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Two significant international events occurred in September. The Group of 77-China summit in Havana, as well as the high-level United Nations segment, will significantly increase Cuba’s international visibility and prestige. As part of these positive developments, it is necessary to discuss the inclusion of Cuba on the US list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
Donald Trump’s administration placed Cuba back on this list in January 2021 after he failed in the election and had only days left before handing over the White House; This reverses one of former President Obama’s most emblematic policies.
If we were to characterize people as exceptional, good, average, bad, very bad, these two idiots would be at the lower end of the scale. Photo Slate.com.
This action was intended to hinder then-President-elect and current President J. Biden’s ability to negotiate a rapprochement with Havana. “With this action, we will once again hold the Cuban government accountable and send a clear message: the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of American justice,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. Pure garbage.
What is the list of state sponsors of terrorism?
“Country sponsors of international terrorism” is a qualification that the U.S. State Department applies to countries that the U.S. government considers to be collaborators with “terrorist organizations.” Inclusion on the list entails strict sanctions, including extraterritorial ones.
It was founded on December 29, 1979, during the Jimmy Carter administration, amid a bitter confrontation between the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress, as well as with key leaders of his own Democratic Party (including Senator Ted Kennedy). Originally it included four nations: Libya, Iraq, South Yemen and Syria. Subsequently, Cuba was included and Iraq removed in 1982, Iran in 1984, and the DPR of Korea in 1988.
In 1990, Iraq returned to the list after the invasion of Kuwait and South Yemen was removed from the list after reunification with North Yemen. In 1993 Sudan was included. Although Afghanistan was never officially on the list, it was treated as such until the US invasion in 2001.
After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country in question was removed from the list the following year in 2004. In 2006, Libya was also removed and in 2008, the DPR of Korea was also removed from the list. In 2015, after relations between the two countries improved, the Obama administration removed Cuba from such a list to which it should never have been included. In 2017, Korea DPR returns to the list. In 2020, Sudan leaves the country and in 2021 Cuba rejoins, as the defeated Trump administration’s final service to the Miami mafia.
There are currently four member countries on the vile “list”: Cuba, the DPR Korea, Iran and Syria.
Apparently, this “list” is another illegal weapon in the repertoire of those who want to allow an unreal unipolar world to exist, are willing to destroy humanity to achieve this, and fantasize that they themselves would miraculously escape the catastrophe.
The pretexts for reintegrating Cuba
The outgoing Donald Trump administration’s main pretext for putting Cuba back on the “list” was Cuba’s refusal to extradite to Colombia a group of ten guerrilla leaders of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) who were accused of a car bomb attack at the General Santander Police Cadet School in Bogotá, in which 21 cadets died. Attack that is not fully understood.
Then-Colombian President Iván Duque not only suspended peace talks with the ELN in Cuba, but also reactivated the arrest warrants against the ten leaders.
In a statement, the State Department said Cuba, among other countries, was “not cooperating fully” in combating terrorism, citing its refusal to extradite guerrilla leaders to Colombia.
Cuba’s response to Colombia’s and US demands was that the ten ELN leaders were on the island because Colombia, during that country’s previous administration, had asked to allow them to live there while the talks were taking place. Peace between Colombia and the USA ELN.
According to the protocols between Cuba and Colombia agreed at the start of the talks (as a continuation of separate talks between Colombia and its other major guerrilla group, the FARC), the guerrilla negotiators would remain free and, if the talks failed or were extended, they should go back. free to Colombia.
The President of Colombia himself, Gustavo Petro, stated today that the criminal consequence of the inclusion of Cuba in the list of countries supporting terrorism cannot be maintained because it is based on nothing more than lies. On behalf of his government, Petro demanded that Cuba be removed from the misclassification prepared by the United States.
He explained that the peace negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN) as agreed with the government of Juan Manuel Santos could not do so, as former President Duque had demanded. What is still missing to remove Cuba from this list if the Colombian president himself asks for it?
Gustavo Petro. Photo: Presidency of Colombia.
“It wasn’t about punishing the ELN,” said a former State Department official. “It was about finding an excuse to punish the Cubans.” Colombia and the United States have said the ELN operates primarily from state-backed shelters in neighboring Venezuela. But the Trump administration has never taken steps to designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism.
When Colombian President Gustavo Petro took office last year, he announced that he would withdraw the extradition request as part of his “Total Peace” initiative, and peace negotiations are currently making great progress, absolute proof that this pretext is false .
The Trump administration at the time also accused Cuba of supporting the government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, a completely legitimate government, the result of free elections, which Washington has tried to overthrow by all means, including criminal acts.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba’s relationship with the Trump administration continued to deteriorate. Cuba’s exemplary deployment of medical brigades in a number of countries lacking medical personnel, including Italy and Andorra in Europe, drew praise from host countries but was strongly condemned by Washington, which accused the Cubans of “exploiting doctors.” . Something really unusual.
