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TERRORISM
SPECIAL REPORT ON CUBA AND
THE TERROR COALITION:
The Emergence of the Terrorist International
by: Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat -
President of Directorio
(with research support from Rafael Artigas and Ana Carbonell)
Center for the Study of a National Option
It was not hard to guess what common foe brought the Supreme Leader and
the Comandante together for their summit meeting in Tehran in May of
this year. The statements made by Fidel Castro during his visit to Iran
are chilling when read in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
According to news reports, during the visit Iranian Supreme Leader
Khamenei "assured Castro that Iran and Cuba can defeat the US hand in
hand," to which Castro agreed, adding that America was "extremely weak
today," and that "we are today eye-witness to their weakness, as their
close neighbors." At Tehran University he stated to the thunderous
applause of students and faculty that "The imperialist king will finally
fall," (AFP, May 10th). Immediately afterwards the Iranian Press Service
proudly proclaimed that "Iran and Cuba reached the conclusion that
together they can tear down the United States." (IPS, May 10th)
Some have argued that Cuba’s well-documented sponsorship and instigation
of international terrorism is a thing of the past, to be understood in
light of the Cold War context. However, irrefutable evidence indicates
that to this day:
The Castro dictatorship continues to actively harbor international
terrorists,
The Castro dictatorship continues to pursue a strategic alliance with
terrorist states so as to create an ‘anti-Western’ international front,
and
The Castro dictatorship has engaged directly in terrorist attacks and
espionage against Americans.
As recently as July 1999 Domingo Muchaustegui, a former Cuban government
official said to have exceptional information about the Cuban
government, wrote: "For U.S. interests, the closeness of the [Cuban]
relationship with Iraq and some of the more militant terrorist groups in
the Middle East is troublesome. Can Cuba be used to carry out terrorist
acts against U.S. targets? Is there any cooperation between Sadam
Hussein and Castro in the development of chemical and bacteriological
weapons? What remains from the close cooperation between Castro and the
more militant terrorist groups in the region?" (University of Miami
Middle East Studies Institute, July 1999).
Evidence indicates that Cuba today continues to serve as a base for
coordination and mutual support among transnational terrorist
organizations. In August 2001 Colombian authorities arrested three
suspected IRA terrorists who were providing specialized training to the
FARC terrorist organization. One of the men, Nial Connolly, had lived in
Cuba since 1996 as the IRA’s representative.(The Times, August 16, 2001,
BBC News August 17, 2001)
It is believed that it was in Cuba where the IRA established contact
with both the FARC and ELN terrorist organizations. These two
organizations, according to the State Department’s 2000 report on global
terrorism, have "…maintained a permanent presence in the island." It is
further believed that the IRA men were training the Colombian rebels in
the development of powerful anti-personnel explosives destined for the
proposed FARC ‘urban offensive.’
The Castro regime has not only continued to provide support for the
vicious Basque terrorist organization ETA, known for its ghastly car
bomb attacks on civilian targets, but it has also publicly attempted to
scuttle diplomatic efforts to condemn it. In a 1995 raid by French
police on ETA hideouts, computer files were found which clearly
indicated that Cuban intelligence aided members of the group wanted for
terror attacks in Spain. According to the files, Cuba’s Communist Party
"considers its relations with ETA to be ‘fraternal, sustained, strategic
and increasingly deep.’ (The Miami Herald, Dec. 27, 1997)
Cuban covert support for terrorism in Spain has been accompanied by
attempts at diplomatic protection. Castro not only refused to join the
other Ibero-American heads of state in condemning ETA terrorism at the
2000 Ibero-American summit, he also "slammed Mexico for its support of a
statement against terrorism at the Ibero American Summit in Panama."
(The Miami Herald, Nov. 11,2000).
The Cuban dictatorship’s continued relationship with bloody terror
groups and the use of Cuban territory and diplomacy to protect them has
long been a mainstay of Cuban foreign policy. As State Department
reports indicate, Americans sought for crimes linked to 60’s radical
groups have long received sanctuary in the island. What proves even more
worrisome however, has been the recent effort by the Cuban regime to
forge an ‘anti-Western’ front with terrorist states in the Middle
Eastern region.
