thedrifter
01-12-06, 06:14 PM
All quiet along the fence line separating Cuba from U.S. naval base
BETH GORHAM
Canadian Press
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (CP) - The height of Cold War tensions has been replaced by more civil, lonely vigils of junior American marines and Cuban soldiers.
Now there are few surprises along the fence line separating the American naval base from the rest of Fidel Castro's communist island.
"It's sagebrush and crickets," said Maj. Jeff Weir, who escorted journalists through the Northeast Gate, the only entry point along a 28-kilometre chain link and barbed-wire barrier.
Where once 1,000 marines guarded the fence, now it's only some 100 in camouflage uniforms who keep watch on Humvee patrols or through high-powered binoculars from boxy wooden towers strung through the arid, rolling landscape of the leased Cuban territory.
The U.S. towers are matched by more spindly Cuban versions.
There's even monthly fence line meetings between the two sides, says base commander Capt. Mark Leary, and two exercises a year on communications and firefighting.
Stadium-like lights have been erected to monitor the area, still an entry point for migrants who brave landmines on the Cuban side to get to the Americans and request asylum.
There's only one break in the fence, at the Northeast Gate, where two Cuban workers pass each morning to get to their jobs at an auto bodyshop and office-supply store on the base.
Before the break in diplomatic relations with Castro in January 1961 and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion that April, hundreds of Cubans worked on the base. About 900 still collect U.S. pensions delivered monthly by the final pair of employees.
In the years after, says Weir, Cuban soldiers threw rocks at Americans guarding the gate and shone lights in their barracks to keep them up all night.
So the marines placed a huge round emblem in the ground by the gate tower that would be picked up the lights and discourage the Cubans.
And the United States cut the water line to in 1964 after they were accused of stealing resources.
Castro, who maintains the century-old Guantanamo base on the disputed terrority of some 120 square kilometres belongs to him, has only cashed one annual lease cheque of $4,085 US worked out under a 1934 treaty.
But relations are a far cry from the tension portrayed in A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson as a marine colonel plays up the danger of eating breakfast a few hundred metres from Cubans who want to kill him.
The base of some 8,000 military personnel, civil service workers and so-called third-country nationals, was established to support the U.S. navy.
Now it's engaged in patrolling waters for drug runners and dealing with migrants who arrive by sea.
And in the past four years, attention has shifted to the prison camp that holds Canadian teenager Omar Khadr and some 500 other suspected terrorists captured in the war on terror.
Not far from the fence line, Camp X-Ray lies abandonned, its outdoor chain-link pens overgrown with creeper vines and inhabited by small mammals the marines call banana rats.
It was used briefly until construction on the current detention centre, Camp Delta, was finished.
U.S. authorities, anxious to show journalists that the primitive X-Ray is a thing of the past, are angry that media organizations still frequently use photographs of the bleak cells without toilets or sinks where detainees showered in the open without privacy.
"Some people would like to have it bulldozed," says Weir. "I think it should stay. It's historic. It served its purpose for three and a half months."
Khadr has spent much of the last 39 months in isolation at Delta, where there are five separate camps and a sixth on the war, surrounded by guard towers and two tall fences with barbed wire in between.
Prisoners wearing orange, tan or white uniforms depending on their level of compliance are separated into numbered camps.
One is a communal facility that affords detainees likely on their way to being released a lot more freedom.
News from around the world is posted on the cell blocks, including word of Saddam Hussein, and there are arrows pointing to Mecca, toward which Muslims turn for prayers five times a day. In the recreation area, the actual distance to Mecca of 12,793 kilometres is painted on the concrete floor.
Each cell has a Qu'ran hanging from the bars in surgical masks to protect them and the hallways have "prayer cones" alerting guards they should be quiet as the detainees pray.
Navy Cmdr. Catie Hanft, who commands the guards inside the gates, says the widespread allegations of torture and abuse of detainees bother her.
