a Guatemalan barge got stuck on the Belize side of the boundary.
The barge - loaded with sand - was going from Livingston to Sarstoon village when it became grounded in an area about 800 meters in front of the BDF's Forward Operating Base.
Smaller vessels from the Guatemalan side then had to come over and take sand off the barge so it could float.
All that was happening on the Belize side - so a BDF patrol had to go and monitor the activities. The BDF called the Coast Guard because it was in the sea, and the always aggressive GAF also showed up in two skiffs.
But, it was getting tense while they waited for the Coast Guard, so the BDF commander concluded that the barge could claim innocent passage and allowed them to haul the remainder of the sand to their village. The BDF General tells us that situation was defused without any major escalation.
