On 30 December 1987, Major General Bantu Holomisa, commander of the Transkei Defence Force (TDF), a staunch African National Congress
(ANC) activist, led a bloodless coup against the Transkei government.
Holomisa, who would become Deputy Minister of Housing in President
Nelson Mandela's cabinet, suspended the civilian constitution and
refused South Africa's repeated demands for a return to civilian rule.
He insisting that a civilian government would be a puppet controlled by
Pretoria.
At the time of the coup Transkei was under the leadership of Stella Sigcau who
would also be a Cabinet Minister in Mandela’s government. The Transkei
was then ruled by a Military Council, with General Holomisa as
Chairperson. Holomisa and his accomplices later applied for amnesty to
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for what they did in 1987.
Source: SA History Online
Wednesday, December 30, 1987
Thursday, December 10, 1987
Israeli Soldiers Kill a Palestinian and Wound 15
Israeli troops shot and killed a West Bank resident and wounded at least 15 other Palestinians today as violent unrest continued for the second day and spread throughout the occupied territories. In the city of Gaza and in refugee districts throughout the Gaza Strip, where a 17-year-old youth was killed yesterday by troops, Palestinians gathered in throngs, burned tires, threw stones at vehicles and blocked roads, witnesses said. Army reports said 5 people were wounded by gunshots in the West Bank and 10 were wounded by gunfire in the Gaza Strip. In addition, a dozen people were hurt in scuffles between Palestinian students and the Israeli police outside a school north of Jerusalem, according to radio reports.
Soldiers fatally shot the 19-year-old Nablus man today when a group of Palestinian youths in the northern West Bank city surrounded a military patrol, pelting it with iron bars and rocks, an army spokesman said. ''The forces tried to disperse them with rubber bullets and tear gas,'' a spokesman said. ''But the force was endangered when its officer was wounded from an iron bar, and the soldiers had no choice but to shoot to get themselves out.''
A woman tried to stab a Border Police soldier in the nearby Balata refugee district but he managed to grab the knife from her hand just in time, an army spokesman said. In the Khan Yunis refugee district in the Gaza Strip, soldiers opened fire and wounded at least eight people after crowds threw gasoline bombs at a military patrol, an army spokesman said. At least two wounded people were brought into the Shifa hospital in Gaza, where merchants along the main street closed their shops and schools were disrupted by protesting students, an army spokesman said. Investigations by Army The army said it was investigating all of the shooting incidents. One unidentified soldier, serving in Gaza city, told Israel's Army Radio, ''We try to be restrained and not let things heat up to much, but when there's a situation that puts us in danger we have to act accordingly.''
By late afternoon, the riots and clashes that had continued throughout the day subsided, the army spokesman said. The Jabalya refugee district, where a resident was shot to death Wednesday after a teenager threw a firebomb at soldiers, remained sealed today.
In the West Bank areas north of Jerusalem, two gasoline bombs were thrown at vehicles today but did not explode. Six Israeli policemen and as many Palestinian teen-agers were injured when the police tried to control students who poured out of a high school at Kalandia, north of Jerusalem, and started stoning passing vehicles, radio reports said.
Soldiers fatally shot the 19-year-old Nablus man today when a group of Palestinian youths in the northern West Bank city surrounded a military patrol, pelting it with iron bars and rocks, an army spokesman said. ''The forces tried to disperse them with rubber bullets and tear gas,'' a spokesman said. ''But the force was endangered when its officer was wounded from an iron bar, and the soldiers had no choice but to shoot to get themselves out.''
A woman tried to stab a Border Police soldier in the nearby Balata refugee district but he managed to grab the knife from her hand just in time, an army spokesman said. In the Khan Yunis refugee district in the Gaza Strip, soldiers opened fire and wounded at least eight people after crowds threw gasoline bombs at a military patrol, an army spokesman said. At least two wounded people were brought into the Shifa hospital in Gaza, where merchants along the main street closed their shops and schools were disrupted by protesting students, an army spokesman said. Investigations by Army The army said it was investigating all of the shooting incidents. One unidentified soldier, serving in Gaza city, told Israel's Army Radio, ''We try to be restrained and not let things heat up to much, but when there's a situation that puts us in danger we have to act accordingly.''
