[A-List] Cuba: changing the course of history in southern Africa

[Michael Keaney]

A Bone in the Throat
Piero Gleijeses

The Real Fidel Castro by Leycester Coltman
Yale, 335 pp, £25.00
London Review of Books, vol. 26, no. 16, 19 August 2004

Leycester Coltman was British ambassador in Cuba from 1991 to 1994. During
these years, the dust jacket on his book claims, 'he came as close to
personal friendship with Castro as any foreigner was permitted.' Coltman
writes with great confidence, even immodesty - we are given the impression
that he knows all Castro's secrets - and the range of his book extends
beyond his immediate experience to take in all of Castro's life.

In doing so, he comments on events and issues with which he is clearly
unfamiliar. Like all Castro's other biographers, he has had to construct his
story without being able to read the relevant Cuban documents and, despite
the claim on the dust jacket, he had no special access to Castro. The Cuban
regime is a closed world that carefully safeguards its secrets; Cubans who
talk to foreigners tend to know little, and those who know a lot remain
silent. Coltman should have been forthright about the limits of his
knowledge, but pretending to know more than one does is a widely shared flaw
among Castro biographers. Only one, Tad Szulc, has resisted this temptation,
and Fidel, published in 1986, remains the best life. Coltman's book is
useful, however: it takes the story almost to the present day, and his
subtle knowledge of Cuba - three years is longer than any other Castro
biographer has lived there - gives him unusual insight into aspects of the
revolution and US-Cuban relations.

His Castro is not very different from the one that emerges from Szulc's
biography and, for that matter, from many US intelligence reports: a
charismatic leader with a passionate desire to improve the lot of the Cuban
people and no tolerance of opposition. 'He is inspired by a messianic sense
of mission to aid his people,' a US National Intelligence Estimate concluded
in 1959, and Coltman agrees that he 'had a mission to change his country and
the world'. This sense of mission - the keynote of Castro's extraordinary
life - has necessitated many sacrifices for the greater good. For Castro,
Coltman writes, progress has always been
achieved at a price, often at the price of suffering and bloodshed . . . The
Cuban revolution was not the work of one man or one generation. It was a
historical process, started in the independence struggles of the 19th
century. Thousands had died fighting for it. It was the duty of the present
generation to save the revolution, however arduous the task. Even in
capitalist countries, many people looked to Cuba as a beacon of hope . . .
Cuba would not disappoint them.
One may agree or disagree with Castro's view of history, but this was
certainly what he believed in 1959, when he entered Havana in triumph. And
it is his belief today, as he continues to defy Washington's imperial will.

Coltman's perceptiveness on this matter makes the weaknesses of his book all
the more frustrating. We are told in the preface that his death shortly
after delivering the typescript prevented him from adding 'a full list of
annotations'. This is something of an understatement: there are no notes,
and only on rare occasions are sources identified in the text. What makes it
difficult to take him at his word is that his facts are often demonstrably
wrong. Take his account of the dispatch of the Cuban column led by Che
Guevara to Congo Kinshasa. Che, he writes, 'flew with a team of elite Cuban
volunteers to Brazzaville' and from there 'set about the task of organising
a Marxist guerrilla movement in Congo Kinshasa'. This is part fact, part
fiction: yes, Che led a Cuban column to aid the rebels; but no, he did not
set out to organise a 'Marxist' guerrilla movement, and no, the column did
not approach from Brazzaville but from Tanzania. The rebels Che was helping
were near the border with Tanzania: in order to get there from Brazzaville,
the Cubans would have had to traverse the entire length of the country,
through territory controlled by the government.

Elsewhere Coltman writes that on a visit to Moscow (typically, he does not
indicate the year), Castro suggested to his hosts that he might engage in an
act of public self-criticism for the many anti-Soviet comments he had made
since the time of the Missile Crisis. The Russians advised him not to make
any such self-criticism. They had invested a lot of capital in building up
the image and prestige of Castro, and saw no benefit in his admitting to
mistakes, even the mistake of having criticised the Soviet Union.

This could be a bombshell. But what is Coltman's source? Did he read a
secret Cuban document about Castro's trip? Did Castro share this secret with
him? Or is his source the same person who told him that Che entered Congo
Kinshasa from Brazzaville?

