Plans for Military Intervention on the Island
Cuba in the sights of the United States
BY PASCUAL SERRANO, —Taken from Le Monde Diplomatique—
AT this moment, nobody doubts that the Bush administration’s new
foreign policy is basically one of military intervention, without respecting
international institutions or world public opinion. The excuse of fighting
terrorism has been demonstrated as the perfect alibi to substitute the
previous one: the threat of Communism during the Cold war. Other less
effective reasons lie behind it, not so effective as the anti-drug fight.
The
silence of the United Nations after the Iraq invasion, the European Union
(EU)’s copycat behavior and the ferocious control it maintains on the great
majority of Arab countries via puppet dictators thus guaranteeing
impunity to the U.S. government.
The United States has not forgotten to send out sound bites on its next
military objectives — Syria, Korea, Iran and Cuba. Just as in Iraq, the
strategy begins by sowing seeds in international institutions, friendly
governments and world public opinion suggesting complicity with
international terrorism in those countries that are the object of
intervention. They are called dictatorships and accused of human rights
violations. This campaign is undoubtedly being speedily developed against
Cuba. Let us see how.
On April 30, 2003 the U.S. government once again included Cuba on its
list of countries sponsoring international terrorism, in an annual report
entitled Patterns of World Terrorism (2) which also mentions Iraq, Iran,
Syria, Sudan, Libya and North Korea. The report specifies that although
Cuba has signed all the 12 international conventions and protocols against
terrorism, and Sudan 11 of them, both countries continue supporting
international organizations that are designated terrorist. This is a great
paradox if we recall that on four occasions, Cuba has officially proposed
a
bilateral program to fight terrorism to the United States and which the
northern neighbor has always rejected.
Nor should we forget Vice President Dick Cheney’s statement on the day
that Baghdad was occupied. He affirmed that had happened was a clear
message to all the countries involved in terrorism (3).
In May, 2002, Under Secretary of State John Bolton accused Cuba of
developing a biological warfare program. Many notable statements have
been issued by Bush administration members; for instance the president’s
own brother Jeb Bush, governor of Florida, who affirmed that after the
success in Iraq, Washington should put an end to the regime in Cuba. Or
Hans Hertell, U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic, who assured
that the war in Iraq would send out a very positive sign and be a very
good example to Cuba. He added that the invasion of the Arab country
was only the beginning of a crusade for freedom to reach all the countries
in the world, including Cuba (4).
The U.S. military intention in Cuba can be seen in publication such as
Military Review, a magazine from the Command School and the U.S. Chief
of Staff. In the September-October 2002 (5) edition, Lieutenant Colonel
Geoff Demarest openly refers to the subject of the U.S. army’s role
during a supposed transition period in Cuba. He affirms in the second
paragraph that the U.S. army’s role could focus on stability operations
and, in the name of applying the and/or rule, supporting aid agencies.
He
later includes an epigraph eloquently entitled: "A role for the U.S. Army?"
This is where he begins detailing all the previous excuses serving to justify
military intervention: Migration to and from the island; weapons arsenals
(including thousands of small arms and ammunition); the enormous
Lourdes intelligence collecting center; allegations of drug trafficking
on the
part of members of Castro’s regime; and the alleged biological weapons
research and development program are just some of the aspects to take
into consideration that could possible complicate transition. The lieutenant
colonel’s text concludes by stating that the U.S. army has a clear
message...the U.S. army could be very useful for its potential to interact
with Cuban soldiers, as well as for its ability to threaten them.
If we look at the footnotes referring to the paragraph listing the reasons
for a U.S. army intervention it can be seen that all these statements are
based on journalist articles from agencies and people financed by the U.S.
government. (El Nuevo Herald, The Miami Herald, Brothers to the
Rescue, Cubanet/Cubanews, The Washington Times Insight magazine).
As we shall soon see, when the United States talks about freedom of
expression and dissident journalists it is referring to press agencies
and
writers directed and financed by the Bush government with the sole aim
of planting arguments that, as this soldier’s text later proves, will be
used
to justify a military intervention.
FINANCING DISSIDENCE
What mechanisms are used in financing these supposedly independent
journalists and agencies?