By late afternoon, the riots and clashes that had continued throughout the day subsided, the army spokesman said. The Jabalya refugee district, where a resident was shot to death Wednesday after a teenager threw a firebomb at soldiers, remained sealed today.
In the West Bank areas north of Jerusalem, two gasoline bombs were thrown at vehicles today but did not explode. Six Israeli policemen and as many Palestinian teen-agers were injured when the police tried to control students who poured out of a high school at Kalandia, north of Jerusalem, and started stoning passing vehicles, radio reports said.
Thursday, October 15, 1987
Burkina Faso President Thomas Sankara's 'Against debt' speech 1987
Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was a Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and communist President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Viewed as a charismatic, and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as "...Africa's Che Guevara."
Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.He immediately launched "the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent." To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Men"). His foreign policies were centered around anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the IMF and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together." Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy; while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.
In order to achieve this radical transformation of society, he increasingly exerted authoritarian control over the nation, eventually banning unions and a free press, which he believed could stand in the way of his plans and be manipulated by powerful outside influences To counter his opposition in towns and workplaces around the country, he also tried corrupt officials, counter-revolutionaries (and) "lazy workers" in peoples revolutionary tribunals. Additionally, as an admirer of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR's).
His revolutionary programs for African self-reliance as a defiant alternative to the neo-liberal development strategies imposed by the West, made him an icon to many of Africa's poor, and despite his excesses, Sankara remained popular with most of his country's impoverished citizens. However his policies alienated and antagonised the vested interests of an array of groups, which included the small but powerful Burkinabé middle class, the tribal leaders whom he stripped of the long-held traditional right to forced labour and tribute payments, and the foreign financial interests in France and their ally the Ivory Coast. As a result, he was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d'état led by the French-backed Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987. A week before his execution he declared that, "While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas".
Source:
Wednesday, August 26, 1987
SYRIA: STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
In the mid-1980s, Syrian society was in a state of flux. The social, political, and economic developments of the preceding two decades precipitated profound changes and realignments in the social structure, but the implications and probable outcomes of these changes were not entirely clear. This uncertainty arises from the division of Syrian society by vertical cleavages along religious and ethnic lines, as well as by horizontal cleavages along socioeconomic and class lines. Minority groups tend to segregate themselves in their own neighborhoods and villages. Although within a minority group there is a high degree of integration and homogeneity, the group as a whole is often ascribed a certain social status. Traditionally, Syrian society has been divided between landlords and tenants, between urban dwellers and rural peasants, and between a Sunni elite and minority groups.
Until the revolutions of the mid-1960s, a syndicate of several hundred Sunni Muslim extended families living in Damascus and Aleppo had dominated life in Syria. Some of these families were of the Sharifan nobility, which claims genealogical descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Most had accumulated great wealth and wielded virtual feudal power as landlords possessing vast agricultural and real-estate holdings. Others made fortunes in industry and trade in the late ninteenth century. Another component of the ruling class was the ulama (sing, alim). This group consisted of religious scholars, Islamic judges (qadis), interpreters of law (muftis), and other persons concerned with the exposition of Sunni Islam. Prosperous Sunni bazaar merchants allied with the great families occupied the next level in the social heirarchy.
The Syrian elite was at the forefront of anticolonial struggle against the Ottoman Empire in World War I and later against the French Mandatory regime. At independence in 1946, Syria's first government was dominated by the old ruling class. However, the elite had never been a monolithic entity, and the new parliament was splintered by factionalism, feuding, and generational differences. These divisions provoked a military coup d'état in 1949 that ushered in a new era in Syrian society.
The armed services and the Baath Party were the mechanisms for the rise of a new ruling elite. Although military service traditionally had been disdained by the old Sunni elite, a military career was often the only avenue of upward mobility open to rural minority group members who could not afford an education. Such men enlisted in disproportinate numbers and came to dominate the officer corps and the enlisted ranks of Syria's armed forces. Likewise, disenfranchised elements of society joined the Baath Party. These dual trends culminated in the 1963 Baath Socialist Revolution and the 1970 takeover by the military of the Baath Party.
