November 2007

Cuba’s armed forces have influenced Venezuela’s military affairs through its training and military advisors found in the FAN.

The Financial Times reports on the current relations between Hugo Chavez and “his” military:

President Hugo Chávez caused a stir earlier this year when he ordered members of Venezuela’s armed forces to salute their superiors with the words “Fatherland, Socialism or Death!”

It fuelled debate in the military over its involvement in politics and civil society – long a sensitive issue in Venezuela, not least since the failed coup five years ago against Mr Chávez, in which factions of the military played key roles both in deposing him and reinstating him.

[…]

Although Mr Chávez owes his continued success in elections to widespread support among the poorer sectors of the population, in governing the country he has consistently fallen back on the army’s support.

Over a quarter of the ministers that served in his government up to 2004 were military officers, while over a third of state governors have a military background. This has led to concerns of a militarisation of politics, although Mr Chávez says he lacks qualified civilians who back his project.

But the military is divided between a more conservative wing, seen by some to be represented by Mr Baduel, which wants to maintain a professional, independent force, and those promoting an ever-closer “civil-military union”. Mr Chávez has struggled to satisfy both.

The idea of a civil-military union is one of the principles behind Mr Chávez’s so-called “Bolivarian revolution”. It is argued that Venezuela can only succeed against a US invasion – however unlikely – through “asymmetrical warfare”, such as in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mr Müller Rojas has argued that Venezuela’s arms build-up – which includes the purchase of 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 53 helicopters and 24 Sukhoi fighter jets as part of a $3bn contract with Russia – contradicts the theory of “asymmetrical warfare”, while Mr Baduel’s removal as minister of defence was seen to favour moves towards a civil-military union.

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The Miami Herald is reporting that “Havana is dispatching one of its most seasoned diplomats, Jorge Bolaños, to head its mission in Washington. In a move that underscores Cuba’s belief that relations with the United States could become more critical in the coming years.”

Bolaños’ biography from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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“Latin America is deepening its democratic institutions, integrating into the global economy, and finally addressing endemic social inequalities — in short, turning into something of a success story even as most outsiders look the other way.”

Read Francis Fukuyama’s review of Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul written by Michael Reid and published by Yale University Press.

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Via AP:

Cuba pledged to sign nearly $450 million in contracts with hundreds of U.S. and international firms, kicking off the island’s largest annual trade event despite decades of economic sanctions. Less than two weeks after President Bush asked lawmakers to renew a 45-year U.S. economic embargo against the Communist-run island, Cuban officials touted their 25th annual trade fair as proof that the policy has failed.

Via Novosti:

Belarus and Cuba have prospects for cooperation in the oil refining industry, Cuban Ambassador Omar Medina Quintero told reporters in Minsk on October 26, Belapan reports. According to him, in December, Cuba puts into operation a large oil refinery with a daily capacity of 95,000 barrels. The refinery had been 70 percent completed before the breakup of the Soviet Union, and will now be operated in cooperation with Venezuela. It will be the first in a series of plants relating to oil refining, including plants manufacturing chemical fertilizers and plastics. Mr. Quintero noted that the two countries also have good prospects for cooperation in power generation, medicine, transport, agriculture and tourism.

Via IRNA:

Iran and Cuba have reached an agreement to establish a joint shipping company, said an Iranian minister. Minister of Commerce Masood Mirkazemi made the remark upon coming back Sunday from a four-day visit to Cuba and taking part in a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) commercial meeting there. The agreement will have a significant bearing on trade with Latin American countries which has recently expanded.

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Chris Simmons, a career counterintelligence officer and an expert on Cuban intelligence has written the following article on the Iran-Cuba nexus published in the Miami Herald:

Scott Carmichael, a senior counterintelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently confirmed continued intelligence sharing between Iran and Cuba. Additionally, Israeli sources report that during last year’s meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Iranian and Cuban intelligence officers discussed increased collaboration in targeting the United States.

Close ties between Tehran and Havana have reportedly existed since Iran’s revolutionary leadership came to power in 1979. Given both nations’ sponsorship of terrorism, their continued collaboration imperils U.S. national security. In the past, Havana provided training and material to selected terrorist groups, some of which are Iranian allies. Today, Cuba remains a safe haven for some international terrorist groups and it allows safe transit to others. Furthermore, Iran’s Interests Section and its Mission to the United Nations appear inadequately staffed for significant intelligence collection. This shortfall likely makes Tehran even more dependent on Havana’s continued intelligence trafficking.

In 2006, Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz — a career officer in Cuba’s premier foreign intelligence service, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) — visited with senior Iranian government officials. This meeting followed his October 2003 meeting with President Mohammad Khatami on expanded ties between Havana and Tehran.

