It's time to bridge U.S.-Cuba divide

By JACK SHEEHAN

As a young Marine in the 1960s, I walked the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base fence line, dug fighting holes and repaired minefields in case of an attack on the U.S. base by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba.

Last year I retired, and in March I spent a week touring Cuba, culminating in a dinner with Fidel Castro. If my thinking and experience are any guide, there are real possibilities for improved relations.

After my retirement, I devoted myself to addressing the central questions facing the United States in its dealings with Cuba: What are the new realities of this relationship and what policy options does the United States have?

I learned the World Health Organization, the British aid agency Oxfam and other relief agencies had become concerned about conditions in Cuba. It soon became clear to me that the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, commonly known as Helms-Burton, was causing economic and health problems for the average Cuban citizen.

So five weeks after the visit of Pope John Paul II, I traveled to the island with a delegation from Americans for Humanitarian Trade With Cuba, a group that favors relaxing the current economic embargo. During our seven days on the island, we visited hospitals; the Cuban health, economics and planning ministries; relief agencies and dissident groups, and we talked with government officials and ordinary citizens.

I also spent a day and a half with Raul Castro, commander of the Cuban armed forces, visiting military units around the country.

When you spend decades studying a problem from satellites and intelligence reports, your judgments are based on abstract data. When you walk the ground and see the data as real people, you get a very different feel for the facts.

I knew the statistics indicating that the average Cuban's life is very difficult because of the shortage of medicine and food. Then I visited William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana and saw children recovering from surgery with unnecessary pain because there was insufficient medication.

I visited Santiago de Cuba, a city of more than 400,000 people, and learned there are only five buses for public transportation. I talked to mothers who wonder what will happen to their children when they reach the age of 7 and the family loses its milk allotment.

Yet in spite of the suffering of the Cuban people, I found that they are able to distinguish between the American people and U.S. foreign policy. They despise Helms-Burton but show a great affection for Americans.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and its assistance to Cuba ended, the Cuban economy went into free fall. The ``special period,'' as it is called in Cuba, saw a disastrous 15 percent reduction in the economy each year between 1990 and 1993. Life for the average Cuban was reduced to a quest for survival.

In 1994 came the rafter crisis in which almost 40,000 Cubans left their country on rafts because the quality of life had become intolerable. All the while, the U.S. policy of diplomatic hostility and economic embargo remained the same.

I began dealing directly with the Cuban military in 1994, as director of plans and policy at U.S. Atlantic Command and later as commander in chief. As a result of the rafter crisis, the U.S. military opened migrant camps at Guantanamo Bay at a cost of $1 million a day.

During my frequent visits to the camps, it became obvious to me that the Cubans seeking to leave still loved their country and were proud of its educational and health-care system but could no longer bear the deprivation created by the embargo and exacerbated by the cancellation of Soviet assistance.

My colleagues and I in the U.S. military sought to reduce the possibility of a misunderstanding between Cuban and American forces. We met regularly with senior Cuban officers. These were not political discussions, but rather exchanges between professional soldiers.

It became very clear to those of us on the U.S. side that Cuba was changing and that this was not the Cuba of the '60s and '70s. Our intelligence data also supported the conclusion that Cuba was not a military threat to the United States.

The Cuban military was enlisted in the national effort to make the country self-sufficient in food production. Today, the Cuban military produces about 25 percent of the country's food. The majority of its military equipment is in storage, and its war-fighting abilities have declined. Cuba's front-line pilots now fly only about 30 hours a year. (U.S. Air Force pilots fly about 20 to 30 hours a month.) The Cuban military has become a home defense force.

Unfortunately, on Feb. 24, 1996, Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based organization created to rescue rafters, sent three planes to the edge of Cuban air space. The Cuban air force shot down two of the planes, killing four people.

While low-level contacts on issues ranging from the migration to drug interdiction eventually resumed, all discussions on changing the dynamics of Cuban-American relations ceased.

I didn't talk to Cuban military officers again until my trip.

My meeting with Fidel Castro took place in the Palace of the Revolution. After a formal meeting with a group of Cuban officials, we had a small sit-down dinner.

When I asked Castro about recent reports of the arrest of dissidents, he denied them, saying, ``Why would I do something like that after the pope's visit, not to mention that my foreign minister is going to Rome for more discussions?''

When I talked with dissidents and with the State Department, they confirmed Castro's statement.

He expressed concern about a string of bombing attacks last summer on Cuban tourist hotels, which Cuban authorities allege were organized by persons outside of Cuba. ``Would you permit such activity if it were directed against your country?'' he asked.

He denied any involvement in the drug trade and spoke forcefully about drug trafficking in the region and its effects, especially in smaller countries. He said he wanted very much to develop a closer working relationship with the United States and other Caribbean nations to combat the drug trade.

Our conversation went on until 2:30 in the morning. On the steps outside, Castro said, perhaps more to himself than to me, ``Do you think the United States will ever treat Cuba as it treats other nations, with a relationship based on mutual respect, not ideology?''

I didn't have an answer to that question.

Full diplomatic recognition between the two countries is politically impossible at the moment, but there are a number of steps that can and should be taken.

The measures announced in February by President Clinton permitting direct flights from the United States and allowing Cuban Americans to send money back home are useful first steps.

Trade for humanitarian goods such as food and medicine should be authorized.

Contacts should be initiated to deal with the drug shipments passing through the Caribbean.

Confidence-building measures to reduce the possibility of a military incident should be conducted on a regular basis.

In short, the militarized fence line at Guantanamo that I walked 35 years ago has outlived its usefulness. It is time to start dismantling some of the barriers between the peoples of the United States and Cuba.