The land reform legislation of 1963 and the nationalization of larger financial, commercial, and industrial establishments virtually eliminated the economic and political power base of the old elite. At the same time, the new elite, comprised of the upper echelon of military and civilian leaders, consolidated its position by cultivating the support of peasants and the proletariat, who benefited from the new economic order. The regime's socialism eroded the position of the bazaar merchants while its secularism removed power from the ulama.
After coming to power in 1970, President Hafiz al Assad reversed or relaxed the more strident socialist economic measures instituted in 1963. His expansion of the role of the private sector led to the emergence of a relatively small, but highly visible new class of entrepreneurs and businessmen who made fortunes in real estate, importing, and construction. This class, nicknamed in Syria "the velvet generation," includes higher- ranking government bureaucrats and their relatives who have capitalized on their official positions to monopolize lucrative government contracts. It also has assimilated many members of the old Sunni elite, who have been coopted by the Assad regime and have accommodated themselves to the new elite. To some extent, the old and new ruling classes have merged through business partnerships and marriages that combine the money and prestige of the old elite member and the power and prestige of the new elite member. Despite a well publicized anti-corruption campaign, patronage and favoritism have remained important forces in Syrian society.
Under Assad, rural peasants have reaped significant gains in their standard of living, primarily through government transfer payments and grants of land redistributed from the original upper-class owners. However, land reform has not been entirely successful in transforming the social structure of the countryside. In many cases, farmers who had previously depended upon their urban landlords to give credit for financing their crops until harvest and to deal with the government have drifted back into similar relationships with urban interests. The landlord's role as an influential advocate and local leader has not been filled by elected Baath Party representatives. In other cases, rich proprietors have begun to regain control over agricultural land and reconstitute large estates.
Since the 1963 Baath Revolution, the approximate middle of Syrian society has remained remarkably stable, both as a percentage of the workforce and in terms of the standard of living and social mobility of its members. Because Syria has not yet developed a large industrial sector, it lacks a true proletariat of wage-earning factory workers. The number of persons employed by private and public sector industry in 1980 was 207,000, or 12 percent of the working population, according to statistics compiled by the Syrian General Federation of Trade Unions. This approximates the size of Syria's "working class."
Syria compensates for its lack of a large proletarian class of industrial factory workers by a large and flourishing group of artisans and handicrafters who produce basic commodities such as soap, textiles, glassware, and shoes in small cottage industries. This group is a main component of Syria's traditional middle class, which also encompasses small proprietors, tradesmen, and white-collar employees, and has remained at about 30 percent of the population.
Since the 1963 revolution, a new and upwardly mobile class of teachers, scientists, lawyers, technocrats, civil servants, doctors, and other professionals has slowly emerged. This new upper-middle class consists of men and women who rose from the old lower or middle classes by virtue of technical or secular higher education.
Even before the revolution of 1963, secular education had become a criterion of status among many ordinary Syrians, especially as higher education ensured a virtually automatic entry into admired and well-paying occupations. The importance of education in this context will probably grow.
Values taught in the schools and emphasized in the media reflect those of the group controlling the government and have gained some currency. Nevertheless, the traditional conservatism of the peasants as well as the economic problems of daily survival that have not been alleviated by changes in government policy militate against any sudden change in the values or way of life of the masses.
As in other Middle Eastern countries, Syrian society has for millennia been divided into three discrete systems of organization based on ecological factors; these are the town, the village, and the tribe. Although closely interrelated, each fosters a distinct and independent variation of Arab culture. The cities of the Middle East are among the most ancient in the world; urban life has been integral to the society of the region throughout recorded history. Therefore, the townsman and his role are well known to all segments of the population. The tribesman, or beduin, although suffering irreversible changes since the mid- twentieth century, has also been a widely known and admired figure throughout history. The peasant farmer, or fellah (pl., fellahin), although less admired than the townsman or the tribesman, also occupies a position of recognized value.
The members of each of the three structural segments of society look on the others as socially distinct. This social distance is symbolized by easily recognized differences in clothing, food, home furnishings, accent, and custom; intermarriage between village, town, and tribal families is usually considered irregular.
