Panamá Update
Is the Pentagon Re-Militarizing Panama?
By John Lindsay-Poland
Accompanied by three military helicopters (in a country with no army or armed opposition), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Panama and met with President Martín Torrijos on November 13. Rumsfeld’s visit came in the wake of claims that the United States is “re-militarizing” Panama’s police force, and harsh criticism of the United States for violating the Chemical Weapons Convention in Panama.
US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, right, is met at the airport by US Ambassador Linda Watt, center, and Panamanian Government and Justice Minister Héctor Alemán, left.
Credit: Miroslava Laguna
The Pentagon chief, Torrijos, and members of the Panamanian cabinet focused on the “war on terrorism” and drug traffic. Rumsfeld said that the United States has a special interest in maritime security and the canal.
A recent study by the Center for International Policy shows that Panama, which has no army, received a huge increase in US military training – from 25 policemen trained in 2002, to more than 900 last year. In Latin America, only Colombia and Bolivia had more soldiers trained by the United States in 2003.
What’s more, US Special Forces trained many of the Panamanian police – in infantry tactics. The Center for International Policy pointed out that “ the U.S. Special Forces do not have a policing mission or use policing tactics.” Neither country’s officials said why the chief of the US military was visiting when Panama’s army was dismantled by the United States in the 1989 invasion, and constitutionally abolished in 1994.
US Contamination Still ExplosiveRumsfeld also faced pointed questions about the United States’ obligation to clean up chemical weapons and conventional explosives left behind by the US military on San José Island and in canal-area bombing ranges.
“The United States is in flagrant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention by not responsibly fulfilling its obligation to destroy the intact chemical weapons that its army abandoned on San José Island,” wrote Juan Méndez, who was the Panama Foreign Affairs Ministry’s main negotiator for cleanup from 1999 through 2003. His comments came out in La Prensa, Panama’s leading newspaper, the day Rumsfeld arrived.
Appearing before reporters in Panama, Rumsfeld said the two countries had discussed cleanup of the bombing ranges and San José Island and that it was a “closed case.” Panama’s Minister of Government and Justice, Héctor Alemán, however, responded immediately, saying the issue was still “pending” and will be discussed by the two countries’ diplomats.
Méndez was more direct. “U.S. troops have traveled half the world, at an exorbitant cost in lives and resources, looking for weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Still, when it comes to the United States carrying out its commitment under the Chemical Weapons Convention, in the case of Panama it refuses to do so,” he wrote. “Japan is destroying the chemical weapons it abandoned in China, and no one had to mediate for them to do it.”
Sabino Rivera, a 42-year-old father of nine children, died in June after stumbling on a mortar while looking for food in the jungle area of a former army range. Fifty-six thousand people live in communities neighboring the former U.S. ranges.
Far from considering a cleanup, the US military is bringing new war maneuvers to Panama. In August, 3,000 troops and 22 warships from eight countries – led by the United States – came to Panama to carry out a week of exercises that simulated defending the Panama Canal from potential terrorist attacks.
What motivated these exercises? “Today we confront a global threat, and the Canal is a sensitive point because of its global importance for commerce,” said US Vice-Admiral Vinson Smith. Panama’s director of the Maritime Service, José Isaza, echoed the idea, saying that Panama “cannot defend the Canal alone, so it needs the help of other nations.”
Speaking of the major regional conflict, General James Hill, outgoing chief of the US Southern Command, commented in October that “This is not Colombia’s war, but a war of its neighbors – in truth a world war – that should be waged regionally by its neighbors. There is a growing understanding of this fact on the part of Ecuador, Brazil and Panama.”
Yet US and Panamanian officials have never identified any specific threat to the Canal. Jorge Illueca, a former president of Panama and of the United Nations General Assembly, pointed out that “the Canal’s vulnerability is not linked to the appearance of terrorism in the world… [but] is a condition it has been burdened with since it was built.”
And if the US military has a presence in the canal area – training troops, conducting exercises – why wouldn’t such a presence attract those interested in attacking US interests, as has occurred in Iraq? This, after all, is the rationale for making the canal neutral, a principle enshrined in the 1977 Neutrality Treaty signed by the United States and Panama and ratified by more than 50 other nations as well.
Panamanians ask whether the Pentagon aims to twist some arms. “There is nothing more dangerous than irresponsible leadership,” Méndez warned. “It is reason that confers power, not the other way around.”
Sources: La Prensa 11/12, 11/13, 11/14/04; El Panamá América 7/7, 8/11, 8/18, 8/23, 11/12/04; Isacson and Olson, Blurring the Lines, at http://ciponline.org/facts/0410btl.htm
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Panamá Update is published quarterly by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean. The FOR is an inter-faith pacifist organization founded in 1915.
Panamá Update is compiled from Panamanian and U.S. sources, and attempts to present a popular perspective on events in Panama and on U.S. policy vis-à-vis Panama. While we do not necessarily endorse all the views presented here, we are dedicated to the goals of peace with justice in Panama, and specifically to the full observance of the Carter-Torrijos Treaties' provisions for U.S. military withdrawal and environmental clean-up of U.S. bases in Panama by the year 2000.
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Panamá Update has been edited by John Lindsay-Poland, Andrés Mares Muro and Sarah Town.
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