Forum Post: The Three-War Doctrine
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The Three-War Doctrine
Saturday, 17 May 2014 12:33
By John Feffer, Foreign Policy In Focus | News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23762-the-three-war-doctrine
U.S. troops have left Iraq and are leaving Afghanistan. The "war on terrorism" now seems so last decade. U.S. military spending has leveled off, and the Pentagon is looking at some fairly serious reductions after 2015. Last month, President Obama finally pulled the various threads of his foreign policy approach into a "doctrine" that emphasizes incremental diplomacy and leaves military intervention as a last resort.
We are, it would seem, at an epochal moment in U.S. history. The Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations attempted to deepsix the Vietnam syndrome and resurrect the U.S. military as the principle tool of U.S. foreign policy. But after the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, the syndrome has returned in an industrial-strength version. Finally, it seems as if the United States is willing to take the cop out of cooperation.
But before we stick flowers into the barrels of the Special Forces' combat assault rifles and celebrate the transformation of the CIA's drones into Amazon delivery vehicles, let's evaluate what will likely be a very substantial backlash to the Obama doctrine. Depending on what happens in the mid-terms and more importantly the next presidential elections in 2016, we might be looking at yet another effort to drive a stake through the heart of the Vietnam-Afghanistan-Iraq syndrome and reassert, once again, American military power.
In the last presidential election, we narrowly escaped a return to the foreign policy of the 1980s with Mitt Romney. Next time around, the hawks from both major parties minus the libertarians—the War Party—may well offer something considerably more retrograde: perhaps a return to the 1890s and a celebration of American empire under Teddy Roosevelt.
But it won't be just one war—Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!—that the War Party will want the Pentagon to prepare to fight. Nor will it be the two or two-and-a-half wars of the Cold War heyday. Instead, the next generation of U.S. militarists—the Project for the New New American Century—will be talking about girding our loins for three wars. Before detailing this three-front global conflict, let me explain how we've been at this point already twice in the recent past.
Long before Obama unveiled his doctrine, the last two Democrats in the White House also tried, in their half-hearted ways, to restrain the Pentagon and elevate the State Department. For Jimmy Carter, his first two years in office marked the high point of détente and the military drawdown from the Vietnam years. Even though he turned considerably more hawkish in the second half of his term, Carter became a symbol of everything weak about the Democratic Party and its foreign policy. The events of 1979—the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution—also conspired against President Malaise. Carter's opponent in the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan, promised to stand up to the Russians, the Iranians, and anyone else who dared challenge Old Glory.
Bill Clinton, too, presided over a reduction of the U.S. military leviathan in the wake of the end of the Cold War. Clinton was by no means a pacifist. The United States was involved in the wars in former Yugoslavia and several attacks on al-Qaeda and its ilk during the 1990s. But the great sin of the Clinton administration, to its critics on the right, was its commitment to multilateralism. The Clinton administration actually seemed to believe in the United Nations and such associated efforts as the International Criminal Court. Beginning in 1997, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) pushed a program that would eerily resemble the eventual foreign policy of the George W. Bush presidency, including a major uptick in military spending and regime change in Iraq. As in 1979, the events of September 11 helped to propel U.S. foreign policy in a different direction.
PNAC is dead and gone, and the Bush doctrine is buried in the sands of the Middle East. Obama has reached back to the earlier traditions of his Democratic predecessors for inspiration, borrowing a measure of modesty from Carter and a measure of multilateralism from Clinton. And Obama has encountered the same congressional resistance to his de facto tempering of American exceptionalism. Behind the Obama doctrine lurks a certain implicit assumption: that a safety net of international norms can both cushion the relative decline of the United States and contain the rise of other powers like China. Of course, Washington would like to game the system as much as possible to prolong the U.S. unipolar moment and ensure a comfortable imperial retirement. If all goes according to plan, the only conflicts that will take place will be over the terms of America's golden parachute and our 401(k) plan (to be negotiated at trade talks, with Chinese investors, and with European banks).
But nothing ever goes according to plan. And here are three reasons why, drawn entirely from recent headlines.
