Some U.S. and Canadian diplomats who were in Havana between 2016 and 2018 are still not fully recovered from ailments they suffered

▲ Building of the U.S. Embassy in Cubadepartment of State].

ANALYSIS / Eduardo Villa Corta

Three years ago, U.S. diplomatic staff stationed in Cuba began to feel physical discomfort supposedly caused by strange sounds to which they had apparently been exposed; Washington spoke of a ˝sonic attack˝, but although the symptoms suffered by those affected have been determined to be anomalous, it has not been possible to establish what caused them. However, although the symptoms suffered by those affected have been determined to be anomalous, it has not been possible to establish what caused them. Was it really an attack? Who was behind it? We review here the main hypotheses and conjectures that have been made, and point out their weaknesses.

In late 2016 and early 2017, several U.S. diplomats stationed in Havana, as well as members of their families, reported suffering from dizziness, vertigo and sharp pains in their ears that could be caused by strange sounds to which they had been exposed. According to their testimonies, the sounds came from a specific direction, and they had heard them in their own residences or, in some cases, in hotel rooms, while people staying in neighboring houses or adjoining rooms had not heard any special sounds. The phenomenon also affected Canadian diplomats in the Cuban capital. In all, some forty people were treated for these symptoms.

Acoustic attack

Echoing the facts reported by its staff in Cuba, in mid-2017 the U.S. State department stated that the symptoms could have been caused by a sonic attack by the Cuban government directed against diplomats and their families. In October 2017, President Donald Trump directly accused Havana: "I believe Cuba is manager; yes, I do."

At the beginning of 2018, the State department issued a travel alertstatement not to travel to Cuba due to a possible health crisis and withdrew a large part of the staff of the diplomatic mission statement in Havana, reducing its activity to the minimum possible. At that time, a total of 24 Americans had been affected.

At the time, the Canadian government also indicated that its diplomats had experienced similar complaints. Ottawa decided to evacuate the families of its employees in Cuba and in early 2019 proceeded to reduce the embassy staff in the face of what appeared to be the appearance of a fourteenth case.

The Cuban government denied from the outset being involved in any harassment operation against the U.S. or Canada. ˝There is no test about the cause of the reported ailments, nor is there any evidence to suggest that these health problems have been caused by an attack of any kind˝, Havana assured. Raul Castro's government offered its cooperation in research the facts, with nothing coming to light that could explain the case. No devices that could have provoked the sounds appeared.

Adding confusion to the status, at least two US diplomats stationed in China, busy at the consulate general in Guangzhou, the largest that the US has in the country, presented in early 2018 also the symptoms already described. Washington evacuated them and issued a health warning about missions in mainland China.

The Associated Press published in October 2017 a recording of the alleged sounds causing the reported ailment, and indicated that government agencies had been unable to determine the nature of the noise and explain its relationship to the bodily disorders caused. Months later, he noted that internal FBI reports did not even establish that there had been an "attack". Other media highlighted the lack of cooperation in the research, due to jurisdictional zeal, between the State department , the FBI and the CIA.

Symptoms of "Havana syndrome".

A medical team from the University of Pennsylvania, at the request of the U.S. Government, examined 21 people affected by what the press began to call "Havana syndrome". The research, initially published in March 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), indicated that most of the patients reported problems with report, concentration and balance, and determined that they appeared to have suffered injuries to extensive brain networks.

Further data from the same team extended to 40 patients, released in July 2019, led to the conclusion that the diplomats had experienced some craniocerebral trauma. The results of the MRI scans, compared with those of a group healthy individuals, revealed differences in the white and gray Issue of the brain, in the integrity of the microstructures of the cerebellum and in the functional connectivity of the subnetworks for hearing and spatial vision, but not for executive functions.

This report concluded that the diplomatic staff had been physically injured, although it could not determine the cause. It also noted that the patients do not experience a usual recovery, as they are not recovering quickly from the symptoms, as in other cases of similar "contusions" or ear problems.

IF IT WASN'T AN ATTACK, WHAT WAS IT?