Coltman's discussion of Castro's relations with the United States combines
insight with faulty analysis and factual mistakes. He writes, for example,
that Castro
had successfully defied and outlived the hostility and threats of five
successive US presidents, from Eisenhower to Ford . . . However, the mild
and amiable President Carter presented a different and in many ways more
difficult problem. He kept up the pressure on Cuba over human rights, but he
did so in a more respectful tone than had been habitual under previous
administrations . . . Carter was in fact the first American president to
exercise at least some influence on Castro.

Castro did indeed respond favourably to Carter's first steps. But Coltman
greatly overstates the importance of human rights in Carter's relationship
with Castro and misses the real stumbling block: Carter's administration was
obsessed with the Cuban military presence in Africa, particularly in Angola.

'Africa is certainly central to our concerns,' a Carter envoy told Castro in
December 1978. 'As I look over the transcripts of our talks' - with the
Cuban vice president, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez - 'I see that we have spent 70
per cent of our time on Africa.' Carter wanted Castro to withdraw his troops
from Angola and used the embargo as a stick. 'We feel it is deeply immoral
to use the blockade as a means of pressuring Cuba,' Castro countered:

There should be no mistake - we cannot be pressured, impressed, bribed or
bought . . . Perhaps because the US is a great power, it feels it can do
what it wants and what is good for it. It seems to be saying that there are
two laws, two sets of rules and two kinds of logic, one for the US and one
for other countries. Perhaps it is idealistic of me, but I never accepted
the universal prerogatives of the US - I never accepted and never will
accept the existence of a different law and different rules . . . I hope
history will bear witness to the shame of the United States which for twenty
years has not allowed sales of medicines needed to save lives.

Why did Castro insist on keeping his troops in Angola? Coltman wastes no
time with the bugaboo that Cuba acted - in Angola or elsewhere - as a Soviet
proxy. Rather, he explains, the key to Castro's foreign policy is his sense
of mission. His conclusion dovetails with that of US intelligence, which saw
Castro not as a Soviet puppet but as a leader 'engaged in a great crusade',
and it echoes Henry Kissinger's assessment. When Castro sent his troops to
Angola in 1975 to stop the South African advance on Luanda, Kissinger
immediately accused him of being a Soviet surrogate, but twenty years later,
in his memoirs, he recanted: 'Evidence now available suggests that the
opposite was the case.' Castro 'was probably the most genuine revolutionary
leader then in power'. All my research in Cuban, US and European archives
indicates that Coltman, the CIA and Kissinger are right. Obviously, Castro's
sense of mission is not the only force shaping his foreign policy, but it is
that policy's foundation. He sees Cuba as a special hybrid: a socialist
country with a Third World sensibility in a world dominated by the 'conflict
between privileged and underprivileged, humanity against "imperialism"', and
where the major faultline was never between socialist and capitalist states
but between developed and underdeveloped countries.

'Castro lost the great battle of his life, the battle against
"imperialism",' Coltman asserts: 'At the end of his life, the United States
is even stronger than in 1958.' While it is true that the United States is
stronger than ever, it is a major misinterpretation of Castro's life to
assert that he has lost his battle against imperialism. For Castro the fight
against imperialism is more than a fight against the United States: it is a
fight against poverty and oppression in the Third World. In this war his
battalions include the Cuban doctors and other aid workers who have
laboured, and continue to labour, in some of the poorest regions of the
world, at no cost or very little cost to the host country. And they include
the thousands of underprivileged youths from Latin America and Africa who
attend, all expenses paid, the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, a few
miles west of Havana. In this war against 'imperialism', Castro has achieved
impressive victories.

And so have his soldiers, particularly in what Castro has called 'the most
beautiful cause', the struggle against apartheid. In 1975, Cuba humbled
Washington and Pretoria in Angola and prevented the establishment of a
government in Luanda beholden to the apartheid regime. The effects of the
Cuban victory were felt all over Southern Africa. Its psychological impact,
the hope it aroused, is illustrated by two statements from across the
political divide. 'In Angola, black troops - Cubans and Angolans - have
defeated white troops in military exchanges,' a South African military
analyst wrote in February 1976, as Cuban troops were pushing the South
African army towards the Namibian border.

Whether the bulk of the offensive was by Cubans or Angolans is immaterial in
the colour-conscious context of this war's battlefield, for the reality is
that they won, are winning, and are not white; and that psychological edge,
that advantage the white man has enjoyed and exploited over three hundred
years of colonialism and empire, is slipping away. White elitism has
suffered an irreversible blow in Angola, and whites who have been there know
it.

