BALM FOR BOTHA AND SHOTS AT THE SANDINISTAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201170010-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201170010-3
k WALL STREET JOURNAL
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE /1
1 August 1985
Balm for Botha and Shots at the Sandinistas
A British anthropologist once discov-
ered a tribe in Burma that changed its en-
tire conception of the universe according
to the seasons. In the summer months,
when the tribe lived up in the hills, its the-
ology was sanguine and its political philos-
ophy democratic. In the winter, when the
tribe moved to the valley floor, this benign
outlook gave way to a grimmer, more tor-
mented eschatology and to authoritarian
political beliefs. The Reagan administra-
tion, reflecting the sophistication of a civi-
lization "higher" than that of the Burmese
Viewpoint
by Alexander Cockburn
thousand people are already being held,
and the aim of the police is clear: to "de-
capitate" black protest by locking up ev-
ery organizer and leader they can find. If
the fate of one such leader, Matthew Gon-
iwe, is any guide, some of these organizers
will not survive their sojourn in prison. At
the end of June, Mr. Goniwe, one of the
most admired of black leaders, failed to
return from a meeting in Port Elizabeth
and his mutilated and charred body was
subsequently discovered next to a highway
amid the widespread belief that the police
were responsible.
At long last the administration, against
rumbles from Congress about economic
sanctions, has itself begun to make noises
and strike the odd rhetorical pose, while
continuing to insist on the utility of con-
structive engagement. Almost the only
tribe, manages similarly radical shifts in piece of good news is that a State De art-
ment intelligence st -Concluded that
its beliefs without even moving out of present turmoil in u Africa does not
Washington, and in the time frame not of a represent, in the words of a White House
year but of a week and even a single ! official "a revolutionary or a re-revolu-
day.
Take the cases of South Africa and Nic-
aragua. Since the beginning of Mr. Rea-
gan's first term the administration has gal
loped over the South African veldt in pur-
suit of the chimera of "constructive en-
gagement," otherwise known as "quiet
diplomacy" or "negotiation behind the
scenes." Thus liberated from noisy diplo-
macy or public arm-twisting, the white,
racist government of South Africa has in-
tensified its repression of the country's 20
million disenfranchised blacks, managing
to murder 300-400 of them in the past 10
months.
In the face of detailed descriptions of
torture, as of the Rev. Simon Farisani, the
Reagan administration remained compla-
cent. The murder of those detained in
prison aroused little or no concern. When
the South African police shot down un-
armed men, women and children earlier
this year, President Reagan suggested that
these victims had somehow brought it on
themselves. In 1984 the Botha government
promulgated a new constitution that accu-
rately summed up the effect of four years
of "constructive engagement": This con-
stitution provided parliamentary represen-
tation without power for Indians and col-
oreds (by which are meant South Africans
of mixed race) and nothing at all for the 20
million blacks. The sole engagement, con-
structive or otherwise, that the constitution
made with the democratic aspirations of
these blacks was a single clause, that the
"control and administration of black af-
fairs shall. rest with the president"
The emergency announced by the Botha
government on July 20 signaled an intensi-
fication of the repression. More than a
tionary situation." is is the wo m
the masterminds who saw no serious prob-
lems for the shah in 1979 and no serious
military threat from Egypt to-Israel in the
fall of 1973, we may expect Nelson Man-
dela to assume power by Labor Day.
Now mark the abrupt shift in theology
and general world outlook as the adminis-
tration (and, it goes without saying, the ed-
itorial outlook of these pages) swivels from
South Africa to Central America. During
four years of thickening night in South Af-
rica, the Nicaraguan government, by con-
trast, produced a constitution that was at-
tended by the first democratic election in
the nation's history. The torture practiced
by the agents of Anastasio Somoza, a dic-
tator with whom the U.S. had the most
constructive and, indeed, prolonged of en-
gagements, has been ended along with the
death penalty.
But since torture and judicial murder
have been abolished by the Sandinistas,
the U.S., abhorring a vacuum, has made
sure that such practices survive, by financ-
ing and training the contras, whose tor-
tures and murders of Nicaragua's civilian
population have been abundantly docu-
mented. This export of terror into Nicara-
gua by the U.S. has been accompanied by
other forms of destructive engagement, in-
cluding a trade embargo and the blocking
of multilateral aid. And, adding final insult
to extreme injury, the president recently
singled out Nicaragua, along with four
other nations, as one that was itself "ex-
porting" terror. Thus has Nicaragua been
rewarded for its own gestures of construc-
tive engagement with the U.S.
Congress has lately showed itself to be
in sympathy with the president's efforts to
improve the volume of his country's terror
exports. External AFDC (aid to the fami-
lies of dependent contras) has been ap-
proved, along with other gestures of good
will toward the White House such as the
repeal of the Clark Amendment, thus per-
mitting aid to Jonas Savimbi's contras in
the Angolan bush. This vote in Congress
would have left that Burmese tribe dizzy
with admiration. On one day the folk in
Congress talk about sanctions against the
South African government; on the next
they clear the way for funding of a
"proxy" of that government, which has
been of extreme importance in maintain-
ing South Africa's illegal occupation of Na-
mibia. This is the sort of "signal" from
Washington that is greeted with raptures
by Mr. Botha and his men.
If this "signal" was not enough, there is
now a report, by Alfonso Chardy in the Mi-
ami Herald's Washington bureau, that
among officials in the White House and De-
fense and State departments there is being
mooted the idea of a "freedom fighters bu-
reau" to coordinate anti-communist insur-
gents around the world. Preliminary esti-
mates of the cost of this "White Interna-
tional" of counterrevolution tote up to $1
billion, although the rapacious corruption
of the intended recipients-former national
guardsmen in the Nicaraguan contras, Af-
ghan bandits and feudal landlords, allies of
Pol Pot in Cambodia, hirelings of the South
Africans in Mozambique and Angola, to
name but a few-will doubtless multiply
that sum greatly.
Over the months to come we can expect
Burma Syndrome to continue apace. On
one day, howls of denunciation against the
white South African police state, with an
escalation of diplomatic protest; on the
next, hearty endorsement of all the forces
kindred to that police state in philosophy
and behavior, along with avoidance of the
fierce economic measures-serious eco-
nomic sanctions and embargoes-that
might actually impel the Botha regime to
recognize the rights of the majority of the
country's citizens.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201170010-3