At the time, Cabrisas served under cover as a minister without portfolio. During their discussions, Khatami said reciprocal visits by officials of the two countries would lead to further expansion and consolidation of mutual ties. Khatami described his nation’s ties with Havana as exemplary and claimed that closer Cuba-Iran cooperation would benefit the entire world. Cabrisas publicly focused on Havana’s willingness to broaden ties with Tehran and underlined the need to bolster economic cooperation. The meeting called for the recurring visits by officials, scientists and others to develop these enhanced ties.

Since at least 1996, the DI has targeted U.S. technologies beneficial to the Cuban economy. With one of the most advanced biotechnology industries in the emerging world, Castro successfully made biotechnology a building block of the Cuban economy. Cuba now holds more than 400 biotechnology patents and earns considerable foreign currency through its sales of biotechnology products to more than 50 nations. Tehran and Havana first began collaborative work on dual-use biotechnologies in the early 1990s.

Acting on behalf of Tehran, in July 2003, Cuban intelligence jammed the transmissions of the National Iranian Television (NITV), the Voice of America and three other Iran-bound broadcasts. The extended jamming coincided with Tehran’s crackdown on the dissident commemoration of the historic 1999 student uprising.

Loral Skynet, owners of the targeted satellite, quickly traced the source of the jamming to a spot several miles outside of Havana. The location identified was the Cuban military intelligence’s Bejucal Signals Intelligence site, which intercepts and jams radio and television signals with equal ease. NITV first broadcast from its Los Angeles-based station in March 2000. However, Iran promptly jammed the Hot Bird 5 satellite in its static orbit over France.

NITV and other broadcasters then moved to Telstar 12, because its stationary orbit over the mid-Atlantic placed it outside the range of Iran’s jamming stations. However, the move placed NITV within range of Cuba, the only nation in the Western Hemisphere that jams foreign broadcasts. Worldwide, only seven nations engage in such illegal jamming.

Havana had demonstrated Tehran’s importance in May 2001 when Fidel Castro visited Iran. Cuba’s ambassador to Tehran, career DI officer Darío Urra Torriente, coordinated and oversaw all aspects of Castro’s meetings with Iran’s leaders. If history is any example, the focus of the conference was economic and political issues, as well as intelligence collaboration. Urra’s experience in the Arab world dates back to the early 1960s, when he served in Algiers. During that tour, he assisted in Algeria’s covert shipments of weaponry to Venezuelan revolutionaries.

(H/T: La Nueva Cuba)

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The Miami Herald reports on East Germany’s notorious Stasi security agency and its influence over the tropical version, Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT). Jorge Luís Vázquez, a Cuban exile who was jailed in 1987 in a Stasi cell, has found hundreds of East German government documents on Stasi relations with MININT, and is nearly finished writing what may well be the most thorough report to date on the links between the two security agencies.

The Stasi reconstructed MININT’s telephone and communications system in 1988 to better facilitate eavesdropping. Before that, in 1981, it modernized MININT’s printing press to enable better, faster production of party propaganda — and false passports used for espionage and subversion, Vázquez says.

The Stasi also overhauled the security system at José Martí International Airport in Havana, installing cameras, migration control booths and state-of-the-art X-ray equipment that mirrored identically the security methods in East Germany.

Coordinated espionage efforts between the Stasi and MININT also helped widen the Cuban secret service’s intelligence gathering. Vázquez’s study reveals that in 1985, Operation Palma Real, a cooperative action of ”electronic espionage” by German and Cuban agents, resulted in valuable interceptions of U.S. telephone and telegraph communications from the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo, Cuba.

Furthermore, the Stasi trained Cuban guerrillas who were being sent abroad to subvert other governments, teaching observation, espionage and interrogation techniques that considerably expanded Cuba’s impact on conflicts ranging from Central America to Africa, according to the documents Vázquez has gathered.

”What we see is a copy of the Stasi system that spread across the developing world — from Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador,” as Cubans passed on the methodology and technology to others, he said.

And then there was that intriguing mention of LSD, in a letter from the MININT’s supply department formally requesting from the Stasi some 360 doses of the hallucinogenic. The document does not explain its use.

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The Cuban Government’s infamous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) is being utilized by Army General Raul Castro to shore up his authority over the country, according to an extensive article from the Washington Post. Castro will employ anew this political tool of control that has served well the regime.

As per the article:

Cuba’s block committees were born in 1960, shortly after Fidel Castro’s revolutionary forces toppled the corrupt, U.S.-friendly government of Fulgencio Batista. Concerned about a U.S. invasion, Castro’s government adopted a motto, still present on Cuban billboards: “In a fortress under siege, all dissent is treason.”

The concept behind the CDRs was to create a citizen force that would reinforce the dictates of Cuba’s government, establishing a kind of omnipresent peer pressure network among next-door neighbors. Leaders of CDRs could put Castro’s every public thought directly and rapidly into the hands of every Cuban, so the government would not have to rely solely on mass media.