As no clear cause has been established as to what caused the ills suffered by the U.S. and Canadian diplomatic staff and some of their family members, the very reality of an attack has been called into question. Although several alternative explanations have been put forward, none of them are fully convincing.

1) Collective hysteria

Formulation. Some neurologists and sociologists, such as Robert Bartholomew, have suggested that it could be a case of mass hysteria. Given the pressure to which some of the diplomats working in very unfriendly environments are subjected, and the endogamic relationship in which they live, living almost exclusively among themselves, it could explain a mutual conviction of an external attack that even has somatic consequences.

Weak spot. Both the research of the University of Pennsylvania and the State department doctor, Charles Rosenfarb, who appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee , came to rule out that the symptoms suffered by the diplomats were due to a mere mental mechanism. It is very difficult that about sixty people, including Americans and Canadians, convinced each other of an aggression of this subject and then almost all of them developed the same brain lesions.

2) Microwave

Formulation. The researcher team at the University of Pennsylvania, while not pointing to any possible cause of the ailments, did not rule out certain assumptions, such as that of microwave affectation. This aspect was insisted upon by research published in 2018 in the journal Neural Computation, which considered the symptoms consistent with exhibition to electromagnetic microwave (RF/MW) radiation.

Weak point. Not all the symptoms shown by patients could be a consequence of exhibition radiation of this subject, which also has a diverging literature on its effects on the human body. Moreover, it is not known that there is a microwave weapon that can affect the brain.

3) Ultrasound

Formulation. A team of computer experts at the University of Michigan suggested in 2018 that it could be a case of exhibition to some ultrasound subject , perhaps coming from malfunctioning listening equipment that mixed multiple ultrasonic signals.

Weak point. The recording of one of the sound episodes - the sample released by AP - is not sufficient to determine its nature. It is also possible that the sound was somewhat different in other cases.

4) Crickets

Formulation. A research from the Universities of California-Berkeley and Lincoln, from the existing sound sample , considered in January 2019 that the possible cause of the attacks was made by cricketsspecifically crickets Anurogryllus muticus. The research was a comparative study between the sound emitted by this variant of crickets and the sample of one of the acoustic episodes in Havana.

Weak point. The sound perceived by the diplomats was directional, so it was not heard by neighboring people. If they had been crickets in their natural environment, the sound would have spread around.

5) Neurotoxins

Formulation. A May 2019 joint study by two Canadian research centers attributed the symptoms suffered by diplomats to exhibition to neurotoxins from pesticides used to spray mosquitoes, a common internship in embassy buildings.

Weak point. The diplomats affected related the beginning of their physical discomfort to situations experienced in their own residences or in hotel rooms, where there was no fumigation.

IF IT WAS AN ATTACK, WHO DID IT?

Given that the previous explanations do not seem entirely solid, the US Government maintains the hypothesis of an attack. If it really happened, who was behind it? Here, too, there are various conjectures.

1) Castro regime

The first option considered, assumed in principle by the US given the public accusations made from Washington, has been to attribute the alleged attacks to the Cuban regime itself. With them, Havana would try to maintain pressure on the Americans, in spite of the formal reestablishment of diplomatic relations, with the goal of marking each other's territory.

Weak point. The incidents began to occur during the Obama Administration, in a context of a ˝honeymoon˝ marked by the reopening of embassies and Barack Obama's visit to Havana. The normal thing is that at the end of 2016, in view of the U.S. elections, the Castro regime would not want to give reasons to the next U.S. president to twist the diplomatic line opened by Obama. It could make sense that after Donald Tump's later revocation of the previous openness measures, Cuba would want to punish the new Administration, but not before seeing the direction it would take; in any case, the attacks would only justify the hard line followed by Trump, which does not benefit the island.

2) A sector of Castroism

Fidel Castro was attributed with an unaccommodating attitude towards his brother Raul's decision to reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States. Although he died in November 2016, people around him might have tried to torpedo that rapprochement, convinced that hostility with Washington was the best way to ensure the survival of the regime as conceived by its founder.

