Castro's Globetrotting Gurkhas

"The M.P.L.A. did not score a military victory [in Angola]," said Henry Kissinger at a Washington press conference last week. "Cuba scored a military victory, backed by the Soviet Union." On the eve of a nine-day, six-nation visit to Latin America, the Secretary of State implicitly raised a question that is bound to be asked at every stop along the way: What is the meaning--and the potential danger--of Cuba's armed intervention in Angola?

Havana's African display of military prowess disturbs many Latin American leaders, including some who had only recently argued that the danger of subversion from Havana was over. Venezuela, for example, led a fight within the Organization of American States to drop hemispheric sanctions against Havana. Now President Carlos Andres Peres frets over reports of several hundred Cuban soldiers in nearby Guyana, a socialist state with which Venezuela for many years had a border dispute.

The Cuban menace extends well beyond Latin America. Havana's most visible presence, of course, is in Angola, where 12,000 Cuban troops are serving the Marxist government in Luanda. The Cubans have been responsible for most of the M.P.L.A. victories, but at some cost. There are estimates that 300 have been killed and 1,400 wounded; at least 100 have been taken prisoner. Such losses may have an impact at home, where only within the past month have Cubans been formally told by Premier Fidel Castro what their men have been doing for nearly a year.

Much of the fighting force was airlifted, despite some notable logistical handicaps. Initially, Cuban planes refueled for the long transatlantic flight at Barbados, but the U.S. pressured that island's government to stop such military flights. The Portuguese government eventually refused to let the Cubans refuel in the Azores. Meanwhile, Ottawa has been mildly embarrassed by reports that Cuban planes landing to refuel at Gander Airport in Newfoundland are ferrying home the dead and wounded from Angola. While Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau has stressed that Gander is not being used as a Cuban "staging point," Canadian officials have not gone aboard the planes to learn if the stories are true.

Special Forces. More than 2,000 Cubans are on loan to African nations other than Angola. Troops provided by Havana form part of President Sekou Toure's bodyguard in Guinea. Cuban bureaucrats supervise government operations in both Equatorial Guinea and Somalia. In Tanzania, 500 Cubans are reportedly training guerrillas to harass the Rhodesian government. In the Congo (Brazzaville), 150 others form a rear echelon for Angola; in Guinea-Bissau, says a grateful government spokesman, "they showed us how to make the terrain work for us and against the Portuguese."

Cubans are also active in a number of Arab states. They train Polisario guerrillas from Western Sahara in Algeria. In South Yemen, there are more than 3,000 advisers and special forces, including MIG-flying pilots. By far the largest detachment is in Syria: 3,500 to 4,000 men, including an entire armored brigade (with 94 Russian T-62 tanks), two commando battalions, perhaps 30 or more MIG pilots.

Radical Hosts. One disturbing aspect of the Cuban presence is the vast amount of military hardware that the Soviets have been sending to Syria. Some intelligence experts believe the weaponry is far in excess of what Syria could possibly use in another war with Israel. Thus, these experts contend, Syria has become a sort of stockpile from which Soviet planes, guns or tanks can be drawn for service in trouble spots like Angola. The Cubans go along to man the equipment. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel P. Moynihan recently described them as "the Gurkhas of the Russian empire," a reference to the fierce Nepalese soldiers who for long moved about the world to fight on Britain's behalf.

Havana's overseas forces--as well as its Middle Eastern and African intelligence operations, handled by Section V of the Direccion General de Inteligencia, Cuba's CIA--are under the stern control of Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother and the country's defense minister. The Cubans are still eager to export their brand of Marxism, but they no longer attempt to create a revolutionary atmosphere, as Che Guevara tried unsuccessfully during the late '50s and '60s in the Congo (now Zaire), the Dominican Republic, Panama and finally Bolivia, where he died. The new Cuban strategy seems to be to take advantage of revolutionary conditions already created by friendly, radical host governments.

The obvious question is where will they move next. Latin American leaders are convinced that some of Havana's troops will soon be helping their revolutionary brothers much closer to home. One possible target could be Peru, which already has a left-wing military junta. Cuba maintains a mysteriously large embassy staff in Lima, and the foresighted Cubans are training Peruvian pilots at San Antonio de los Banos and Yuri Gagarin air bases outside Havana--just in case Lima decides to buy some MIGs from Moscow. Peru, in one scenario, could even be the springboard for a new Gurkha maneuver all the way along South America's west coast.

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