On May 1, China set up an oilrig in the South China Sea in waters that Vietnam also claims. Vietnam has used YouTube to show China ramming its ships. Both sides have fired water cannons at each other. Chinese fighter jets patrol the sky above the disputed territory. Vietnam and U.S. allies Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines have all pressed Washington to check China's more assertive claims to territory in the East and South China Seas. They want a more vigorous Pacific pivot to Asia.
On May 11, voters in two regions in eastern Ukraine supported greater autonomy in a referendum rejected by the central government in Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to intervene if the interests of ethnic Russians in Ukraine are threatened. Although he has promised to withdraw the 40,000 troops currently near the border, no such troop movements have been detected. Clashes between Ukrainian government forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine threaten to spiral into a civil war. New NATO members in East-Central Europe are wary of Russia's more assertive claims to territory near their eastern borders. Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak, for instance, has called on the United States to "re-pivot" to Europe.
Then there's Africa, where the United States created a new Africa Command shortly before Obama took office and where the Pentagon has recently ramped up its operations to more than a mission a day. Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group that seeks to turn Nigeria into an Islamic state, kidnapped more than 200 girls from their school last month. It's only the latest act of extremism from a group that Washington put on the foreign terrorism list last year. It's not clear whether the Nigerian radicals have any ties to al-Qaeda. But the war on terrorism has entered a new phase in which smaller U.S. forces partner with governments on the ground in Africa to battle non-state actors. Although some in the United States have called for an "African pivot," no one in the region has issued such an invitation. They don't really have to. We're already there.
So far, the Obama administration has been rather cautious in addressing all three of these challenges. The U.S. Navy maintains more than half of its fleet in the Pacific, the Army still has bases in Europe, and Special Forces are deployed throughout Africa. But the administration has not advised military intervention in any of the three cases (though the use of drones and some "boots on the ground" in Africa certainly go beyond mere non-military strategies).
It's also not likely that a Republican president would do anything appreciably different, although the party has practically Photoshopped Neville Chamberlain into the Oval Office. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is likely to throw his hat in the ring for 2016, has called for perhaps the strongest responses to Russia and China. But even he has stopped short of calling for actual U.S. military intervention. After all, Americans are now thoroughly cynical about sending U.S. troops to fight overseas.
But remember: the United States maintained its two-war doctrine more as a yardstick for measuring how much money to allocate to the Pentagon. In the 1980s, hawks were not pushing the United States to start a war with the Soviet Union or Iran. Rather, they wanted to maintain the capabilities to fight both wars simultaneously if need be.
Here's the nightmare scenario for 2016. The War Party will fight against any cuts in Pentagon spending and argue for upping the allocation in order to fight three wars simultaneously: against Russia, against China, and against non-state actors wherever they threaten U.S. interests. Sound unlikely? The Bush administration was able to transform a ragtag group of crazies—which, admittedly, had directly attacked the United States and killed nearly 3,000 people—into the "heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century." Imagine what the War Party, if it controlled the White House and Congress, could do with the likes of Russia, China, and the heirs of the heirs of all those murderous ideologies? If we're lucky, we'll avoid any outright conflict. But the price will nevertheless be bankruptcy. Forget about that imperial 401(k) plan.
It's often pointed out that the British Empire finally collapsed because of the debts incurred by England during World War II. Washington extended London a mountain of loans to fight the war, and when the loans came due, the United States effectively replaced England as the hegemon of the "free world."
But the process was not so cut and dried. "In July 1950, on the eve of the Korean War," writes Tony Judt in Postwar, "Britain had a full naval fleet in the Atlantic, another in the Mediterranean and a third in the Indian Ocean, as well as a permanent 'China station.' The country maintained 120 Royal Air Force squadrons worldwide and had armies or parts of armies permanently based in Hong Kong, Malaya, the Persian Gulf and North Africa, Trieste and Austria, West Germany and the United Kingdom itself." Five years after the end of World War II, someone forgot to give the British the news that their term was over.
The United States that Barack Obama inherited in 2008 was similarly a "dead empire walking," and China now serves as the bankroller that the United States was in the 1940s. A prudent president, Obama has attempted to maintain U.S. position in the world at a lower cost and with less blowback. His critics on the left, myself included, want less empire and more prudence. But we must also acknowledge the deluge that might come après Obama and make the last few years seem like halcyon days.
