{"id":11242,"date":"2016-01-29T23:15:46","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T05:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=11242"},"modified":"2016-01-29T23:15:46","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T05:15:46","slug":"cold-war-files-the-cuban-army-abroad-castros-foreign-cold-warriors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/29\/cold-war-files-the-cuban-army-abroad-castros-foreign-cold-warriors\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold War Files: The Cuban Army Abroad; Castro’s Foreign Cold Warriors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cuba-in-Angola\"<\/h3>\n

\u201cThroughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Castro was only too eager to export revolution to the Third World. Often this support even came in the form of\u00a0combat\u00a0troops\u00a0to lend a hand to various Marxist\u00a0uprisings.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

AMERICA WAS STILL REELING <\/strong>from its humiliation\u00a0in\u00a0Vietnam in\u00a0<\/strong>1976 when hawks within the administration of President Gerald Ford<\/a>\u00a0were pushing for the United States to\u00a0enter yet another war \u2014 this one much closer to home.<\/p>\n

According to documents recently released by the National Security Archive<\/a> and reportedin The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger<\/a> urged the 38th<\/sup> president to order\u00a0a massive bombing campaign against Cuba. The air strikes were to be followed by an assault on the island nation\u00a0using American ground forces including Marines stationed at Guantanamo Bay<\/a>. The proposed hostilities came amid\u00a0Havana\u2019s brazen\u00a0deployment of thousands of combat troops to the ongoing civil war in Angola<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In late 1975, as\u00a0many as 5,000 Cuban army personnel had been airlifted\u00a0to the African hotspot to support the leftist People\u2019s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)<\/a>\u00a0as it vied for control of the war torn region \u2014 the U.S. and South Africa had been backing the opposition\u00a0UNITA<\/a>\u00a0faction and the right wing National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA)<\/a> for years.<\/p>\n

Kissinger was outraged by Havana\u2019s sudden involvement in the war. He blasted Fidel Castro<\/a> for squandering the progress gained through years of secret bi-lateral negotiations aimed improving relations between the U.S. and Cuba.\u00a0In fact, documents reveal that the American foreign secretary was \u201capoplectic\u201d over the communist deployment. He called Castro a \u201cpipsqueak\u201d and demanded that Ford use air power to \u201cclobber\u201d the country\u2019s\u00a0military infrastructure.[1<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Although the president, facing an election in November, ultimately balked at the prospect of war with Cuba, the entire episode highlights Washington\u2019s disquiet over\u00a0Havana\u2019s often-forgotten foreign military adventures.<\/p>\n

Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Castro was only too eager to export revolution to the Third World. Often this support even came in the form of\u00a0combat\u00a0troops\u00a0to lend a hand to various Marxist\u00a0uprisings. Here are some examples of Cuba’s foreign wars.<\/p>\n

\"Che\"<\/p>\n

The Congo<\/h2>\n

While Havana\u00a0had ordered\u00a0military advisors into Africa as early as 1961, communist\u00a0Cuba\u2019s first sizeable international military foray was its involvement in the Congo Crisis<\/a>. In 1965, Castro dispatched his favourite lieutenant,Che Guevara<\/a>, with a team of a dozen crack revolutionaries to the war torn former Belgian colony. The unit\u2019s mission was to train and lead a grassroots insurgency against the western-backed strongmanMobutu Sese Seko<\/a>. Within months, the guerrilla movement was in a shambles and Che, his body ravaged by tropical diseases, abandoned the campaign at returned to Cuba in despair. It was an inauspicious start to more than 20 years of foreign\u00a0military intervention.<\/p>\n

Bolivia<\/h2>\n

Two years later, Guevara and a handful of Cuban revolutionaries took part in yet another off-shore insurgency, this time against the Washington-backed Bolivian government of President Ren\u00e9 Barrientos<\/a>. In 1967, a force of 17 commandos, along with several dozen local revolutionaries ran a six-month hit-and-run campaign against federal troops in the country\u2019s rugged interior<\/a>. By October, national army units under the direction of the CIA (and with the help of the notorious Nazi war criminal\u00a0Klaus Barbie<\/a>), surrounded the guerrilla encampment and captured Guevara in a brief firefight. The famous revolutionary was interrogated and then promptly executed<\/a>. It was the end of Che, but not of Cuba\u2019s foreign wars.<\/p>\n

