"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 Andrés Péres 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 Sékou Touré'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.