The 'white giants' had retreated for the first time in recent history - and
black Africans celebrated. 'Black Africa is riding the crest of a wave
generated by the Cuban success in Angola,' noted the World, South Africa's
most important black newspaper. 'Black Africa is tasting the heady wine of
the possibility of realising the dream of total liberation.' There would
have been no heady wine but instead the pain of a crushing defeat had the
Cubans not intervened.

The impact was more than moral. It had clear, tangible consequences
throughout Southern Africa. It forced Kissinger to turn against the racist
white regime in Rhodesia and kept Carter on the right path until Zimbabwe
was finally established in 1980. And it marked the real beginning of
Namibia's war of independence. As Jannie Geldenhuys, a South African
general, has written, 'for the first time they' - the Namibian rebels -
'obtained what is more or less a prerequisite for successful insurgent
campaigning, namely a border that provided safe refuge.' For 12 years -
until the New York agreements of December 1988 - Pretoria refused to leave
Namibia, and Cuban troops helped the Angolan army hold the line against
bruising South African incursions.

Very little has been written about these years. The major published source
is the memoir of Reagan's assistant secretary for Africa, Chester Crocker,
who explains the outcome - the independence of Namibia - largely in terms of
US patience, skill and wisdom. But a different explanation emerges from an
analysis of newly declassified Cuban and US documents. In April 1987, the US
ambassador reported from Pretoria that the South African government was
'implacably negative' towards Namibian independence. The following
September, the South African Defence Force unleashed a major attack against
the Angolan army in south-east Angola. By early November it had cornered the
best Angolan units in the small town of Cuito Cuanavale and was poised to
destroy them. But on 15 November, Castro ordered the best units of his army
and its most sophisticated hardware to Angola. 'By going there' - to Cuito
Cuanavale - 'we placed ourselves in the lion's jaws,' Castro said later. 'We
accepted the challenge. And from the first moment we planned to gather our
forces to attack in another direction, like a boxer who with his left hand
blocks the blow and with his right - strikes.' On 23 March 1988, the South
Africans launched their last major attack against Cuito. Once again, they
failed. 'One should ask the South Africans: "Why has your army of the
superior race been unable to take Cuito, which is defended by blacks and
mulattoes from Angola and the Caribbean?"' Castro remarked.

As he spoke, hundreds of miles south-west of Cuito a large Cuban force was
advancing towards the Namibian border. 'At any other time,' US intelligence
reported, 'Pretoria would have regarded the Cuban move as a provocation,
requiring a swift and strong response. But the Cubans moved with such
dispatch and on such a scale that an immediate South African military
response would have involved serious risks.' The South Africans warned that
the Cuban advance posed a 'serious' military threat to Namibia and that it
could precipitate 'a terrible battle'. But they gave ground.

While Castro's troops advanced towards the Namibian border, Cubans,
Angolans, South Africans and Americans were sparring at the negotiating
table. 'Reading the Cubans is yet another art form,' Crocker noted. 'They
are prepared for both war and peace . . . We witness considerable tactical
finesse and genuinely creative moves at the table.' Many factors forced
Pretoria to accept an independent Namibia, but there would have been no New
York agreements without the Cubans' prowess on the battlefield. 'In a small
village called Cuito Cuanavale,' the South African ambassador to Cuba
remarked in January 2004, Cuban, Angolan and Namibian troops defeated the So
uth African army. The story of Southern Africa . . . changed dramatically
from that moment on. A paralysing blow from which they were never to recover
was struck to the last bastion of colonialism in Africa . . . the gates of
freedom were opened, starting with Namibia to be followed by South Africa
years later. The key component to this defeat was the internationalism of
Cuba and its people.

Any fair assessment of Castro's foreign policy must recognise its role in
changing the course of Southern African history in defiance of Washington.
As Nelson Mandela said when he visited Havana in 1991: 'We come here with a
sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba . . . What other
country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has
displayed in its relations to Africa?' Such foreign policy successes explain
why, as Coltman writes, Castro is 'still a bone . . . stuck in American
throats'. The desire for revenge, and not just for the Miami vote, explains
why the deeply immoral embargo continues.

*  Piero Gleijeses is a professor of American foreign policy in the School
of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Conflicting
Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa 1959-76 came out in 2002; he is
completing a book about Cuban and US policy towards Southern Africa during
the Carter and Reagan administrations.