If the War Party wins in 2016, all bets are off. We will prepare to fight in the Eurasian heartland, the South China Sea, and the resource-rich lands of Africa—because if we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here. Just when it seemed like we were about to give peace a chance, the United States will suddenly revert to a three-war doctrine. 2016 will be 1979 and 2001 all over again. And, as we all know, bad luck always comes in threes.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
Militarized Humanitarianism in Africa
Saturday, 17 May 2014 11:03
By Joeva Rock, Inter Press Service | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23759-militarized-humanitarianism-in-africa
Washington - As the world remains transfixed by the kidnapping of almost 300 Nigerian girls, there have been increasing calls for international intervention in the effort to rescue them. But what many people don't know is that the U.S. military has been active in the region for years.
With the Iraq War over and the war in Afghanistan slowly ending, it is becoming increasingly apparent – from interviews with generals, recommendations from influential think tanks, and private conversations with military personnel – that Africa is the U.S. military's next frontier.
U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the newest of the U.S. military's six regional commands, has rapidly expanded its presence on the African continent since its establishment at the end of the Bush administration.
Emphasising a "3D" approach of "defence, diplomacy, and development," the White House describes AFRICOM's charge as coordinating "low-cost, small-footprint operations" throughout the African continent.
Yet despite efforts to market AFRICOM as a small operation, recent reports have revealed that the command is "averaging more than a mission a day" on the continent, and has anywhere from "5,000 to 8,000 U.S. military personnel on the ground" at any given point.
Rather than the "shock and awe" of Iraq, the military has attempted to put a friendly face on its expedition to Africa. This past March, writing in the New York Times, Eric Schmitt marveled at AFRICOM's Operation Flintlock, a multinational and multiagency training operation in Niger.
Schmitt wrote glowingly about fighting terrorism with mosquito nets: "Instead of launching American airstrikes or commando raids on militants," he wrote, "the latest joint mission between the nations involves something else entirely: American boxes of donated vitamins, prenatal medicines, and mosquito netting to combat malaria."
Humanitarian and development missions like the ones outlined in Schmitt's article are at the forefront of AFRICOM's public relations campaign. But promoting AFRICOM as a humanitarian outfit is misleading at best.
To put it simply, these projects are more like a Trojan Horse: dressed up as gifts, they establish points of entry on the continent when and where they may be needed.
A staging ground
Under the auspice of development and conflict prevention, AFRICOM regularly undertakes humanitarian projects in countries unmarked by permanent war or conflict. AFRICOM relies heavily on social media to showcase these projects and to portray itself as collaborative with African partners, dedicated to humanitarian aid, and trustworthy in the eyes of local peoples.
The command's Facebook and Twitter accounts are updated daily, and include postings on anything from participation in global humanitarian campaigns such as World Malaria Day (#malariabuzz) to reports on medical missions, sound bites from local recipients of AFRICOM aid, and photos of troops distributing toys to children.
Less is said about the expansive presence of American military personnel and technology on the ground and in the skies. AFRICOM conducts aerial and ground operations with U.S. troops, private military contractors, and proxy African military operatives trained and equipped by the United States.
Operation Flintlock is just one of the many training exercises AFRICOM provides for country partners, and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti is a well-known staging ground for drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia.
Not surprisingly, given the ongoing U.S. interest in securing new fuel sources and growing concerns over China's influence in the region, many of AFRICOM's efforts are located in oil-rich regions – specifically Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and the Gulf of Guinea.
The Gulf of Guinea, which hugs the Western coast of Africa, has received heightened interest of late given its proximity to the Sahel and Mali, an alleged increase in pirating, and notably, both on- and off-shore oil deposits.
In Takoradi, Ghana, for example – a place affectionately nicknamed "Oil City" -AFRICOM trains Ghanaian troops, conducts humanitarian missions, and meets with local chiefs, NGOs, and fishing communities.
Of course, wary of lingering skepticism about U.S. motives in Iraq, spokesmen have attempted to distance the United States from any interest in the region's oil.
A recent report from the Army War College dismissed claims that AFRICOM is protecting U.S. oil interests, but nonetheless argued that private American oil companies are the "best corporate citizens that African leaders and their publics could hope for."