Traditionally, the cities have been an expression--at the highest level of sophistication and refinement--of the same Arab culture that animated the villages. As Western influence grew, however, during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, the social distance between the city and village increased. Western customs, ideas, techniques, and languages were adopted first in the cities, especially by Christians, while the villages remained ignorant of them. The introduction and adoption of elements of a radically alien culture opened a gap between the city and the village that has not narrowed with time. Only in recent years have modern transportation and mass communication begun to bring the countryside once again into the same cultural orbit as the cities.
Although the town, village, and tribe are socially distinct, they depend on each other for services and products and so are related by overall functional ties. The town supplies manufactured, specialty, and luxury products; administrative and governmental services; education and higher learning; sophisticated culture; law and justice; and financing. The village supplies agricultural products; and the tribe provides protection and navigation for caravans, travelers, and traders in the desert. As more and more villagers become educated and move to the cities, and as the beduin surrender their sole mastery of the desert to motor vehicles and the police power of the modern state and begin to adopt a sedentary life, the traditional distinctions will continue to blur.
Towns
Villages
Tribes
Thomas Collelo, ed. Syria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987.
Source: U.S. Library of Congress
Until the revolutions of the mid-1960s, a syndicate of several hundred Sunni Muslim extended families living in Damascus and Aleppo had dominated life in Syria. Some of these families were of the Sharifan nobility, which claims genealogical descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Most had accumulated great wealth and wielded virtual feudal power as landlords possessing vast agricultural and real-estate holdings. Others made fortunes in industry and trade in the late ninteenth century. Another component of the ruling class was the ulama (sing, alim). This group consisted of religious scholars, Islamic judges (qadis), interpreters of law (muftis), and other persons concerned with the exposition of Sunni Islam. Prosperous Sunni bazaar merchants allied with the great families occupied the next level in the social heirarchy.
The Syrian elite was at the forefront of anticolonial struggle against the Ottoman Empire in World War I and later against the French Mandatory regime. At independence in 1946, Syria's first government was dominated by the old ruling class. However, the elite had never been a monolithic entity, and the new parliament was splintered by factionalism, feuding, and generational differences. These divisions provoked a military coup d'état in 1949 that ushered in a new era in Syrian society.
The armed services and the Baath Party were the mechanisms for the rise of a new ruling elite. Although military service traditionally had been disdained by the old Sunni elite, a military career was often the only avenue of upward mobility open to rural minority group members who could not afford an education. Such men enlisted in disproportinate numbers and came to dominate the officer corps and the enlisted ranks of Syria's armed forces. Likewise, disenfranchised elements of society joined the Baath Party. These dual trends culminated in the 1963 Baath Socialist Revolution and the 1970 takeover by the military of the Baath Party.
The land reform legislation of 1963 and the nationalization of larger financial, commercial, and industrial establishments virtually eliminated the economic and political power base of the old elite. At the same time, the new elite, comprised of the upper echelon of military and civilian leaders, consolidated its position by cultivating the support of peasants and the proletariat, who benefited from the new economic order. The regime's socialism eroded the position of the bazaar merchants while its secularism removed power from the ulama.
After coming to power in 1970, President Hafiz al Assad reversed or relaxed the more strident socialist economic measures instituted in 1963. His expansion of the role of the private sector led to the emergence of a relatively small, but highly visible new class of entrepreneurs and businessmen who made fortunes in real estate, importing, and construction. This class, nicknamed in Syria "the velvet generation," includes higher- ranking government bureaucrats and their relatives who have capitalized on their official positions to monopolize lucrative government contracts. It also has assimilated many members of the old Sunni elite, who have been coopted by the Assad regime and have accommodated themselves to the new elite. To some extent, the old and new ruling classes have merged through business partnerships and marriages that combine the money and prestige of the old elite member and the power and prestige of the new elite member. Despite a well publicized anti-corruption campaign, patronage and favoritism have remained important forces in Syrian society.
Under Assad, rural peasants have reaped significant gains in their standard of living, primarily through government transfer payments and grants of land redistributed from the original upper-class owners. However, land reform has not been entirely successful in transforming the social structure of the countryside. In many cases, farmers who had previously depended upon their urban landlords to give credit for financing their crops until harvest and to deal with the government have drifted back into similar relationships with urban interests. The landlord's role as an influential advocate and local leader has not been filled by elected Baath Party representatives. In other cases, rich proprietors have begun to regain control over agricultural land and reconstitute large estates.