Weak point. Although Fidel Castro's reluctance towards rapprochement with the U.S. is true, it is difficult to think that the most conservative sector within Castroism would dare to boycott so directly Raul Castro's fundamental political line. Another thing is that, after he handed over the presidency of Cuba to Miguel Díaz-Canel in April 2018, some sectors within the regime could make internal movements to send certain messages, but the changeover occurred when most of the acoustic episodes had already taken place.

3) A third country (Russia, China)

The third option would be that a third country generated the attacks. American intelligence indicates that the most viable option in this case would be Russia. Moscow has been keen to return to operating in the Caribbean, as in the Cold War, and aggression against U.S. diplomats in Cuba would fit in with its strategy. It has also been suggested that China might want to repay Washington in its backyard with the same harassment that the Chinese believe they feel from the US in their nearest seas.

Weak point. The return of Russia to the Caribbean is certainly documented, and it is conceivable that Moscow could have promoted a punctual action against some specific goal , but it seems difficult that it would have sustained over time an operation that harms Cuba's sovereignty. As for China's presence in the US neighborhood, it is a less confrontational move than the one carried out by Russia. For the rest, if Beijing had chosen foreign soil in order to better erase the traces of an action against US diplomats, then the cases recorded in Guangzhou would not have occurred.

Trump has maintained several of the measures passed by Obama, but has conditioned their implementation

Donald Trump has not Closed the embassy opened by Barack Obama in Havana and has kept to the letter of the rules allowing only certain travel by Americans to the island. However, his imposition of not establishing commercial or financial relations with companies controlled by the Cuban military-police apparatus has affected the trade Issue . But it has been above all his anti-Castro rhetoric that has returned the relationship almost to the Cold War.

▲Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, at the baseball game they attended during the U.S. president's 2016 visit to Cuba [Pete Souza/White House].

article / Valeria Vásquez

For more than half a century, relations between the United States and Cuba were marked by political tensions. The last years of Barack Obama's presidency marked a significant change with the historic reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the approval of certain measures of U.S. openness toward Cuba. The White House then hoped that the climate of growing cooperation would boost the modest economic reforms that Havana had begun to implement earlier and that all this would eventually bring political transformations to the island.

The Cuban government's lack of concessions in subject of freedoms and human rights, however, was used by Donald Trump to reverse, upon his arrival to power, several of the measures approved by his predecessor, although it has been above all his anti-Castro rhetoric that has created a new hostile environment between Washington and Havana.

Obama era: détente  

In his second term, Barack Obama began secret negotiations with Cuba that culminated in the advertisement in December 2014 of an agreement for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The respective embassies were reopened in July 2015, thus overcoming an anomaly dating back to 1961, when the Eisenhower Administration decided to break relations with the Antillean neighbor in view of the communist orientation of the Cuban Revolution. In March 2016, Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years.

Beyond the diplomatic sphere, Obama also sought an economic opening towards the island. Since lifting the decades-old US embargo required the approval of congress, where he faced a Republican majority, Obama introduced certain liberalizing measures by means of presidential decrees. Thus, he eased travel restrictions (he hardly changed the letter of the law, but did relax his internship) and authorized raising the Issue of purchases that Americans could make in Cuba.

For Obama, the economic embargo was a failed policy, as it had not achieved its purpose of ending the Cuban dictatorship and, consequently, had prolonged it. For this reason, he was in favor of a change of strategy, in the hope that the normalization of relations - diplomatic and, progressively, economic - would help to improve Cuba's social status and contribute, in the medium or long term, to the change that the economic embargo had failed to bring about. According to Obama, the embargo had had a negative impact, as issues such as the limitation of tourism or the lack of foreign direct investment had affected the Cuban people more than the Castro nomenklatura.

A new economic relationship

Faced with the impossibility of lifting the economic embargo on Cuba, Obama opted for presidential decrees that opened up trade relations between the two countries. Several measures were aimed at facilitating better access to the Internet for Cubans, which should help to promote democratizing demands in the country. Thus, Washington authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to establish business in Cuba.

In the financial field, the United States allowed its banks to open accounts in Cuba, which facilitated transactions. In addition, Cuban citizens residing on the island could receive payments in the U.S. and send them back to their country.