The U.S. Interests Section systematically hands over material and
financial support. This translates as radios and all types of technical
means
plus a payroll of $100 per month for all those visiting James Cason, head
of the U.S. mission (see note 4).
In 2000, USAID donated $670,000 to three Cuban organizations to help
publish the island’s independent journalists’ work abroad...and distribute
their writing in Cuba (6).
USAID provides an exceptional amount of funding for financing the Cuban
dissidence. In order to help create independent NGO’s in Cuba: $1.602
million. Planning the transition in Cuba: $2.132 million. Evaluating the
program: $335,000.
Groups in the United States gather together all this money. Let us see
who some of them are. In 2002, the Center for a Free Cuba, whose
function it is to collect information from human rights groups in order
to
spread and distribute it, received $2.3 million. Internal Dissidence
Working Group: $250,000. Freedom House, responsible for the Cuban
transition program’s strategic questions: $1.325 million. Dissidence
Support Group: $1,200.
There are others such as the Democracy in Cuba Institute and the
International Republican Institute. In 2001, the Cubanet agency received
$343,000 plus another $800,000 in 2002. The American Center for
International Solidarity Work, whose declared social objective is
persuading foreign investors not to invest in Cuba: $168,575. Cuban
Democratic Action received $400,000 in 2002 (7).
Between 1997 and 2002, USAID destined $22 million to these ends. On
March 2, Curtis Struble, the assistant secretary of state for western
hemispheric affairs, indicated that this year USAID would be investing
another seven million dollars in "economic aid" to Cuba. On March 26,
Colin Powell announced to the Senate a $26.9 million budget for Radio and
TV Martí transmissions (8).
Radio Martí transmits 1,200 hours a week from the United States,
contravening International Telecommunication Union rules and violating
Cuba’s radio air waves space. The programs encourage internal
subversion, sabotage attempts, desertion and illegal immigration.
It is obvious that nothing but U.S. government money lies behind the
so-called dissidents and independent journalists and agencies, with a clear
and concrete proposition.
FREEDOM FIGHTERS
It is also important to discover the profiles of the freedom fighters of
the
so-called dissident leaders and intellectuals. The most significant of
those
recently jailed is the poet Raúl Rivera.
This former member of Cuba’s Association of Journalists and Writers had
a heady conversion: he was employed by the powerful Miami Herald,
Southern Florida’s most conservative daily. He was next catapulted to
vice president of the Inter-American Press Society (SIP) Caribbean
department, grouping U.S. and Latin America mainstream press barons.
This organization is an old stronghold of Cold War conspirators in the
service of Washington.
One of the best known figures is Carlos Alberto Montaner, imprisoned in
Cuba in 1961 for taking part in a terrorist organization that hid explosives
in packets of cigarettes. He fled the country during the October Missile
Crisis and enlisted in the U.S. army’s special Cuban forces. The CIA
recruited him in the 1970’s and he reappeared in Spain (1970) to found
the Firmas Press news agency. Montaner was in charge of facilitating
terrorist Juan Felipe de la Cruz’ entry into France; de la Cruz was killed
when the bomb he was carrying exploded. Montaner is one of those who
openly support the United States’ annexing Cuba. In 1990, he founded the
Cuban Democratic Platform and the following year the Cuban Democratic
Coordination (CDC), a dissident organization inside the island. CDC
members include Cruz Varela, Huberto Matos, José Ignacio Rasco and
Juan Suárez Rivas. Carlos Montaner was also a founding member of
the
Cuban Spanish Foundation (FHC) (9).
Oswaldo Payá is another internationally known dissident, especially
after
the European Parliament gave him the Sajarov award. They say that he
has received massive popular support in Cuba for his Varela Project,
signed by 11,000 Cubans — in a country with 11 million inhabitants — and
five thousand Europeans from 15 countries. According to documents
signed by Carlos Alberto Montaner, foreign governments initiated the
Varela Project. James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana,
admitted that Miami’s Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) and
the Freedom for Cuba Council, responsible for various attacks in Cuba in
which civilians died and assassination attempts on the Cuban president
(see note 8), are being consulted over the plan for a democratic transition.