On September 18, 2000 in an exclusive interview with the Qatar-based
Al-Jazeera television, Castro stated that "We are not ready for
reconciliation with the United States, and I will not reconcile with the
imperialist system." He further added that his government had
successfully defended Cuba against "…a Western cultural invasion,"
echoing one of the key themes of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the
region. In May 2001 Castro undertook a round of visits to Syria, Libya,
and Iran. Speaking at Tehran University, he insisted that "…people must
be informed and awakened, they must not allow themselves to be pillaged
by the West." On July 26, 2001, Castro marked another anniversary of the
beginning of his revolution by marching in Havana alongside the
Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson, now a high ranking Iranian official.
The Iran-Cuba link has long worried intelligence and security analysts
in the US. Soviet Colonel Ken Alibek, formerly second-in-command of the
USSR’s bacteriological arms development program, has long insisted that
the Castro regime has such weapons at its disposal. In his book
Biohazard, Alibek quotes his former boss, General Yuri T. Kalinin, as
having told him that Cuba had an active bacteriological arms program.
Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen stated in May 1998 that:
"Cuba’s current scientific facilities could support an offensive
biological warfare program in at least the research and development
stage." In October 2000 Cuban vice president Carlos Lage and the Iranian
vice minister of Health inaugurated a biotechnological research and
development plant outside Tehran. Experts expressed doubts about the
supposed medical objectives of the installation, since Iran already
produces 97% of the medicines its population consumes.
It is feasible to both establish the links of the bin Laden network with
the Iranian government and to identify its common interests with the
Castro regime. Both Castro and bin Laden work hard to build a common
front to bring down the United States and to develop biological weapons
of mass destruction.
In its indictment of bin Laden the Justice Department stated that the
Al-Qaeda terrorist organization under his command sought to "…put aside
its differences with Shiite Muslim terrorist organizations, including
Iran and its affiliated terrorist group Hezbollah, to cooperate against
the perceived common enemy, the United States and its allies…"
The indictment further alleges that Al Qaeda "…also forged alliances
with the National Islamic Front in Sudan and with representatives of the
government of Iran, and its associated terrorist group Hezballah." In
February 1998 Osama bin Laden announced the creation of an
"international front" against the United States. According to a document
obtained by the PBS program ‘Frontline,’ bin Laden "regards an
anti-American alliance with Iran and China as something to be
considered."
But there may be more to the Castro-bin Laden connection than the Iran
link. In a March 4, 2000 story the Associated Press reported that: "A
young Afghan who trained this winter at a camp in mountainous Kunar
province, in northeastern Afghanistan, said he saw men from Chechnya,
Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Cuba and North Korea. The North Korean, he
said, had brought chemical weapons, which were stored in caves and in
the dozens of sunbaked mud-and-stone houses."
The New York Times reported in September 1998 that advisers provided
President Clinton with evidence that "bin Laden is looking to obtain
weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons to use against US
installations." Is it that far-fetched to see that the ideological
affinity between Cuba and Al Qaeda and the allure of bin Laden’s money
for Castro’s cash-strapped regime could easily result in the worst of
scenarios?
As America prepares to build a global coalition for a definitive assault
on international terrorism it must come to grips with the fact that the
enemy is a step ahead. Policy makers, legislators and analysts must not
dismiss Cuba’s insistent efforts aimed precisely at building an
anti-Western alliance, its continued support and encouragement for
international terrorist organizations, or its latent capacity for
biological warfare and its propensity to share it with other terrorist
states directly linked to US enemies.
Above all, Castro’s continued virulent rhetoric against the US and the
Western world in general must not be overlooked. It was not too long ago
that Americans were the direct targets of Castroite terrorist attacks.
On February 24, 1996 two unarmed US civilian aircraft were shot out of
the sky in plain daylight in international air space, murdering three US
citizens and one resident. A group of Cuban spies in Florida were
recently convicted of conspiring to murder US citizens, seeking to
penetrate US military installations, spying on members of the US
Congress and providing information on Miami International Airport.
Turning a blind eye to Castro on the eve of the ‘first war of the 21st
century,’ would be tantamount to ignoring the Nazi and Fascist alliance
with Japan the day after Pearl Harbor. The enemy is 90 miles south of
Key West. And he does not hide his hatred for us.
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