One need not look far – from the polluted waters of Nigeria's Niger Delta to Equatorial Guinea's inequitable oil-driven development – to see how egregiously false that claim is.
A sign of what's to come
AFRICOM is insistent that its end-goal is to empower local forces to find African solutions to African problems. But its daily operations and talk of "sensitising" West African nations to the idea of a permanent Marines "crisis unit" in the region make clear that a more permanent U.S. presence on the continent is its true intention.
Humanitarian projects allow military personnel to train in new environments, gather local experience and tactical data, and build diplomatic relations with host countries and communities.
As activists with Women for Genuine Security have explained, this use of relief and humanitarian aid to "further larger geopolitical and military goals" – a practice they have dubbed "disaster militarism" – is a general strategy employed by the U.S. military worldwide.
For example, a 2010 report from the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University found that in Kenya, humanitarian projects by the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, a multi-branch military operation in East Africa, provided "an entry point" to "facilitate a military intervention, should the need arise."
Similarly, as David Vine has shown with regard to the U.S. military's "lily pad strategy" of speckling the globe with tiny military installations – much like AFRICOM's "small-footprint operations" – small-scale troop build-ups allow the United States to establish "goodwill" with local communities, planting the seeds for larger concentrations of troops and activities later on.
Accordingly, while humanitarian missions may incur small-scale benefits, these projects ought to be carefully monitored and scrutinised.
As Women for Genuine Security put it, "co-mingling humanitarian relief and military operations" contributes to "civilian confusion, public distrust, and questions of transparency and accountability."
We should approach AFRICOM's humanitarian undertakings not as gestures of goodwill or conflict-deterrence, but rather as signs of what's to come for the militarised U.S. approach to foreign policy in Africa.
Visit IPS news for fresh perspectives on development and globalization.
Militarization of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef Harms Indigenous Communities
Saturday, 17 May 2014 09:01
By Sandra Cuffe, Truthout | News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23729-militarization-of-the-mesoamerican-barrier-reef-harms-indigenous-communities
The Cayos Cochinos off Honduras and at the southern end of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef are a protected area, but that protection - including a strong military presence - rarely extends to the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna communities or their life-ways.
Fausto Blanco gestures out past the vivid aquamarine surrounding the archipelago, towards where the Honduran Navy confiscated the dugout canoe he was navigating to harvest coconuts. Blanco was left stranded in the water and had to swim back to one of the 11 cays that, along with two small islands, make up the Cayos Cochinos. The cays are set towards the southern end of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, a coral reef system in the Caribbean Sea second only to Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Much has changed in the 20 years since the Cayos Cochinos were declared a protected area. The Afro-indigenous Garifuna communities inhabiting the cays had to fight plans for their eviction, which would have enabled the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to create an exclusion zone for scientific study. Today, reality-show production and tourism are facilitated by the Honduras Coral Reef Fund, which manages the area with support from the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy. Even with the onslaught of tourism and film crews, Garifuna subsistence fishermen and divers remain subject to ever-changing fishing restrictions enforced by the Honduras Coral Reef Fund and by the Navy.
The surge in US military and police aid to Honduras since the June 2009 coup has included $10 million for three new naval bases along the Caribbean coast, and US training of an elite naval team. It has also led to four indigenous civilian deaths during DEA-run operations. Officially, US military and police aid support efforts targeting drug trafficking and organized crime, but entire Garifuna communities have been targeted with the label "narco-communities." In addition, conservation in some of the coastal and insular areas that the Garifuna have long depended on to survive is heavily militarized.
Jesús Flores Satuyé faces the consequences of militarized conservation every day. In 2001, when he and two other Garifuna were out diving for spiny lobster and shellfish, the Honduran Navy pulled up and began confiscating their equipment. When Flores Satuyé spoke up, he was shot in the forearm. Unable to fish or dive due to the loss of mobility in his left hand, he began eking a living by taking other Garifuna divers out in the cays in his cayuco - the traditional Garifuna dugout canoe. It was confiscated by the Navy in 2010. "I'm really screwed, because here, the cayuco is what gets us around," says Flores Satuyé, sitting in a hammock in his unfinished home, cradling his left hand. "Sometimes I go hungry," he said quietly.