Another of the measures adopted was the lifting of some of the travel restrictions. As required by U.S. legislation, Obama maintained the restriction that Americans can only travel to Cuba under various circumstances, all linked to certain missions: academic, humanitarian, religious support trips... Although purely tourist trips were still excluded, the lack of control that the U.S. authorities deliberately stopped applying meant a considerable opening of the hand.

In addition to authorizing banking transactions related to such travel, to cater to the anticipated increase in tourists it was announced that several U.S. carriers such as JetBlue and American Airlines had received approval to fly to Cuba. For the first time in 50 years, in late November 2016 a U.S. commercial aircraft landed in Havana.

The U.S. president also eliminated the expense limit for U.S. visitors in the purchase of staff products (particularly cigars and rum). He also promoted partnership in medical research and approved the importation of medicines produced in Cuba.

In addition, Obama repealed the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, whereby Cubans arriving on U.S. soil were automatically granted political asylum, while only those intercepted by Cuba at sea were returned to the island.

Trump's review

Since his election campaign, Donald Trump showed clear signals about the direction his relations with Cuba would take if he became president. Trump announced that he would reverse the opening towards Cuba carried out by Obama, and as soon as he arrived at the White House he began to strengthen Washington's anti-Castro speech . The new president said he was willing to negotiate a "better agreement" with the island, but on the condition that the Cuban government showed concrete progress towards the democratization of the country and respect for human rights. Trump raised the prospect of free elections and the release of political prisoners, knowing that the Cuban regime would not accede to these requests. In the absence of a response from Havana, Trump insisted on his previous proposals: maintenance of the embargo (which in any case the Republican majority in congress is not willing to lift) and reversal of some of Obama' s decisions.

In reality, Trump has formally maintained several of his predecessor' s measures, although the ban on doing business with companies controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which dominate a good part of Cuban economic life, and the respect for the letter in travel restrictions have reduced the contact between the US and Cuba that had begun to occur at the end of the Obama era.

Trump has ratified the repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy decided by Obama and has maintained the diplomatic relations reestablished by Obama (although he has paralyzed the appointment of an ambassador). It has also respected the timid commercial and financial opening operated by the Democratic president, but as long as the economic transactions do not take place with companies linked to the Cuban army, intelligence and security services. In this regard, on November 8, 2017, the Treasurydepartment published a list of companies in these sectors with which no U.S. contact subject is allowed.

In terms of travel, the restricted assumptions for American travel to the island are maintained, but in contrast to the blind eye adopted by the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration requires that Americans who want to go to Cuba must do so on tours conducted by American companies, accompanied by a representative of the group sponsor and with the obligation to communicate the details of their activities. Treasury rules and regulations require that stays be in private hostels (casas particulares), meals in restaurants run by individuals (paladares) and shopping in stores run by citizens (cuentapropistas), with the purpose of "channeling funds" away from the Cuban army and weakening communist policy.

Reduced tourist expectations led already at the end of 2017 to several US airlines having cancelled all their flights to the Caribbean island. Cuban Economics had counted on a large increase in U.S. tourists and yet now had to face, without higher revenues, the serious problem of falling shipments of cheap oil from Venezuela.

Future of diplomatic relations

The greatest tension between Washington and Havana, however, has not been in the commercial or economic sphere, but in the diplomatic sphere. Following a series of apparent "sonic attacks" on U.S. diplomats in Cuba, the United States withdrew a large part of its staff in Cuba and expelled 15 diplomats from the Cuban embassy in Washington. In addition, the State department issued a travel advisory against travel to the island. Although the origin of these alleged attacks, which the Cuban authorities deny having carried out, has not been clarified, it could be the accidental side effect of an espionage attempt, which would have eventually caused brain damage to the persons being monitored.

The future of relations between the two countries will depend on the direction taken by Trump's policies and the pace of reforms that the new Cuban president may establish. Given that not many changes are foreseen in Miguel Díaz-Canel's management , at least as long as Raúl Castro lives, Havana's immobility in the political and economic fields will probably continue to run up against Trump's anti-revolutionary rhetoric.