\"Castro-in-Vietnam\"<\/p>\n

Vietnam<\/h2>\n

According to a 2013 story on MilitaryHistoryNow.com<\/a>, Cuba never has formally confirmed its participation in the Vietnam conflict. Yet despite the\u00a0denials, several thousand military engineers are believed to have been sent to Southeast Asia to aid the Hanoi war effort. In addition, advisors from Havana are suspected to have taken part in the interrogation of at least 19 captured U.S. fliers<\/a>. In fact, their supposedly brutal methods have since been dubbed \u201cthe Cuban Program\u201d. Castro himself visited Quang Tri province in South Vietnam shortly after it fell to the communists in 1972.<\/p>\n

\"Castro<\/p>\n

The Middle East<\/h2>\n

Cuba also joined the\u00a0multinational effort to aid Syria and Egypt in their 1973 surprise invasion of Israel<\/a>. Havana dispatched as many as 4,000 combat troops along with tank commanders and helicopter crews to the region to take part in the three-week conflict. [2<\/a>] Cuban personnel are believed to have even participated in combat operations against the Israeli army while stationed in the Middle East. Other contributors to the war included Iraq, Morocco, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even North Korea.<\/p>\n

Somalia vs. Ethiopia<\/h2>\n

Four years later, Cuban troops were in east Africa, this time to take part in one of the most bizarre dust-ups of the Cold War. Following the outbreak of hostilities between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977<\/a> over the disputed Ogaden region<\/a>, Havana dispatched 15,000 troops, along with armoured vehicles, helicopters and even artillery to shore up Addis Ababa\u2019s Derg regime<\/a>. Ethiopia\u2019s ruling party, a one-time U.S. ally, had just\u00a0turned its back on Washington and announced it had\u00a0zealously embraced Marxism. Meanwhile, the pro-Moscow government of Mohamed Siad Barre in Mogadishu<\/a>\u00a0renounced communism, severed its ties with the Soviets and became an ally\u00a0of the United States. As the fighting raged between these ideologically flexible foes, Cuban troops suddenly found themselves in the thick of the action repelling a Somali offensives and mounting full-scale combat operations of their own. Castro\u2019s forces were soon joined by Soviet combat advisors and even military personnel from East Germany. The fighting ended when Somali troops withdrew from Ogaden in 1978.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

The Battle of Cuito Cuanvale<\/h2>\n

More than a decade after sending its\u00a0first combat troops to Angola, Cuba returned to southwest Africa with a vengeance. The crisis, known as the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale<\/a>, began in the summer of 1987 with an assault\u00a0by Soviet-equipped national army troops against anti-communist UNITA forces in the country\u2019s south. Soon, South African forces invaded to\u00a0support the beleaguered U.S.-backed faction and the Angolan offensive stalled. Acting independently from Moscow, Havana\u00a0reinforced its African ally\u00a0with a surge of 15,000 combat troops, tanks, artillery and even\u00a0MiG-23 fighter-bombers<\/a>. Over the next six months, Cuban troop levels in Angola topped 55,000 [3<\/a>]. The fighting, which featured some of the most intense\u00a0conventional\u00a0combat seen on the continent since the Second World War North African campaign, soon spread to neighbouring Namibia. Cuban troops and warplanes hammered South African forces prompting Pretoria to call up more than 140,000 reservists [4<\/a>]. By the spring of 1988, both sides had suffered heavy casualties and were ready for peace talks. Negotiations continued throughout the summer and a peace treaty was signed in September of 1988. Within two years, the Cold War was over and Cuba\u2019s foreign policy shifted away from military intervention. All told, as many as 5,000 Cuban troops died in Angola during the 1970s and 80s. [5<\/a>]<\/p>\n

(Originally published on MilitaryHistoryNow.com on Oct. 8, 2014)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Military History Now<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThroughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Castro was only too eager to export revolution to the Third World. Often this support even came in the form of\u00a0combat\u00a0troops\u00a0to lend a hand to various Marxist\u00a0uprisings.\u201d   AMERICA WAS STILL REELING from its humiliation\u00a0in\u00a0Vietnam in\u00a01976 when hawks within the administration of President Gerald Ford\u00a0were pushing for the United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2717,2770,1583,1704,3140,2004,475,1286,1898],"tags":[4165,4166,3018,4167,4168,4169,4170,4171,4172,3823],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}