For the past few years, Flores Satuyé's cayuco and those of several other Garifuna fishermen and divers have been sitting exposed to the elements at the small naval base on Cayo Mayor, one of the two larger islands in the coral archipelago. Sometimes, as was the case with Blanco, the Navy confiscated the cayucos at sea, forcing those on board into the water. That practice has led to uneasy doubts about the fate of local fishermen who have disappeared at sea.
Since the Navy began patrolling the cays, long-time fisherman José Buelto Batíz has tracked seven cases of people who have gone out fishing and never returned.
Long-time fisherman José Buelto Batíz is very careful not to make any direct accusations, but since the Navy began patrolling the cays, he has tracked seven cases of people who have gone out fishing and never returned. "It's the strangest thing. Of those seven disappeared, not a single body was ever found," he said. "Sometimes we arrive at the conclusion that maybe - and I repeat, I'm not accusing anyone - but if we look at the behavior and arrogance of the Navy, suddenly we could think that they are partly to blame."
In the mid-1990s, Buelto Batíz was at the forefront of the struggle against the eviction of the Garifuna communities inhabiting the cays. Now in his 70s, he is gradually losing his eyesight and hearing, and is no longer able to fish. But his mind is sharp, and he explains the historic ties between the cays and coastal Garifuna communities as he walks along the dirt road in his home community of Nueva Armenia.
Six nautical miles from the cays, Nueva Armenia is the sister community to Chachahuate, the largest cay community. Roughly 250 feet by 50 feet, the Chachahuate cay has a population that oscillates between a few dozen and 200 people, some permanent residents and others splitting their time between the cays and the coast. Río Esteban, another coastal Garifuna community, is linked to East End, a small community located on Cayo Mayor, where the elementary school, naval base and a US-owned hotel complex are located. Fishermen from Sambo Creek have traditionally stayed on Cayo Bolaños while fishing in the cays.
The diminishing Garifuna land base on the coast made the fight for the cays even more necessary, according to Buelto Batíz. In the early 1900s, Honduras granted traditional Garifuna lands along the Papaloteca River in concession to the Standard Fruit Company. The community of Armenia was relocated, and the fertile lands that locals used for subsistence farming were occupied by banana plantations. Standard's concessions expired at the end of the century, but the territorial loss wasn't reversed. "Instead of returning the lands to the Garifuna, they were given in concession to ranchers," said Buelto Batíz. Fishing became even more crucial for survival.
In 1993, the Cayos Cochinos were declared a protected area, and were later given National Marine Monument status in 2003. In retrospect, the initial designation had both positive and negative consequences for the Garifuna, according to Reinaldo Colón, president of the patronato, the community governance council, in Chachahuate. "We had industrial fishing boats all around us," he says, leaning on a windowsill of his wooden home in Chachahuate, facing the crystal waters shining in the midday sun. He glances back every now and then, keeping an eye on his young children eating lunch inside. "Those of us who live here were the last to get the catch because there were boats from [the Bay Islands] that came to fish, to get lobster, and they stayed here." Protected area status put an end to the large-scale commercial operations and dragnet fishing practices that had been devastating the coral reef ecosystem.
On the other hand, a total ban on fishing, including local subsistence fishing, was in place for five years following the creation of the protected area and the agreement assigning its management to the Honduras Coral Reef Fund, known locally as "the Foundation." The 1993 decree mandated the provision by the Armed Forces of assistance, surveillance and police control of the coastal areas, waters and territory of the archipelago. A naval captain and a Honduras Coral Reef Fund representative met with the community of Chachahuate in 1994, offering the inhabitants approximately $1,000 per household to leave, but telling them that they would be forced to leave either way.
"We're not against the area being reserved and protected. What we're against is that our rights are being denied, especially the right to feed ourselves."
"It was terrifying because they wanted the people to leave the cay. But how were we going to leave the cay? It has been part of the heritage of the Garifuna people," said Juana Celestina Arzú, who coordinated the local divers' association for years. "We're not against the area being reserved and protected. What we're against is that our rights are being denied, especially the right to feed ourselves."