One of Payá’s charming exploits was to accuse Fidel Castro of complicity
in violating human rights in Guantánamo (10); in an interview with
Madrid’s El Pais weekly on March 9, 2003 he stated that that under the
Batista dictatorship the Cuban press was incredibly free. This brilliant
intellectual, with unknown sources of income, has been on a two-month
world tour. Carlos Fazio puts it very clearly: The strategy for building
leaders is simple and the example of Oswaldo Payá eloquent: create
a
letterhead, fabricate an organization or an ad hoc NGO (in his case the
Varela project); organize well publicized and planned tours and meet
well-known figures (Pope John Paul II, Spanish head of government José
María Aznar, Mexican president Vicente Fox, U.S. Secretary of State
Colin
Powell) and accept prizes that increase the individual’s visibility (Payá
received the Sajarov human rights award and has been proposed as a
Nobel prize candidate). This is the way to go about building a certain
kind
of credibility profile around a person to give them power, a task that
is
later amplified by propaganda makers and the "great democratic pens" of
the U.S. and European mainstream press (see note 8).
Hubert Matos is another relevant person. He spent twenty years in jail
for
rebelling, along with his men (he was head of a rebel Army regiment in
Camagüey), ten months after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. On
leaving prison (and Cuba) in 1979, he formed the Independent and
Democratic Cuba (CID) group. Former Batista journalist Luis Manuel
Martínez said that Matos has been in "CIA hands" ever since he left
the
island. He was director of the Voice of CID, a short wave radio station
broadcasting to Cuba partially financed by the CIA, as radio Miami
International owner Jeff White has confirmed (see note 9).
Proof of his spirit of freedom can be seen in the reply he gave to journalist
Hernando Calvo Ospina when he asked him about dissidents links with
company directors wishing to invest in Cuba: we can’t guarantee the
safety of these investors after the regime falls; they won’t be respected
because they have been accomplices of the regime; they will be a cause
of
friction. Of course if they offer us good economic support then we can
do
business (11).
The Estefan clan (Gloria and Emilio) have big plans. They are Bacardi
shareholders and thus financiers of terrorist acts in Nicaragua, Angola
and
Cuba and accomplices to stealing Cuban patents. Gloria and Emilio Estefan
sponsor other para-terrorist organizations such as Brothers to the Rescue
whose aircraft have been violating Cuban airspace for years.
The CIA recruited Martha Frayde, former Cuban ambassador to
UNESCO in Paris, when she was working at that post. Together with
Elizardo Sánchez, Gustavo Arcos and Ricardo Bofill, she organized
a
miniscule counterrevolutionary group that has informed the U.S.
delegation at the UN about alleged human rights violations in Cuba. She
represented Gustavo Arcos at the inauguration of the Cuban Spanish
Foundation in Madrid (see note 9).
The writer Zoe Valdés is now very much in fashion, although she
was an
absolute unknown until she was given the Planeta prize. Shortly before
the war in Iraq began she wrote an article for El Mundo (Madrid) daily
affirming that she wanted the war to start once and for all so that she
could have some peace from all those anti-war signatures.
During a conversation in 1985, when she was an unheard of writer and
wife of a high ranking official at the Cuban embassy in Paris, Spanish
journalist Javier Ortiz called Zoe Valdés’ opinions "truly cloying
Castroism." (12)
Let us conclude with two important figures who may not be of Cuban
origin but must not be forgotten: Robert Menard from France and
Mexican Jorge Castañeda. Menard is the secretary general of NGO
Reporters Without Frontiers, an organization that, two days after two
journalists were killed by a tank fire in Baghdad, dedicated practically
the
entire home page of its on-line web page to the lack of free expression
in
Cuba (13). When asked by journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina about the
priority his organization gave to Cuba, he replied: It’s dangerous being
a
journalist in Colombia or Peru but there is press freedom. Journalists
are
murdered and imprisoned in those countries but their relatives and
colleagues are content with making denunciations (see note 11).
On May 20, the UN Committee responsible for NGO’s sanctioned
Reporters Without Frontiers, recommending that its consultative status
be suspended for one year due to behavior incompatible with the
principals and objectives of the UN Charter. (14)
Former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda has had the merit
of
ending the historically good relation between Mexico and Cuba.
