The Imaginary Cuban Troops in Syria
By Matt Peppe
October 18, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
Fair-and-balanced Fox News
reported on Wednesday that "Cuban military operatives reportedly
have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising
President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers and may be preparing to man
Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed
by the U.S." Fox's claim of an imaginary enemy alliance relies on
two sources: the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies and an anonymous U.S. official.
The source at the Miami Institute indicated that "An Arab military
officer at the Damascus airport reportedly witnessed two Russian
planes arrive there with Cuban military personnel on board. When the
officer questioned the Cubans, they told him they were there to
assist Assad because they are experts at operating Russian tanks."
It is unclear what nationality the "Arab" officer was. Perhaps, said
Arab determined the people aboard the Russian plane were Cubans
because he saw them smoking cigars and drinking mojitos. The Cuban
soldiers then volunteered - supposedly - they were "there to assist
Assad" because of their expertise manning Russian tanks. However
improbable this may seem to an unbiased observer, the source from
the Miami Institute said that "it doesn't surprise me."
The supposed U.S. official - who Fox grants anonymity to without
giving a reason why - related "evidence" from "intelligence reports"
that Cuban troops "may" have trained in Russia and "may have" come
to Syria in Russian planes. Sounds legit.
Despite the thinness of the report's sourcing and the improbability
of its content, other news organizations were quick to parrot its
claims. Spanish newspaper
ABC noted the next day that media from Germany to Argentina to
the Middle East had echoed the Fox News report, while ABC did the
same themselves.
By Friday, the story had gained enough traction that it was raised
at a White House briefing. In a response that should have been
enough to put the story to rest, the
White House Press Secretary said "we've seen no evidence to
indicate that those reports are true."
But a few hours later, the
Daily Beast had definitively declared in a headline that: "Cuba
Is Intervening in Syria to Help Russia. It's Not the First Time
Havana's Assisted Moscow."
Progressive
concern troll James Bloodworth turned Fox's rumors into fact and
wrote that "Not for the first time Cuban forces are doing Russia's
dirty work, this time in Syria... Obama has been holding his hand
out in a gesture of goodwill to America's adversaries only for them
to blow him a raspberry back in his face - while standing atop a
pile of Syrian corpses."
In reality, Obama's "gesture of goodwill" is little more than
behaving less overtly hostile after decades of American aggression
against Cuba and Iran. If you are choking someone unprovoked and you
loosen you're grip, it is far from a gesture of goodwill.
Bloodworth also tries to make a historical argument that Cuba's
(imaginary) military actions in Syria are consistent with their
"bloody" interventions elsewhere. He
decries "Cuban terror in Ethiopia" that resulted in hundreds of
thousands of people being killed. "The tragedy was largely a
consequence of the policies pursued by the Communist dictatorship
that ruled Ethiopia at the time - a regime propped up by Cuba and
the Soviet Union."
In 1977, Somalia had invaded Ethiopia in an attack that "had been
encouraged by ambivalent signals from Washington," according to
historian Piero Gleijeses in his book Visions
of Freedom. [1] Initially reluctant to become involved,
Fidel Castro finally agreed to Ethiopian requests to send troops to
repel the Somali invasion.
Gleijeses found in his extensive review of formerly classified
military documents that Cuba's motives in aiding Ethiopia were
sincere:
With hindsight, we know that Mengistu's policies
resulted in disaster, but this was not clear in 1977: though the
process was undeniably bloody, the Ethiopian junta had decreed a
radical agrarian reform and taken unprecedented steps to foster
the cultural rights of the non-Amhara population... The evidence
indicates that the Cubans intervened because they believed, as
Cuban intelligence stated in March 1977, that 'the social and
economic measures adopted by Ethiopia's leadership are the most
progressive we have seen in any underdeveloped country since the
triumph of the Cuban revolution.' [2]
In addition to correcting the record on Ethiopia,
Gleijeses' study also serves to set the record straight on Cuba's
historical modus operandi in its military interventions
abroad. Cuba did maintain a large military presence in Angola for
nearly 15 years, starting in 1975.
