IT is a very serious matter for the United States of America, USA, the most powerful country in the universe, to place a country on the list of states “sponsoring” terrorism. So, when on May 15, 2024 it placed Cuba in this category, it was bound to attract attention. However, this will be for those who have not been following the cat and mouse game between both countries since November 3, 1961 when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy signed “The Cuban Project.
Terrorism is essentially the use of violence to further political goals. But the USA has a number of definitions depending on various institutions like the CIA. But its most spectacular contribution to humanity was during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it was perhaps the only country in the world that refused to shut its borders against other human beings. When in March 2020, the British cruise ship, MS Braemer with 682 passengers on board ravaged by COVID-19 was left to drift in the Caribbean with no country allowing it to berth, Cuba brought in the ship.
The second intervention the Cubans had engaged in was sending 55,000 troops over 9,000 kilometres to fight and conquer the seemingly invisible Apartheid South Africa military that was invading various African countries and colonising Namibia and South Africa. This led to the independence of these two colonies in Africa.
On April 14, 2015, the USA under President Barack Obama reviewed this classification of Cuba and admitted it was political and unhelpful. On that day, the White House declared: “While President Obama acknowledges that Cuba and the United States continue to have great differences, these differences do not pertain to Cuba supporting terrorism.” So Cuba was removed from the list.
In the analysis of the Cuban Government: “It is nothing but a totally unilateral and unfounded list, whose sole purpose is to smear sovereign states and serve as a pretext for imposing coercive economic sanctions on them, as those ruthlessly imposed on Cuba.”