Since the 1963 Baath Revolution, the approximate middle of Syrian society has remained remarkably stable, both as a percentage of the workforce and in terms of the standard of living and social mobility of its members. Because Syria has not yet developed a large industrial sector, it lacks a true proletariat of wage-earning factory workers. The number of persons employed by private and public sector industry in 1980 was 207,000, or 12 percent of the working population, according to statistics compiled by the Syrian General Federation of Trade Unions. This approximates the size of Syria's "working class."
Syria compensates for its lack of a large proletarian class of industrial factory workers by a large and flourishing group of artisans and handicrafters who produce basic commodities such as soap, textiles, glassware, and shoes in small cottage industries. This group is a main component of Syria's traditional middle class, which also encompasses small proprietors, tradesmen, and white-collar employees, and has remained at about 30 percent of the population.
Since the 1963 revolution, a new and upwardly mobile class of teachers, scientists, lawyers, technocrats, civil servants, doctors, and other professionals has slowly emerged. This new upper-middle class consists of men and women who rose from the old lower or middle classes by virtue of technical or secular higher education.
Even before the revolution of 1963, secular education had become a criterion of status among many ordinary Syrians, especially as higher education ensured a virtually automatic entry into admired and well-paying occupations. The importance of education in this context will probably grow.
Values taught in the schools and emphasized in the media reflect those of the group controlling the government and have gained some currency. Nevertheless, the traditional conservatism of the peasants as well as the economic problems of daily survival that have not been alleviated by changes in government policy militate against any sudden change in the values or way of life of the masses.
As in other Middle Eastern countries, Syrian society has for millennia been divided into three discrete systems of organization based on ecological factors; these are the town, the village, and the tribe. Although closely interrelated, each fosters a distinct and independent variation of Arab culture. The cities of the Middle East are among the most ancient in the world; urban life has been integral to the society of the region throughout recorded history. Therefore, the townsman and his role are well known to all segments of the population. The tribesman, or beduin, although suffering irreversible changes since the mid- twentieth century, has also been a widely known and admired figure throughout history. The peasant farmer, or fellah (pl., fellahin), although less admired than the townsman or the tribesman, also occupies a position of recognized value.
The members of each of the three structural segments of society look on the others as socially distinct. This social distance is symbolized by easily recognized differences in clothing, food, home furnishings, accent, and custom; intermarriage between village, town, and tribal families is usually considered irregular.
Traditionally, the cities have been an expression--at the highest level of sophistication and refinement--of the same Arab culture that animated the villages. As Western influence grew, however, during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, the social distance between the city and village increased. Western customs, ideas, techniques, and languages were adopted first in the cities, especially by Christians, while the villages remained ignorant of them. The introduction and adoption of elements of a radically alien culture opened a gap between the city and the village that has not narrowed with time. Only in recent years have modern transportation and mass communication begun to bring the countryside once again into the same cultural orbit as the cities.
Although the town, village, and tribe are socially distinct, they depend on each other for services and products and so are related by overall functional ties. The town supplies manufactured, specialty, and luxury products; administrative and governmental services; education and higher learning; sophisticated culture; law and justice; and financing. The village supplies agricultural products; and the tribe provides protection and navigation for caravans, travelers, and traders in the desert. As more and more villagers become educated and move to the cities, and as the beduin surrender their sole mastery of the desert to motor vehicles and the police power of the modern state and begin to adopt a sedentary life, the traditional distinctions will continue to blur.
Towns
Villages
Tribes
Thomas Collelo, ed. Syria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987.
Source: U.S. Library of Congress
Friday, June 12, 1987
Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987
President Reagan's remarks on East-West relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987.
For more information on the ongoing works of President Reagan's Foundation, visit us at http://www.reaganfoundation.org
Source: Regan Foundation
For more information on the ongoing works of President Reagan's Foundation, visit us at http://www.reaganfoundation.org
Source: Regan Foundation
Thursday, February 12, 1987
Reagan’s Dangerous Game in Nicaragua
By supporting the contras, the president is undermining democracy in Central America
Natividad Vargas shifted his weight from one foot to the other, awkwardly folding and refolding his arms as he answered questions from the visiting journalists. The Honduran peasant sounded confused and a little frightened. It is the way refugees always sound when war sweeps over the countryside and drives them from their homes. He did not understand, he said, why two foreign armies were fighting in his native land — Nicaragua’s Sandinista army and the American-backed contras.