At the end of last year, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer confirmed
that Casteñeda’s ministerial term was over even before President
Fox did.
(15).
EMIGRATION AND DESTABILIZATION
One of the mechanisms used by the United States to provoke the Cuban
government and destabilize the island’s society is emigration. U.S. policy
is
based on providing incentives and encouraging violent and spectacular
emigration attempts projecting an image of desperation to the rest of the
world. The objective is not to normalize migration policy or offer
possibilities in the United States to Cuban dissidents; it is aimed only
at
destabilizing. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, strongly criticized by the
Cuban government, is one of the laws serving this purpose and once again
demonstrates that the U.S. government is two-faced.
Different to any other Latin American immigrant, a Cuban who arrives at
the U.S. coasts is guaranteed a visa — thanks to the Adjustment Act. A
Haitian rafter would immediately be sent back to his or her country; but
not Cubans.
After the 1994 rafters crisis when waves of Cubans left Havana for the
United States, completely unrestricted by the Cuban government, both
countries signed an agreement regulating emigration and establishing that
the United States would concede 20,000 visas a year to Cubans
requesting them. However, in 2002, the United States only authorized
200 out of the 20,000. And in the first five months of the present year,
it
only issued 505, a number that has declined in relation to previous years.
This rate does not fulfill migratory agreements, thus creating an
atmosphere of tension among those wanting to emigrate, encouraging
illegal emigration. Some Cubans not granted legal entry visas by the U.S.
authorities are then given them in virtue of the Cuban Adjustment Act
when they leave on a raft or hijack whatever means of transport. This is
the opposite of European policy aimed at dissuading illegal African and
Latin American migration. Europe rewards those who use the legal
embassy channels and punishes those who arrive by illegal channels with
repatriation and prohibiting them from entering the country for various
years.
By not fulfilling migratory agreements the U.S. objective is to increase
internal pressure and encourage boat and aircraft hijacking. It is safe
to
say that if the Cuban government once again applied its 1994 policy of
allowing uncontrolled emigration then the United States would have a new
excuse to intervene, alleging a threat to its national security that the
mass
arrival of illegal Cubans could bring.
Cuba is now experiencing the greatest ever stimulus for illegal emigration.
In the seven months before the trials, seven Cuban aircraft and boats
were hijacked.
International law regards such hijackings, some involving weapons and
hostages, as acts of terrorism punishable under international conventions.
Nevertheless, in four of the cases the United Sates has not brought the
hijackers to trial and they remain at liberty in that country.
Fidel Castro has indicates that this plan was put into action the same
day
that war began — approximately two hours before war was initiated in
Iraq, at about 7:00 p.m. — when a passenger aircraft on the Nueva
Gerona (Isle of Youth)/Havana route was hijacked. This was carried out
by six common criminals; they brandished knives in a similar way to the
hijackers of U.S. passenger planes that were then flown into the Twin
Towers. The Cuban passenger aircraft carrying 36 passengers was
deflected from its route and forced to land in Key West. A few days later
the Miami DA Office set the hijackers free on bail. It had been nine years
since a similar occurrence, the number of years after the U.S.-Cuba
migratory agreements were signed, and it suddenly took place two hours
before the war (16). This impunity led the way for more kidnappings
involving dozens of hostages.
U.S. complicity in hijack terrorism is such that on June 1, a U.S. judge
confiscated from the Cuban governmetn and auctioned the hijacked DC-3
that put down in Key West and the Russian AN-24 hijacked in April by a
man carrying grenades (17).
Terrorists armed with grenades who hijack civil aircraft and take hostages
are not just left unpunished, but Cuban government property is
confiscated—and put up for auction. This entire strategy follows a plan
developed beforehand consisting in using the wave of hijackings to
provoke a migratory crisis that could be used as a pretext for a naval
blockade, that would then inevitably lead to war. Thus Kevin Whitaker,
head of the State Department’s Cuba Bureau, cynically warned Havana
that hijackers of Cuban aircraft and boats are a threat to U.S. security.
