Clash in Cuba shows government on high alert

Clash in Cuba shows government on high alert
Last Updated: Monday, December 11, 2006 | 9:20 AM ET
CBC News

A crowd of government supporters swarmed a small group of dissidents in
the Cuban capital Havana on Sunday, an incident a Canadian expert on
Cuba suggests is part of a message being sent to Washington.

The demonstrators were on a silent march in a Havana park to mark
International Human Rights Day when they were roughed up.

It was one of the first public confrontations since President Fidel
Castro disappeared from public life because of illness in July.

Hal Klepak, a historian at the Royal Military College of Canada in
Kingston, Ont., says the incident shows that the Cuban military is
trying to send a message to the U.S. that, although its uniformed ranks
are depleted, Cubans are prepared to fight to defend the island nation.

In Cuba for research, Klepak said Cuba is on high alert for internal
disturbances out of fear they could be fuelled by the U.S. in an effort
to topple the Castro government.

Loyalists accused Sunday's demonstrators of being mercenaries for the
U.S. government.
Continue Article

Klepak says during the last four months, with Castro sick and out of the
public eye, the U.S. has been trying everything short of armed invasion
to find chinks in Cuba's self-defence plan.

"It is essential that the Cuban armed forces show that this will not be
quick victory," Klepak said.

The Cubans realize they can't win an all-out war against the United
States, he said, but "they will still be in a position to make the war
long, bloody, costly and embarrassing.

"They believe and they are determined."

Cuba's armed forces recently paraded through the streets of Havana in a
display of military force, but Klepak said the military is down its bare
bones.

When Cuba's economy nearly collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union
in the early 1990s, it drastically cut its armed forces from 300,000
troops to about 55,000.

If it had to muster a real fighting force, Klepak said the Cuban
military would need the "people's army," hundreds of thousands of
trained civilians on the reserve list, to put up a real fight. Klepak
estimated there are 700,000 trained reservists in Cuba.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/11/cuba-military.html