“We campesinos don’t understand politics,” Vargas said. “I don’t know why they’re fighting. The contras say they are fighting communism. But I don’t understand that.”
Eight days earlier, Vargas and his family, along with scores of others, had abandoned their farm a few miles from the Nicaraguan border after the Sandinista army had attacked contra strongholds there. In all, at least 15,000 Hondurans, perhaps many more, have been displaced by the war and forced to find squatter homes in towns away from the fighting. Neither the Honduran government nor the United States has provided them with any help.
Another peasant, a gaunt old man with white stubble on his dark face, gave a vivid account of the bomb, mine and mortar explosions he had heard as the opposing forces fought across his fields. “I was really frightened,” he said. “I don’t want to go back as long as there is firing.”
“The Sandinistas only come in because the contras are here,” said Eldermarina Gonzales, a displaced mother with five small children. “If the contras were gone, the Sandinistas would not come.”
The refugees we talked with were living in Nueva Esperanza, a hillside barrio outside of Danli, a quiet little farm town about an hour’s drive from Tegucigalpa and only fifteen miles from the border and the fighting. The contras operate a small hospital in Danli to treat their sick and wounded.
The more the peasants talked about the contras, the angrier they became. They did not like having to live with a foreign army in their midst — men who are well armed and well financed by the United States. “Look around you — this is a very poor country,” Jose Amaya, a merchant, said. “If we had money, we would all go to the United States. I think the contras should get out. They have no business being here. These countries are sisters. We should find a way to exist in peace.”
“I’m going to tell the truth, even if I get in trouble,” Natividad Vargas declared. “The truth is the contras treat us very badly. Imagine. You’re going to town and the contras are guarding the road and they ask us for papers. What right does a foreigner have to ask us for papers in our own country? They accuse us of helping the Sandinistas. They killed one of my neighbors and they killed his son. We don’t know why. It’s not our land anymore. They do whatever they want.”
As we were touring the neighborhood, we could hear the distant clatter of helicopters. Children pointed knowingly to the north at a few small, dark specks that were passing above a far mountain ridge and moving down the valley. Soon the specks became a swarm as more than a dozen American helicopters, Cobras and Chinooks, crossed overhead and disappeared to the south. They were ferrying Honduran soldiers to the war.
“The people have become so used to it,” a woman said. “They don’t even get scared anymore.”
Later, we drove a few miles south from Danli to the site where the helicopters were landing. It was a small airstrip built by the United States in the valley of Jamastran. Honduran soldiers — some serious, some loose and joking — were disembarking in the swirls of dust and trotting off down the country lanes. They were pulling heavy mortars behind them as they fanned out to set up defensive positions on the surrounding farms. An American army lieutenant named Lappas stepped forward from a circle of Honduran officers and told us to get lost. He pretended to be puzzled by our questions.
“What war?” he asked blandly. “I didn’t know we were at war. What makes you think there’s a war here?”
The Reagan administration is playing a dangerous game in Honduras: intentionally flirting with war. While the White House continues to claim that its military buildup here is strictly for training exercises, the Sandinistas and most Hondurans believe that the administration is trying to push both sides toward war in order to justify American military intervention in Nicaragua.
As a result of the occasional border clashes with Honduran troops, the Sandinistas might be drawn into a larger war against Honduras or, alternatively, the Honduran military might be shamed into launching a full-scale attack against Nicaragua. In either event, the Reagan administration could claim that a valued ally was under assault and that it must provide support by bombing Managua or even landing American troops inside Nicaragua. Fortunately, neither Honduras nor Nicaragua intends to play along. “What the United States fears,” Miguel D’Escoto, Nicaragua’s foreign minister, told me in Managua, “is not that we will attack Honduras. What they fear is that we won’t. They would like nothing better than for us to do it. We would be serving them on a silver platter the pretext they are looking for to make a direct intervention. They are concerned, they are angry that we don’t fall into the trap.”