The behavior of the U.S. and Cuban governments is diametrically opposed
when it comes to hijacking airplanes. The United States has confiscated
many of the 51 Cuban planes hijacked between 1959-2001 and not one
single hijacker has been punished. Cuba has sentenced 69 of those
responsible for 71 cases of planes hijacked in the United States and flown
to the island; the other two hijackers were handed over to the U.S. legal
authorities. (18)
38lemon2
A HISTORY OF TERRORISM
The possibility of a U.S. intervention in Cuba is an evident one, as
demonstrated by the long history of hostile and terrorist actions, attempts
on the life of the president and constant violation of international law
on
the part of the United States in order to do away with the Cuban socialist
system.
Dating back to the attempted Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, armed attacks
can be counted in the hundreds. One of the most savage was the sabotage
of a Cubana passenger plane in full flight in 1976 off the Barbados coast,
which killed all 73 persons on board, and the wave of terrorist attacks
on
tourist facilities in the 1990s, organized and funded by the
Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), which led to the death of
an Italian tourist.
According to the Cuban government, the U.S. policy of terrorism has
caused the death of 3,478 Cuban citizens and left a further 2,099
incapacitated or seriously affected. The U.S. government has tolerated
assassination attempts on President Fidel Castro and other revolutionary
leaders on hundreds of occasions, and has even been physically involved
itself. It is responsible for the sabotage of the French vessel La Coubre,
the arson attack that destroyed El Encanto department store, for
organizing and giving armed forces’ backup at the failed Bay of Pigs
invasion, for numerous air and sea pirate attacks on defenseless citizens
and civilian installations. The United States has supported the burning
of
cane fields, the machine-gunning of Cuban territory, attacks on Cuban
fishermen and the murder of National Revolutionary Police and Border
Guard agents.
The U.S. government bears responsibility for acts of terrorism involving
bombs and explosives against the Cuban diplomatic mission in Portugal,
to
the United Nations and in other countries, causing deaths and serious
injury to diplomatic personnel. It is responsible for the disappearance
of
Cuban diplomats in Argentina and the assassination of another diplomat
in
New York.
Those actions are continuing today. On April 26, 2002 a plan to attack
the
legendary Tropicana nightclub with explosives that could have killed up
to
1,000 people was thwarted, according to the Cuban agent infiltrated into
the commando group, Percy Francisco Alavarado. (19)
On April 6 this year the Sun Sentinel of Florida recounted how the
paramilitary Commando F-4 was training with heavy weapons to execute
armed actions against Cuba and for a possible armed invasion of the
country.
The U.S. attitude to terrorism is totally contrary to that of Cuba’s. On
December 20, 2001, Cuba passed a law against acts of terrorism
stipulating heavy sentences for those using Cuban territory to organize
acts of terrorism against any country, including the United States. On
the
other hand, the latter’s territory continues to be a training ground for
paramilitary groups operating against Cuba.
Further evidence of U.S. cynicism is the detention of the five Cubans who
are serving lengthy prison sentences, including double life, for trying
to
stop ultra-right wing terrorist groups exiled in Miami from perpetrating
acts of violence against Cuba. Have discovered their intentions, the five
Cubans informed the U.S. authorities and in response, were jailed on
espionage charges.
THE MEDIA
While all this has been going on, the media is continuing its anti-Cuba
harassment campaign. While widely reporting manifestos condemning the
island, it silences those showing support, such as one signed by more than
3,000 intellectuals, artists and professionals from 69 countries, including
four Nobel prize winners, entitled "To the conscience of the world." (20)
While criticisms by José Saramago are aired, the backing of Adolfo
Pérez
Esquivel, Noam Chomsky, Ernesto Cardenal, Mario Benedetti, Augusto
Roa Bastos, Gabriel García Márquez or Rigoberta Menchú
are omitted.
The press presents persons who planted bombs in Havana hotels in 1997
as dissidents, along with the hijackers of aircraft and maritime vessels.
Cuban sentences passed on hijackers are condemned and massacres
committed by other governments in attempts to resolve similar hostage
situations are ignored, like that in the Moscow theater where 100
hostages and Chechen terrorists died, or the cold-blooded killing on
Fujimori’s orders of those who seized the Japanese embassy in Lima.
