ONE of the most notorious international terrorists, Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban national accused of the bombing of a Cuban airline, entered the United States illegally in 2005 and is being held on that charge. There have been requests for extradition by Venezuela (for the bombing) and by Cuba (for the bombing and other crimes) and so far all requests have been denied.
Carriles has been turned down in his efforts to enter Mexico and many other countries have also refused to accept him.
The US Justice Department has continuously refused to designate Carriles a terrorist, choosing to live him in the hands of the immigration services. In February 2007, a US Federal judge denied Carriles bail pending a decision on deportation.
It is given that every self-respecting president has a doctrine that he wants attached to his name. President Robert Mugabe pursues an anti-imperialist doctrine and right now he faces widespread criticism mainly from the West. The core principle of President George W Bush is that the United States must “rid the world of evil” as he put it right after the September 11 attacks.
According to this principle, as well as President Bush’s “messianic mission” to democratise the world, the US has a special responsibility to wage a war against terrorism and to fight dictatorships, with the corollary that any state that is a dictatorship or that harbours terrorists should be treated accordingly.
A fair and simple question can be asked. What would be the consequences if we were to take the Mugabe doctrine seriously and treat imperialist countries as oppressors and exploiters that deserve to be kicked out of developing countries? Equally, what would the consequences be if we were to take the Bush doctrine seriously and treat states that harbour terrorists as terrorist states, subject to bombardment and invasion?
The Mugabe doctrine may likely invite confrontation with imperialist countries with dire consequences such as is the strangulation of the Zimbabwean economy today and for many; this kind of predicament needs to be avoided at all cost. The fear of such strangulation and the subsequent suffering it entails is exactly why many a Zimbabwean today silently agree with President Mugabe but openly oppose his doctrine, only for reasons related to the politics of the stomach.
Those Africans and other citizens of the developing world who do not face the risk of a direct backlash of the Mugabe doctrine continue to applause the man as an African hero and liberator while those who have had contact with the backlash through Zimbabwean citizenry or the appeal of neighbourhood are backing up in surrender, with many advising a postponement of such a doctrine for future generations.
As for the Bush doctrine; the US has long been a sanctuary to a rogues’ gallery of people whose actions qualify them as terrorists and whose presence undermines U.S. proclaimed principles.
In 2001, the so-called Cuban Five, Cuban nationals who were convicted in Miami, made interesting reading about the U.S. commitment to fighting terror.
This case is mired in the sordid history of the US-Cuba relations, phenomenally characterised by the crushing, decades long US embargo that continues to stand in violation of UN General Assembly Resolutions in which the US is virtually isolated.
Despite President Bush’s zealous crusade of spreading the anti-terror campaign, the United States has engaged in large and small scale terrorist attacks against Cuba since 1959, that including the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bizarre assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, and far more serious attacks in Cuba and against Cubans abroad.
In the J.F. Kennedy years, his brother Robert Kennedy directed the terror on Cuba and Kennedy Junior’s highest priority was to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba, according to Arthur Schlesinger, the historian and advisor to Robert Kennedy, and also his biographer. This priority ranking is ominously mirrored by Henry Kissinger’s desire to see the economy of Chile “scream”, a term that has been borrowed by Chester Crocker in describing the US foreign policy on Zimbabwe.
The Kennedy terror on Cuba was briefly halted by Lyndon Johnson and later resumed by Richard Nixon, with the US government’s direct participation in terrorist attacks on Cuba ending in the seventies – at least officially.
In 1989, George Bush senior pardoned Orlando Bosch, the notorious anti-Castro terrorist who orchestrated the bombing of the Cuban airliner in 1976, together with Luis Posada Carriles. The pardon was blissfully oblivious of the fact that the Bosch-Carriles bombing claimed seventy-three innocent lives.
Bush senior arrogantly overruled the Justice Department, which had refused any asylum request from Bosch, the Department rightly concluding “The security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists, whose target we too often become.” Bush did not think so and his son does not look any different.
Cuban intelligence realised that the US was going to blatantly harbour anti-Cuba terrorists and Cuban agents decided to infiltrate the terrorist networks in Florida and Miami. To show their competence the Cuban intelligence unit decided to prove what was going on to FBI officials in 1998. The US sent high-level FBI operatives to Havana and they were shown kilometres of videotape and thousands of pages of documentation about terrorist actions organised by cells in Florida and Miami.