As Castro’s brother, interim President Raul Castro, prepares to take full control after his brother’s death, party officials take visiting dignitaries on tours of the committees, and there are signs that the younger Castro is trying to inject new life into a system that could be crucial to solidifying his hold on power.

Police call block leaders more often, pressing aggressively for information, according to interviews with current and former CDR leaders. Earlier this year, Cuba’s state-run television network broadcast an exposé shaming several committees for failing to post obligatory round-the-clock sentries.

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A new Latell Report follows:

President George W. Bush’s address on Cuba policy at the State Department on October 24 was his first since Raul Castro’s accession to power fifteen months ago. The president used powerful, and at times evocative, language in reaffirming his administration’s commitment to maintaining the economic embargo until a genuine democratic transition begins on the island. He welcomed several supportive members of congress–conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats– and introduced family members of imprisoned Cuban journalists and democracy activists. Bush was adamant that the United States not acquiesce in a dynastic succession, insisting that life will not improve for Cubans by exchanging one dictator for another.

He seemed, moreover, to move policy into a more activist mode than had been the case since Fidel Castro yielded power in July 2006. By many accounts, actions in support of Cuban dissidents have been more cautious since then. The administration has also generally eschewed confrontational language, perhaps in the belief that the new regime’s grip on power was tenuous and out of concern that instability on the island would provoke another mass seaborne migration to Florida.

But to whatever extent such considerations may have inhibited policy, they now appear to have been superseded. The president said, the operative word in our dealing with Cuba is not stability. . . (it) is freedom. . . Now is the time to support the democratic movements growing on the island. Now is the time to stand with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty. If he meant that new or more assertive policies are in the works to support the democratic opposition, he provided no details.

But in other, potentially more significant ways, the president ventured beyond the standard rhetoric and policy prescriptions of recent years. For the first time, perhaps in the entire history of American relations with the Castro brothers regime, a president made public overtures to Cuban military and security personnel. Seeking to enlist at least some of them as agents of democratic change, Bush said that Cuba must find a way to reconcile and forgive those who have been part of the system, but who do not have blood on their hands. They are victims too.

Remarkably, substantial segments of the speech were excerpted in Granma, Cuba’s communist party daily. The preceding conciliatory commentary was deleted, but another, equally potent one was printed on page two of the Cuban newspaper. It was a both a plea and a promise to the Castro brothers nomenclatura.

You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure. When Cubans rise up to demand their liberty . . . you’ve got to make a choice. Will you defend a disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people? . . . There is a place for you in the free Cuba.

It is difficult to understand why Cuban authorities took the unprecedented step of quoting a sitting American president. I cannot recall another comparable example since relations were severed in 1961. And much of the verbiage that was aired by the Cuban media was highly critical, even incantatory, directed at different Cuban audiences, including schoolchildren and the country’s discontented youth.

Perhaps the new regime is so confident of its strength and popularity that it does not fear how the president’s remarks will be received. Alternatively, reformers who appear to be ascendant in the current leadership may have wanted to add the president’s words to the increasingly dynamic mix of issues the regime has encouraged the populace to debate and discuss. Many pragmatists no doubt agree with President Bush that life will not improve for Cubans under their present system of government. By allowing that conclusion to be aired in Cuba’s controlled media, they may have signaled their concurrence.

The president also cited many items from the long list of pre-conditions for normalizing relations that are specified in the 1996 Cuba Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton). But one of the most prominent of them was not mentioned in any form. Section 205 (a) (3) of Helms-Burton demands the dissolution of Cuba’s most powerful organs of internal repression: the Department of State Security in the Ministry of Interior, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and the Rapid Response Brigades that often inflict violence on dissidents. The omission of this previously crucial requirement for a transition government may have been no more than a drafters or editors oversight. But its absence is consistent with the speech’s central theme of willingness to reconcile with members of Cuba’s uniformed services.

Other straws in the wind suggest that a certain new level of bilateral security cooperation has already been instituted. The State Department’s two most recent annual reports on international terrorism, issued by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, reveal that Cuba has assured the United States that it will no longer provide safe haven to new U.S. fugitives who may enter Cuba.

Last year, the Cuban government made good on that commitment by repatriating an American who landed a stolen plane in Cuba. The 2006 State Department report, issued in April 2007, indicates that after several meetings between U.S. diplomats in Havana and Cuban officials, the man was returned last October for prosecution. The report concludes that this was the first instance in which the Cuban government permitted the return of a fugitive from U.S. justice.

It is not clear whether this new Cuban policy results from a unilateral decision to seek greater bilateral security cooperation or from a process of mutual concessions. So far, the administration has not commented beyond the cursory wording included in the two annual counter terrorism reports.

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