All of this and other falsehoods, such as the already largely silenced lie that Cuba was involved in the “sonic attacks” on US diplomats and their families, have been debunked.
Yet despite all this, the Biden-Harris administration, without any justification, maintains that Cuba is a sponsor of terrorism.
The real causes
The economic, trade and financial blockade against Cuba already severely limited the ability of Americans to do business or visit the island, but it still had its function of inciting rebellion against the Cuban government or forcing it to give in to demands to surrender, not met Washington and Miami. But the new terrorism label hinders trade deals with third countries on which Cuba depends for imports of vital goods, and deters foreign investors in its all-important tourism industry and many other strategic sectors.
The decision was part of a series of last-minute moves by the Trump administration to advance hard-line policies advocated by influential domestic constituencies, despite the complications it posed for State Department lawyers, humanitarian interests abroad and the then-new administration of Joe would bring with him Biden.
“This blatantly politicized label makes a mockery of an objective and credible measure of a foreign government’s active support of terrorism,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). “There’s nothing here that’s even remotely like that. “In fact, domestic terrorism poses a much greater threat to Americans in the United States than in Cuba.”
I do not believe that the real reasons for adding Cuba to the “list” should be simplified. Although it is very important for American neo-fascism to enjoy the support of the Miami mafia, now reinforced by groups of Venezuelan origin – and with Argentine, Brazilian, Bolivian, etc. members, politically projected by the three senators, several federal representatives “Cuban -American people”; and dozens of Tallahassee mayors, council members, assembly members, etc. There are other important factors as well.
One of them is to increase the discouragement of the Cuban people. It means telling the Cuban people that “there is no light at the end of the tunnel” and that we will always do something that hinders the normalization or even improvement of relations. Deterring U.S. and third-country businessmen from being punished in the United States for investing in Cuba, and disillusioning the growing solidarity movement with Cuba in the United States itself.
The Joe Biden administration’s inaction, complicity through action and inaction
María Elvira Salazar wears a huge crucifix on her chest, but her actions are far from God. Photo: María Elvira Salazar Page.
The re-inclusion of Cuba on the terrorism list immediately sparked a fair and angry protest in Havana against the measure. “We condemn a unilateral, absurd, hypocritical and unjust maneuver by the US government to add Cuba to its list of state sponsors of terrorism,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel tweeted about Cuba’s inclusion. “This government protects terrorist groups that target Cuba.”
Shortly after he took office, Biden administration officials said they would review Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. The United States Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken reiterated this point in an October 2022 press conference with Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who expressed his own objections to the United States’ terrorism designation. Despite these promises, there has been no real progress so far.
Reactionary congressmen led by María Elvira Salazar introduced the proposed law called FORCE (HR 314), which, if passed (currently far from being so), would prevent Cuba from being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism until it meets the requirements of Section 205 of the FREEDOM Act (criminal Helms – Burton Act) (PL 104-114), which would mean renouncing independence as a nation.
This “bill” proposal was approved by the House Foreign Relations Committee by a narrow majority (25 to 20), but most experts agree that it is unlikely to be approved by the full House, despite having a majority has. Republican. A version of this proposed “bill” was introduced in the Senate in the last legislative session by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), along with Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), and even though it was If it passes the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it has little chance in the Senate since the Democratic Party has a slim majority. Only one Democratic senator (Bob Menéndez) supports it, while several Republican senators strongly oppose it.
Organizations in solidarity with Cuba and a significant number of American politicians who have a reasonable degree of sanity and common sense are strongly opposed to the approval and implementation of this anti-Cuban monstrosity.
In addition, we consider it likely that in the next 12 months Cuba will be removed from such an unfortunate list: the rejection it generates is so great, not only in the United States but throughout Latin America and the world.
The United States has carried out 36 large-scale invasions or direct military aggression worldwide from 1959 to the present and more than 200 major acts of sabotage, coup d’etat, or acts of mass terrorism during that period. The inclusion of Cuba on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism is a typical case of a thief shouting “The Thief.”
We witnessed the G-77 and China summit and the high-level segment at the United Nations, and at the United Nations, just over 30 days later, the resolution condemning the blockade is adopted by an overwhelming majority for the 31st consecutive year .
The complete lack of reasons for Cuba being on the Notorious List makes it likely, in my opinion, that the J. Biden administration will attempt to appease the national and international outcry and designate Cuba for electoral purposes in the general election such monstrosity in November 2024, amid a series of actions to show voters that they are no longer “more of the same” in their electoral confrontation with the openly neo-fascist far right.