In apparent embarrassment the FBI reacted by arresting the people who provided the information, including a group known as the Cuban Five. The arrests were followed by a travesty of justice that came with the show trials in Miami. The five were convicted, three to life sentences – for espionage; and the leader, Gerardo Hernandez, also for conspiracy to murder.
These show convictions stand in sharp contrast to the fact that people regarded by the FBI and the Justice Department as dangerous terrorists live happily in the United States, where they continue to plot and implement heinous crimes.
Among the long list of terrorists resident in the United States is Emmanuel Constant from Haiti, nicknamed Toto, a founder to the Front for Advancement of Progress in Haiti (FRAPH). This group was the paramilitary group used by Duvalier to oust President Aristide, and later to carry out state terror under the Duvalier military junta.
In 2005, Toto was living somewhere in Queens, New York, and the US adamantly refused Haiti’s request for extradition. The assumption by many observers is that the reason for refusal is that Constant would most likely reveal ties between Washington and the military junta that killed 4000 to 5000 Haitians.
This is largely believed to be the same reasoning behind the refusal by Britain to hand over Augusto Pinochet to Chile or Spain – all the way until the death of the brutal US installed dictator in 2006. A trial for Pinochet was likely to taint the image US-UK alliance if deliberations would ever venture into the 1973 era.
For the United States, Cuba continues to present “a successful defiance of the United States, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half” according to a 1964 declassified document from the State Department.
This kind of thinking is in line with the Monroe doctrine that declares that no challenge to U.S. dominance would be tolerated globally.
Venezuela now stands in triumphant defiance and as the Wall Street Journal put it in February 2004, “Fidel Castro has found a key benefactor and heir apparent to the cause of derailing the US’s agenda in Latin America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.”
Venezuela has so far failed to secure an extradition for two former military officers who are seeking asylum in the United States. The two took part in the June 2002 military coup, which, before its reversal and popular overthrow by a mass uprising, had disbanded Parliament, the Supreme Court, and all other vestiges of democracy – all with the tacit support and backing of Washington, endlessly lauded for its religious dedication to “democracy promotion”.
When the coup leaders who briefly overthrew Chavez in 2002 were disbanding Parliament, the Supreme Court and other democratic structures, Washington and the Western press called it the dawn of democracy in Venezuela.
Whoever will disband the land reform programme and the Indigenisation Empowerment Act in Zimbabwe will undoubtedly be lauded as bringing back democracy to the country – notwithstanding the fact that many will see this as democracy at the expense of the people.
There are reports that the confrontational clashes between the US diplomats and authorities in Zimbabwe are increasingly becoming more frequent and such clashes can only be described as defiance in the White House circles.
Of course they are nothing but provocations in as far as the Zimbabwean government is concerned.
Outrage over defiance is deeply ingrained in US history. When France was holding to New Orleans, which Thomas Jefferson coveted, he warned, “France character is placed in a point of eternal friction with our character, which though loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is also high minded.”
These words may as well be incisive for Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Iran and Cuba – countries that currently command characters placed in a point of eternal friction with the US imperial character.
The role of fighting for democratic space in Zimbabwe by US Ambassador, James McGee might be noble in principle but such a role stands tainted by the history of the United States – a history so littered with the innocent blood of many nationalities, together with a series of US-propped dictatorships that terrorised their own people with the complicity of Washington.
If the reports that the politically motivated violence in the run up to the Zimbabwe presidential run off election is two sided in terms of the political divide are correct, then it is in the interest of the US and any other international observers to stand impartial in their judgement and remedies.
Any bias in the reporting of events and in resolutions taken will only compromise the already tainted image of the world’s most powerful country.
It must not take James McGee or his United States of America for Zimbabweans to realise that violence is a primitive and barbaric way of expressing opinion, long discarded even by baboons. It must not take the US for Zimbabweans to realise that the loss of one life is one too many.
It must not take Kofi Anan, Thabo Mbeki, Raila Odinga or Levy Mwanawasa to point out that killing each other for politicians is the stupidest thing ever to grace humanity. Equally, it should not take gruesome images of injured or dead people (made up or real), to realise that killing each other is diabolical and unacceptable.
It is now incumbent upon Zimbabweans to choose the way that will ensure peace and prosperity for the country – that in a way that is mature and free of hate and intolerance. The Presidential run off has two Zimbabwean candidates and both must be tolerable to the people of Zimbabwe, as one of them has to emerge the winner.
Intolerance will only breed perpetuity of conflict and suffering and that route did not take Rwanda, DRC and Liberia to any form of victory. It has not taken Sudan and Chad to any form of victory and most certainly will not.
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