THE EUROPEAN UNION
For its part, the European Union (EU), led in its anti-Cuba policy by José
María Aznar, has more than ever before revealed its hypocrisy and
double
standards. The nations that said nothing when international law was
violated in the case of the invasion of Iraq; who have never condemned
the death penalty against minors, the mentally ill and foreigners refused
their right to consular attention, to the point of a total of 71 executions
in
the United States last year, are now clamoring against Cuba.
The EU has called on the Cuban authorities to avoid the useless suffering
of prisoners and to not subject them to inhumane treatment, while looking
the other way in terms of the 600-plus prisoners, some of European
origin, in the Guantánamo concentration camp who have been tortured,
and have no right to legal aid or family visits. A EU that is silent over
the
thousands of prisoners in U.S. jails in the wake of the September 11 attack
for the crime of beings Muslims, without legal guarantees, trials and
without their names even being known.
Measures using diplomatic punishment, suspending trade and cooperation
agreements, canceling bilateral government visits, reducing European
states’ participation in cultural events, inviting Cuban dissidents to
embassies in Havana, suspending cooperation and solidarity programs
with Cuba. These are the European Union’s replies to a country that only
requests respect for the UN Charter acknowledging Cuba’s right to choose
its own political system, acknowledging respect for the principal of
equality between states and the right to peoples’ free determination.
The divorce between public opinion and governments following the United
States has never been as evident as in the case of Cuba. Whilst the
majority of presidents apply policies against the island that are in line
with
Bush dictates, demonstrations of support and solidarity are happening
spontaneously in whatever country Cuban leaders visit. All these
governments, and especially the U.S. one, must know that their peoples
do not share their acts of aggression and harassment against Cuba.
Peoples who should denounce and confront the basis justifying military
intervention that, in the name of democracy and human rights, can only
bring death and pillage in its wake.
Notes:
Maurice Lemoine, America Latina, Cuba y la democracia Le Monde Diplomatique,
Southern Cone edition, June 2003.
See U.S. State Department website
http://usinfo.state.gov/espanol/terror/03043001.htm
Jorge Isunza. No nos dejemos manipular.
www.rebelion.org/international/030417insunza.htm
Miguel Bonasso. Topos y condenas.
www.rebelion.org/internacional/03041bonasso.htm
http:/www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/spanish/Dep=Ct02/demerest.asp
USAID report, Evaluation of the USAID Cuba Program, 2001
Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque press conference, April 9, 2003
Carlos Fazia, Cuba: Los beneficios de una eventual era postrevolución.
La Jornada,
Mexico.
See www.rebelion.org/internacional/030412roque.pdf
José Daniel Fierro. Quieren Guerra.
http://www.rebelion.org/spain/03061Ofierro.htm
Pascual Serrano. Fidel Castro, violador de derechos humanos en Guantánamo.
http:/www.rebellion.orgddhh/serrano231202.htm
Hernando Calvo Ospina, Katlijn Declerq. ¿Disidentes o mercernarios?
Vosa
publishers, Madrid, 1998.
See http://www.javierortiz.net/jortiz1/diario2002/18.2003.html
13.Adolfo Mena. Cuba y Iraq
http://www.rebelion.org/internacional030411mena htm
14.Pascual Serrano. The UN begins expulsion process against Reporters Without
Frontiers as a consultative body for acts incompatible with the UN Charter’s
principles and objectives.
See http://www.rebelion.org/medios/030529rsf.htm
15. Pascual Serrano. Before the Mexican president accepted the resignation
of
Minister Castañeda, Bush had already bid him farewell.
http://www.trebelionorg/internacional/fox150103.htm.
16. Fidel Castro interviewed by Miguel Bonasso, Página 12. Argentina.
See http://www.rebelion.org/internacional/030514fidel.htm
17. Frank Martin. World Data Service.
See http://www.rebelion.org/internacional/030604marin.htm
18. Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs Statement, May 2, 2003.
See http://www.rebelion.org/internacional/030509cuba.htm
19.Percy Francisco Alvarado. Objectivo: Cabaret Tropicana.
www.rebelion.org/internacional/030523godoy.htm
20. See http://www.rebelion.org/internacional/030503pl.htm