Taking Cuba Off State Sponsor of Terrorism List
By Matthew Vadum
President Obama wielded his pen yesterday to begin the process of removing the longstanding U.S. designation of Communist Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that pushes the U.S. closer to restoring full diplomatic ties with the brutal Caribbean dictatorship.
Obama’s action comes as watchdog group Judicial Watch yesterday claimed [1] that America has a terrorist problem closer to home than Cuba which is 90 miles away from the U.S. coast in Florida.
The group says the Muslim terrorists of Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) are operating a camp about eight miles from the U.S. border near El Paso, Texas. The base is located in an area called Anapra which is west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another Islamic State cell is located in Puerto Palomas and is targeting Columbus and Deming, N.M., for easy access to the U.S. Sources for the information include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector, according to Judicial Watch.
It is unclear what, if anything, the Obama administration is doing about this.
Meanwhile, in a written message to Congress, Obama formally certified, as required under federal law, that “the government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period,” and “has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”
This is, of course, at odds with reality.
Cuba is a longtime state sponsor of terrorism and has meddled militarily and otherwise in the affairs of its neighbors and in faraway countries such as the African nation of Angola. The State Department labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982, citing “Fidel Castro’s training and arming of communist rebels in Africa and Latin America.” President Reagan ordered an invasion of Grenada after its Marxist dictatorship grew too close to Cuba and he struggled heroically to aid the anticommunist contras in their war against the Cuban-backed Communist regime in Nicaragua.
More recently Cuba has provided support to the Marxist narco-trafficking terrorists of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and has aided Venezuela’s communist dictators. FARC, in turn, reportedly has ties to al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The State Department acknowledged last year that Cuba has long been a haven for members of FARC and the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA).