Castro first sent troops in November 1975 after Angolan President
Agostinho Neto warned of a South African invasion of the country
already underway which would inevitably topple the nascent
government without outside support. Cuba agreed to send soldiers to
Angola right away. Several months later, they would repel the
apartheid army back to Pretoria. They remained in Angola at Neto's
bequest to prevent further incursions from the racist South African
army into the country's sovereign territory.
At the same time, there was an ongoing civil war between Neto's MPLA,
the largest and most popular of the guerilla groups, and the South
African and American-backed UNITA guerillas led by former Portuguese
collaborator Jonas Savimbi.
Castro was adamant that Cuban troops would be responsible for
preventing a South African invasion, while Angolan troops should
deal with their own internal conflict. In meetings with Neto, Castro
"kept hammering away on the need to fight the bandits ... He
explained to us that the fight against the bandits was necessarily
and without question the responsibility of the Angolans, that we
could not wage this war, that it was their war." [3]
Cuba's position during the Angolan conflict is consistent with the
diplomatic approach they have repeatedly espoused in Syria, that the
Syrian conflict is a domestic problem for the Syrian people and
government to resolve themselves, while the international community
works to achieve a peaceful solution.
"Cuba reiterates that international cooperation, based on the
principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity, is the
only way to effectively promote and protect all human rights," Cuban
representative to the UN Human Rights Council
Rodolfo Reyes said at a meeting in Switzerland. He added that
"Cuba is confident of the capacity of the Syrian people and
government to solve their domestic problems without foreign
interference."
Unreliable Sources
That the Fox News could cause such a stir is a testament to the
refusal of mainstream news organizations to verify sources. In all
of the iterations of the "Cuban troops in Syria" fantasy, there are
no new sources cited. The original Fox News report cites one
anonymous U.S. official who may, or may not, even exist. The only
source on record with their incredulous claims is someone from the
Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the
University of Miami.
ICCAS is notorious for its reactionary, anti-Communist politics
revered among the fanatically right-wing Cuban and Cuban-American
population in Miami. Their academic research includes a conspiracy
theory that appears to implicate
Fidel Castro in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Another ICCAS
report claims "the often-repeated view in many countries that
the United States is an evil power, guilty for much of the problems
and sufferings of the developing world, is owed in great part to the
propaganda efforts of Fidel Castro" - not, rather, to decades of
direct U.S. military intervention; profligate support to fascist
military dictatorships; and predatory, neo-colonial lending policies
that demand neoliberal structural adjustment programs which funnel
public assets and resources to creditor interests, at the expense of
the employment, health and well-being of the vast majority of local
populations.
ICCAS is also home to the
Cuba Transition Project whose mission is "to study and make
recommendations for the reconstruction of Cuba once the post-Castro
transition begins in earnest." CTP acknowledges on its Web site that
"the project was established in 2002 and supported by grants from
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until 2010."
It's funding indicates it is at least indirectly an arm of the U.S.
government's destabilization and subversion efforts dedicated to
regime change of the politically and economically independent Cuban
government.
Cuban Prensa Latina reporter in Syria
Miguel Fernández noted that ICCAS has reported six or seven
times since 2006 that Fidel Castro has died. He suggested reports
such as those originating with ICCAS about Cuban troops in Syria
were part of the campaigns of reactionary groups opposed to
normalization to tarnish the new relations between Cuba and the
United States.
The Cuban Embassy in Damascus reportedly "laughed"
at the report of Cuban troops in Syria, and told
Sputnik News: "It's pure lunacy. It is as if they were claiming
that Russia had sent its troops to Madagascar to protect lemurs."
Despite claims of Cuban troops in Syria contradicting Cuba's stated
policy and historical modus operandi, and the fact that now
four days have passed without a single piece of corroborating
evidence to the laughable Fox News report, the imaginary Cuban
troops in Syria are likely to morph into more outrageous fantasies
of media who have shown themselves primarily interested in
fabricating tales of intrigue about America's evil enemies rather
than reporting actual verifiable facts.
Matt blogs at
http://mattpeppe.blogspot.com
References
[1] Gleijeses, Piero.
Visions of Freedom: Havana,
Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa,
1976-1991. The University of
North Carolina Press, 2013. Kindle edition.
[2] Ibid.
[3] as quoted in Gleijeses, 2013