The Garifuna successfully resisted the plans for their eviction from the cays in the name of conservation. Communities eventually received communal land titles to Chachahuate, East End and Bolaños in 2007. Residents also succeeded in having the ban on local subsistence fishing and seafood harvesting lifted. In 2004, the first five-year management plan for the protected area came into effect, outlining where, when and how locals could fish. The Honduras Coral Reef Fund involves some local participation in the development of the management plans, but both their process and content are sources of ongoing tensions in the communities.
"They've made the management plan with some three or four people. I was participating, but I left, telling them I thought the communities needed to come to a consensus on the management plan," said Arzú. "From my point of view, I didn't like that decisions had to be made like this," she said, snapping her fingers. Arzú withdrew from participating in 2013 after an attendance list from a meeting she attended was used to claim support for the plan from those present, regardless of their positions.
As the president of Chachahuate's patronato, Colón was invited to participate in meetings leading up to the most recent management plan, now in place for the next five years. Like Arzú, he was concerned that the Honduras Coral Reef Fund was only inviting a small select group of people to participate. He pushed for a community consultation meeting in Chachahuate so that all residents could have a say and develop a management plan that would reflect conservation and community needs. "They told me that yes, they would come, that they would come, and they never came," said Colón. "That has been our problem with the Foundation. They make decisions without consultation and without alternatives, and that impacts us."
A boat sits on display outside the Honduras Coral Reef Fund office in La Ceiba, the main city along the country's Caribbean coastline. A blue dolphin painted on the side of the bright yellow boat contrasts sharply with the shark teeth painted on the bow of the gray naval boats that patrol the cays.
Despite a constitutional prohibition on foreign land ownership of islands or any land within 25 miles of the coast at the time, most of the cays had fallen into private hands - including those of Swiss billionaire Stephan Schmidheiny - long before the protected area was created. Initial efforts to establish a reserve were led by a group of elite Honduran businesspeople, who formed a company, Sociedad de Inversiones Ecologicas (SIEC), partnered up with Schmidheiny's AVINA organization, and bought several cays. They then lobbied the government for protected-area status. In the first few years, the Honduras Coral Reef Fund worked closely with SIEC, AVINA and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy support followed. Schmidheiny would later be sentenced to 16 years in prison by an Italian court in 2012 for his role as an executive of Eternit, an asbestos company accused of causing thousands of deaths due to workers' and local residents' exposure in and around the company's plants in Italy.
Foreigners continue to maintain ownership of some cay and island properties that are part of traditional Garifuna territory.
Foreigners continue to maintain ownership of some cay and island properties that are part of traditional Garifuna territory. A small but steady stream of day trip, cruise ship, research and other tourists visit the cays, and especially Chachahuate. Cay residents provide occasional overnight visitors with lodging in Chachahuate or East End, sell fish for meals, prepare lunch, rent snorkel masks and sell coconut shell jewelry, but tour operators, foreign hotel owners and the Honduras Coral Reef Fund obtain the bulk of tourism profits. "Others are benefiting from tourism. We always receive the leftovers, the last bit or nothing. We just serve as a stop along the way," said Colón.
Along with small-scale and day-trip tourism, the cays have become a popular filming location for reality television. Since 2006, several Italian, Colombian and Spanish reality show seasons have been filmed on Cayo Timon and Cayo Paloma. Sobrevivientes, a Spanish version of "Survivor," began filming its 2014 edition in March. While the Honduras Coral Reef Fund has raked in millions of dollars from production companies over the years, fishing activities have been further restricted during filming. Reality-show contestants are often allowed to fish, but Garifuna fishermen have been prohibited from approaching areas where they traditionally catch the small fish they use for bait.
The denial of Garifuna territorial rights and the accompanying pattern of human rights violations in Cayos Cochinos led OFRANEH, a Garifuna federation, to file a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2003. The petition originally included the cases of two other communities, but was fragmented into several petitions by the commission. The cases of the Garifuna communities of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra have now moved on to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and two separate cases regarding the cays may not be far behind.
Back in Chachahuate, a naval patrol boat has come and gone, and a cruise ship rests on the horizon. The light turquoise hues of the coralline waters grow darker as the sun begins to set on the archipelago. Three fishermen are coming in for the day, black and red nylon sails guiding their cayucos home. The sea is calm, for now.
Copyright, Truthout.