In Tegucigalpa, Honduran officials put the matter more obliquely, but they also do not intend to be drawn into a war. Even while Sandinista soldiers were fighting inside Honduran territory, and Honduras was responding with troop deployments and bombing, Honduran diplomat Roberto Suazo Tome, an adviser to the minister of foreign affairs, was emphasizing the peaceful relationship between the two nations. “The Sandinistas have penetrated our borders from time to time, and there has even been sporadic fighting between our troops and theirs,” Suazo said, “but the level of political and diplomatic relations are good. We’ve had many meetings with high-level Sandinista officials. Our economic minister has traveled three times to Nicaragua to increase trade between the countries. Honduran businessmen have traveled to Nicaragua, and we are planning a visit to Honduras by Nicaraguan industrialists. So we have many different forms of economic cooperation. Nicaragua is a sister country. We do not use aggressive rhetoric toward them. We can exist with them, and we have mutual respect between our two systems.”
In any case, the Hondurans do not believe America can defeat the Sandinistas, through either military conflict or political agitation. “The contras are already defeated,” Suazo said. “It’s only a question of time.”
Suazo has proposed a solution to the problem along his border: the United States should grant asylum to the 20,000 contras and get them out of Honduras. “Our government has declared on many occasions that the presence of the contras in our territory is neither desired nor authorized nor tolerated,” he insisted. “But it is beyond our capacity to impede their presence.”
The civil government is not in control of events here. The generals are. The Honduran constitution forbids the stationing of foreign military forces without congressional approval, but the Honduran congress was not consulted. It was the Honduran military that provided sanctuary for the contra army and allowed the deployment of American troops. In return, the generals received generous military aid from the United States.
“The contras are like an unwanted guest,” Honduran sociologist and journalist Victor Meza explained. “But they are tolerated by the military because they bring money, and it means money to the military. The contras are their blackmail — their card to blackmail Washington for more aid. It’s also their card with which they can negotiate with the Sandinistas, behind the backs of thecontras. And the contras are good for business. They have made people rich here, civilians and military personnel.”
In Managua, Carlos Chamorro, editor of the Sandinista newspaper La Barricada, described the game being played by the Honduran generals. “They have to sell themselves to the U.S. to get the aid,” Chamorro said, “so they participate in actions against our army on the border, but they have been restrained. Why? Because they do not want to fall into a total death trap with Nicaragua.”
In the Honduran capital, Victor Meza offered a similar analysis. “The Honduran military,” he said, “knows that war should be avoided. Even if Honduras could win, they know that the real winner would be the United States and the contras, not Honduras. They know that if they were to win, this war, all the U.S. aid currently going to Honduras would then go to Nicaragua. So they know if they win, they lose. For that reason, they have done everything to avoid going to war.”
But if either the Honduran generals or the Sandinista leaders should miscalculate, then the Reagan administration may get what it wants — a regional war in Central America. American planes and troops could then be dispatched to fight another war in the name of freedom.
In Tegucigalpa, a city ringed by mountains, every window seems to have a spectacular view. Unlike Managua, the Honduran capital has a false glow of prosperity — downtown streets are clogged with traffic, store windows are filled with American toys and appliances. Militarization can be good for business without doing anything to improve a country’s basic economy; there was a similar bustle of commerce in Saigon at one time.
Honduras has been a passive nation for many decades, resigned to the dominance of military oligarchs and accustomed to blatant manipulation by American ambassadors. The country served as the staging area for the CIA’s overthrow of Guatemala’s elected government in 1954; now it has allowed itself to become the support base for America’s proxy war against Nicaragua. “The United States has a democracy inside,” said Efrain Diaz, a Christian Democrat in the national assembly, “but the U.S. acts as an empire in its relations with countries such as Honduras. We have let the United States do what it wants. We have been so easy.”
Popular dissent, nevertheless, is slowly finding its voice. Antiwar petitions proliferate as more and more organizations demand that the government stop America’s military adventure here. A blue and white peace poster proclaims, OUR COUNTRY — NOT FOR SALE, NOT FOR HIRE, NOT FOR LOAN … GRINGO TROOPS OUT … CONTRAS OUT.
