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New war, same old
enemy - the media
By Peter Spiegel. The
Financial Times, UK, August 28 2004.
The sign above the gate reads as if the
cold war never ended: "Republica de
Cuba: territorio libre de America",
or "land free from America". It
stands less than 50 yards from a similar
gate with a similar sign: "North East
Gate Marine Barracks: Ground defense/security
force".
At one time, this crossing point on Cuba's
arid southeast corner was a Caribbean Checkpoint
Charlie, one of the few places on earth
where armed forces of the Soviet sphere
stood face-to-face with American soldiers.
But today, the guard stations on the fence
lines that separate Fidel Castro's Cuba
from the US navy base at Guantánamo
Bay stand empty, as do the towers once manned
by armed sentries on both sides of a barbed-wire
fence.
Gone, too, are the US landmines pulled
up in the mid-1990s, although Cuban ones
remain - but only because those who laid
them forgot to map out where they were buried.
If this overgrown crossing point is the
symbol of a war all but over, a windowless
former dental clinic in an old administrative
headquarters building just miles away has
become an equally powerful emblem of a war
only recently launched. Here, on top of
a small hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea,
is where the first military tribunals for
alleged al-Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan
finally began last week.
The wars may be different, but the paranoia,
confusion and mistrust are eerily similar.
All week, a heavy security cordon surrounded
the two-storey building and heavily-armed
soldiers guarded a nearby checkpoint. Two
more checkpoints - one at the bottom of
the hill, the other at the top - bristled
with more weapons and the occasional armoured
Humvee.
Who these men were planning to repel with
their automatic weapons, military spokesmen
would not say. If they were concerned that
a band of al-Qaeda operatives might be planning
to launch a daring prison-break by dashing
across the scrubby desert, they might have
manned the old Marine watchtower on the
Cuban border instead. Or maybe they decided
the remaining Cuban minefield was adequate.
Perhaps the real threat came from the media,
who were greeted almost every morning and
evening at the boat dock near their home
away from home - the leeward combined bachelors'
quarters - with yet more armed soldiers.
When one reporter complained, she was told
to clam up by a sailor with a shotgun, who
called her "mouthy".
If the media were perceived as the real
threat, the most serious shot across the
bow came from the presiding officer himself,
Peter Brownback, the colonel who threatened
just hours before the first session to seize
reporters' notebooks and rip out pages if
any classified information was accidentally
revealed in court. An hour after journalists
threatened to walk out of the proceedings,
however, Col Brownback retreated. A small
victory for the troops armed with pens instead
of swords.
The writer is the FT's defence correspondent
© Copyright
The Financial Times Ltd 2004.
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