Disaster drill illustrates new approach to Cuba
In another sign of the Obama administration's approach to Cuba, the U.S.
military gave more information about its exercise with Cuban troops.
By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- About 150 U.S. and Cuban troops worked
side by side last week, testing collaboration across a minefield that
has long divided the Cold War adversaries.
A Cuban Army helicopter flew over this Navy base and dropped 500 gallons
of saltwater on burning plywood to extinguish a simulated raging
wildfire. American sailors crossed into Cuban-controlled turf to set up
a mock triage center run by both nations' militaries, should catastrophe
strike.
Nearly anywhere else, the event would have been a run-of-the-mill
training exercise. And although U.S. forces at this remote base have
engaged in the annual rite with the Cuban Frontier Brigade for more than
a decade, the Bush administration forbade the disclosure of information.
The Southern Command usually answered questions about the time, date or
operation scenarios with ``no comment.''
This time, the U.S. military struck a different tone. It provided
details but refused to let journalists already on the base for war-court
hearings observe the ''mass casualty exercise.'' Sailors photographed
the event but were forbidden to release the images, said U.S. Navy base
spokesman Terence R. Peck.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Jack Sheehan called the calibrated
exposure a likely ''trial balloon'' by an Obama administration
experimenting with expanded relations with Havana.
The White House has moved on a number of initiatives involving Cuba this
year, including increasing the frequency with which Cubans could visit
the island and voting for a process that could return Cuba to the
Organization of American States after almost 50 years. And this summer,
the administration resumed U.S.-Cuban diplomatic talks on migration
issues, which the Bush administration abandoned seven years ago.
`INCREMENTAL'
Sheehan, a 1994-97 commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command, and advocate
of deeper U.S.-Cuban military relations, told The Miami Herald he
instituted the mass-casualty drill as part of an outreach to a military
that, he said, would have a critical, trusted role in any future
transition in Cuban society.
He said the Obama administration was now likely engaging in ''an
incremental process'' of exposing and potentially exploiting the
military relationship at Guantánamo. ''We've never advertised it in the
sense of the term because it was very controversial,'' he said.
Pentagon policymakers refused to comment on the new approach. Navy
spokesmen said only that the U.S. Navy base ``has fostered a positive
relationship with the Cuban Frontier Brigade . . . as one outcome of our
shared responsibility for this region of Cuba.''
Sheehan said all sorts of military engagement began in the mid-'90s when
both sides agreed to migration accords to stem the tide of rafters
trying to cross the Florida Straits for Miami, a time he said, ``when
hard-liners on both sides of the Straits were looking for reasons not to
advance a dialogue.''
Discussions then, he said, included minefield removal and scenarios for
what would happen if a U.S. fighter jet strayed into Cuban territory.
`BENIGN'
The talks increased when the Bush White House decided to open the
war-on-terror prison camps at Guantánamo, said retired Navy Capt. Bob
Buehn, a former base commander.
The Americans informed their Cuban military counterparts ahead of the
Jan. 11, 2002, arrival of alleged enemies in orange jumpsuits, and the
Cuban government permitted large U.S. military aircraft carrying al
Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan to fly over portions of Cuba rather than
perform risky corkscrew landings.
But these drills and exchanges were mostly kept secret and mentioned
cryptically by base commanders long afterward to illustrate what they
cast as a ''benign relationship'' along a 17.4-mile fence line where
cameras, motion detectors and stadium lighting now augment a leaner U.S.
Marine force than those portrayed in the Hollywood hit, A Few Good Men.
CIRCUITOUS ROUTE
Another example: Last month, the U.S. Navy provided a special flight to
an American archbishop, Timothy Broglio, from the base at Guantánamo to
Grand Cayman -- in time to catch a connection to Havana.
From there he flew on to Santiago, in time to tell worshipers at a Mass
the next day, across the minefield, that U.S. troops would welcome ties
with the Cuban people.
''Many of the servicemen in the Guantánamo base wanted to make this trip
with me,'' he told Cuban Catholics in a homily reportedly delivered in
flawless Spanish by Broglio, a former Vatican delegate to the Dominican
Republic. ``Let us pray to God that someday we may share a service
together, without separations.''
Broglio is head of the Vatican's diocese that ministers to Catholics and
their families in the U.S. military.
He told The Herald that the U.S. Navy made his trip easier, but it was
initiated by the Bishop of Guantánamo, in the Castros' Cuba, who had
been told the American archbishop would visit the 45-square-mile Navy
base that Fidel Castro ordered evacuated more than 40 years ago.
Cuba declined a proposal by the Guantánamo Archdiocese to let Broglio
cross the minefields, through a road that connects Cuba to the Navy base.
Disaster drill illustrates new approach to Cuba - Front Page -
MiamiHerald.com (20 July 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/front-page/story/1148814.html
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