“The worst problem this country has is that eighty percent of its people live in poverty,” Diaz explained. “Our main problem is development. It is not this problem with Nicaragua. But as long as we have this permanent conflict, I don’t think there is any way in which Honduras can really grow, no way Honduras can really develop. To me, that’s one of the consequences. The other is that we’re going to become a very polarized society. You cannot destabilize Nicaragua without destabilizing Honduras and the other countries in Central America.”
America’s Cold War-inspired foreign policy is creating some of the same problems in Central America that it produced twenty years ago in Indochina. While the Reagan administration claims to be defending the region’s democracies against Soviet domination, its military presence is actually undermining them. Anxious voices from the region plead futilely that East-West conflict is not the relevant issue. Poverty is the issue. So is the right of self-determination.
Miguel D’Escoto, Nicaragua’s foreign minister, has offered a powerful metaphor to explain why the American government cannot tolerate the revolutionary regime in his country. “We do not accept what the U.S. would like to impose — the status of a backyard nation,” he said. “The U.S. is afraid because it realizes that if Nicaragua is allowed to get away with this, then others will demand the same. The situation is like what you once had here in Nicaragua with the landowners. They related to peons in a very special way. The peon never entered the house. He came up to the front steps, he never sat down, he stood up. He took off his hat and he always addressed the señor as usted, the formal way of saying ‘you.’ Imagine the landowner’s reaction if one day, out of the blue, this peon walks right into the house, goes right into the living room and sits in the rocking chair. He folds his legs and calls the señor by the informal tú. He begins to relate as an equal. That’s what Nicaragua has done, too.”
Many citizens of Honduras would love to do the same someday.
America should realize that it has nothing to lose by abandoning its patronizing policies toward Central America’s small and struggling nations. Only then will the region be ensured of democractic and economic growth. As long as our government bullies, bribes and manipulates these countries, as it is now doing in Honduras, it can only expect that they will remain backward, cynical and utterly dependent.
Unfortunately, a new American perspective on Central America will have to wait until there is a new president in Washington. Even if Congress cuts off financing for the contras this year, the White House will not lose its hunger for conflict. The Sandinistas will continue to offer a mutual-security agreement for the region, but no one really expects Ronald Reagan to negotiate a peaceful settlement. The most we can hope for is to get through the last two years of this administration without stumbling — or being tricked — into a larger war.
Reagan’s final days will be a difficult period for all the players in Central America. The Sandinistas know that they are capable of defeating the contras in battle, even wiping them out, but they also know that a clear-cut victory would increase the risk of direct American intervention. The Reagan administration, mired in the contra-gate scandal, knows that it has little time left to defeat the Sandinistas. Will it simply walk away from a lost cause? Or will it launch a desperate strike against the Nicaraguan government? The recent announcement by the United States that it would be sending 3000 troops and 4500 national guardsmen from eight states and Puerto Rico to Honduras to participate in joint military exercises indicates that Reagan intends to raise the stakes in this dangerous game.
As for the contras, they may be pushed by the White House to go for quick victories inside Nicaragua this year in order to maintain political support in Congress. Given the Sandinistas’ superior forces, that could be a suicide mission. “I wouldn’t like to be with the contras right now,” said Victor Meza, “because I think everyone is trying to negotiate behind their backs. Possibly what will happen to them is that they’ll be forced into Nicaragua and they will be defeated by the Sandinistas.”
And if the United States finally abandons the struggle, as it did in Vietnam, a lot of Ronald Reagan’s “Freedom fighters” are going to be left behind when the last American helicopter departs.
Honduras, meanwhile, faces its own problems. Politicians here are beginning to wonder what will happen if Congress cuts off aid to the contras and Reagan abandons them. What will become of the occupying army that now virtually governs the southern flank of this country? Who will be able to control the contras?
“If the U.S. cuts off aid,” Roberto Suazo said, “the contras will need to eat. They’ll still need medicine. That could create very serious problems for Honduras…. What I mean to say is that a person with a gun will get what he needs. As we say in Central America, we need to feed our people today, not tomorrow. And the contras will do the same.”
Source: Rolling Stone
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