US Department of State: Patterns of Global Terrorism (1997 & 2001)

Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism

Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism

Consistently, the Secretaries of State have designated Cuba among the seven governments that state sponsors terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. These governments support international terrorism either by engaging in terrorist activity themselves or by providing arms, training, safe haven, diplomatic facilities, financial backing, logistic and/or other support to terrorists.

The US policy of bringing maximum pressure to bear on state sponsors of terrorism and encouraging other countries to do likewise has paid significant dividends. There has been a marked decline in state-sponsored terrorism in recent years. A broad range of bilateral and multilateral sanctions serves to discourage state sponsors of terrorism from continuing their support for international acts of terrorism, but continued pressure is essential.

Although there is no evidence to indicate that Cuba sponsored any international terrorist acts in 1997. As of 2001, it has continued to provide sanctuary to terrorists from several different active terrorist organizations. Castro also maintains strong links to terrorists and to the other states that sponsor international terrorism.

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CUBA AND THE TERROR COALITION:
The Emergence of the Terrorist International

by Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat

Center for the Study of a National Option

(with research support from Rafael Artigas and Ana Carbonell)

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 [in Cuba] are today eye-witness to their weakness, as their close neighbors.” At Tehran University, Castro also stated to the thunderous applause of students and faculty that ” The imperialist king [USA] 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:

a) The Castro dictatorship continues to actively harbor international terrorists,

b) The Castro dictatorship continues to pursue a strategic alliance with terrorist states so as to create an ‘anti-Western’i international front, and

c) The Castro dictatorship has engaged directly in terrorist attacks and espionage against Americans.

There has been a recent effort by the Cuban regime to forge an ‘anti-Western’ front with terrorist states in the Middle Eastern region.

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).

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.” 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 classified information on Miami International Airport.

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. 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.

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 before Pearl Harbor. An enemy is 90 miles south of Key West. And he does not hide his hatred for us.