"I know the sailors and soldiers here and I know they don't do the things people say they're doing."
Ellie
BETH GORHAM
Canadian Press
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (CP) - The height of Cold War tensions has been replaced by more civil, lonely vigils of junior American marines and Cuban soldiers.
Now there are few surprises along the fence line separating the American naval base from the rest of Fidel Castro's communist island.
"It's sagebrush and crickets," said Maj. Jeff Weir, who escorted journalists through the Northeast Gate, the only entry point along a 28-kilometre chain link and barbed-wire barrier.
Where once 1,000 marines guarded the fence, now it's only some 100 in camouflage uniforms who keep watch on Humvee patrols or through high-powered binoculars from boxy wooden towers strung through the arid, rolling landscape of the leased Cuban territory.
The U.S. towers are matched by more spindly Cuban versions.
There's even monthly fence line meetings between the two sides, says base commander Capt. Mark Leary, and two exercises a year on communications and firefighting.
Stadium-like lights have been erected to monitor the area, still an entry point for migrants who brave landmines on the Cuban side to get to the Americans and request asylum.
There's only one break in the fence, at the Northeast Gate, where two Cuban workers pass each morning to get to their jobs at an auto bodyshop and office-supply store on the base.
Before the break in diplomatic relations with Castro in January 1961 and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion that April, hundreds of Cubans worked on the base. About 900 still collect U.S. pensions delivered monthly by the final pair of employees.
In the years after, says Weir, Cuban soldiers threw rocks at Americans guarding the gate and shone lights in their barracks to keep them up all night.
So the marines placed a huge round emblem in the ground by the gate tower that would be picked up the lights and discourage the Cubans.
And the United States cut the water line to in 1964 after they were accused of stealing resources.
Castro, who maintains the century-old Guantanamo base on the disputed terrority of some 120 square kilometres belongs to him, has only cashed one annual lease cheque of $4,085 US worked out under a 1934 treaty.
But relations are a far cry from the tension portrayed in A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson as a marine colonel plays up the danger of eating breakfast a few hundred metres from Cubans who want to kill him.
The base of some 8,000 military personnel, civil service workers and so-called third-country nationals, was established to support the U.S. navy.
Now it's engaged in patrolling waters for drug runners and dealing with migrants who arrive by sea.
And in the past four years, attention has shifted to the prison camp that holds Canadian teenager Omar Khadr and some 500 other suspected terrorists captured in the war on terror.
Not far from the fence line, Camp X-Ray lies abandonned, its outdoor chain-link pens overgrown with creeper vines and inhabited by small mammals the marines call banana rats.
It was used briefly until construction on the current detention centre, Camp Delta, was finished.
U.S. authorities, anxious to show journalists that the primitive X-Ray is a thing of the past, are angry that media organizations still frequently use photographs of the bleak cells without toilets or sinks where detainees showered in the open without privacy.
"Some people would like to have it bulldozed," says Weir. "I think it should stay. It's historic. It served its purpose for three and a half months."
Khadr has spent much of the last 39 months in isolation at Delta, where there are five separate camps and a sixth on the war, surrounded by guard towers and two tall fences with barbed wire in between.
Prisoners wearing orange, tan or white uniforms depending on their level of compliance are separated into numbered camps.
One is a communal facility that affords detainees likely on their way to being released a lot more freedom.
News from around the world is posted on the cell blocks, including word of Saddam Hussein, and there are arrows pointing to Mecca, toward which Muslims turn for prayers five times a day. In the recreation area, the actual distance to Mecca of 12,793 kilometres is painted on the concrete floor.
Each cell has a Qu'ran hanging from the bars in surgical masks to protect them and the hallways have "prayer cones" alerting guards they should be quiet as the detainees pray.
Navy Cmdr. Catie Hanft, who commands the guards inside the gates, says the widespread allegations of torture and abuse of detainees bother her.
"I know the sailors and soldiers here and I know they don't do the things people say they're doing."
Ellie