Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Revolutionary Armed Forces
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
Escudo FAR.gif
guide
Commander in Chief : Raúl Castro
Defense Minister: Leopoldo Cintra Frias
Military leadership: Headquarters of the armed forces
Military strength
Active soldiers: 70,000 (2013)
Conscription: 2 years, men
Resilient population: Men (16-49): 2,998,201

Women (16–49): 2,919,107 (2010)

Eligibility for military service: 17–28 years
Share of soldiers in the total population: 0.76% (2011)
household
Military budget: US $ 1.5 billion (2006)
Share of gross domestic product : 3.8% (2006)
history
Founding: 2nd December 1956

The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias ( FAR , Spanish for " Revolutionary Armed Forces ") are the armed forces of Cuba . The administrative unit in the Council of Ministers is the Ministry of Defense Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (MINFAR).

history

The name was first used in the fall of 1959 for the Cuban military in the new state, after the armed forces that existed before the revolution were merged with the victorious rebel army and completely restructured under the command of the new Defense Minister Raúl Castro . Later on, Cuba acted as an intervention force in African proxy wars typical of that era. Between 1975 and 1991, it sent around 430,000 soldiers to Angola . No other Latin American country has ever been militarily active on other continents in this intensive form. Since the early 1990s, the Cuban armed forces have been reduced from around 300,000 to around 70,000 men. In 2011, an arms trade with North Korea became known because weapons smuggled on a North Korean ship had been found in Panama that were originally intended to have been delivered to Cuba.

Since the early 1990s, however, the Cuban armed forces have been reduced from around 300,000 to around 70,000 men. During their last big parade on the occasion of Fidel Castro's 80th birthday in December 2006, the elderly were elderly.

organization

Naval War Flag of the Navy of Cuba

The army is now divided into an army with approx. 58,000, an air force with approx. 10,000 and a navy with approx. 3,000 soldiers. There is also a paramilitary vigilante group , the Militias for Territorial Defense ( MTT - Milicias de Tropas Territoriales ) with around 1 million members, which are integrated into the military forces in times of war.

Calls

Domestic operations

To combat internal opposition and to put down unrest , the FAR were used primarily in its early years, when numerous former revolutionary fighters rose against the communist Castro government and led an unsuccessful guerrilla fight from the Escambray Mountains . Even after the unrest in Havana in 1994 , there were considerations about the use of the military to combat rioting.

In 1961, the FAR fended off a US-backed, amateurish attempt at intervention by Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs .

Assignments abroad

The Cuban army made a name for itself in the Cold War through military advisers and, until the 1980s, through combat missions, such as in Angola or in Grenada , Ethiopia , Syria and Mozambique . As a power to intervene in this African proxy war between the political blocs in the Cold War, Cuba sent a total of around 430,000 soldiers to Angola between 1975 and 1991.

In the 1980s, the FAR were instrumental in building the Sandinista People's Army ; In 1985 there were a good 1250 Cuban military instructors in Nicaragua . From 1984 to 1986 General Arnaldo Ochoa was the top Cuban military advisor in Managua .

Until around 1990, Cuba's army was one of the largest and best-equipped armed forces in Latin America and all developing countries .

equipment

The military's equipment consists mainly of outdated Soviet weapons. According to the government, Cuba received $ 30 billion in arms from Moscow, mostly in gifts strategically motivated by rivalry with the United States. Due to its high foreign debt, Cuba has not yet been able to initiate a fundamental modernization.

In 2006 over 50 MiGs of the types 21 , 23 and 29 as well as some Antonov transport machines and helicopters were in use. Twelve MiG-21bis and some MiG-21UM are still in service today. The MiG29 is used in the variant MiG-29A (2 pieces) and MiG-29UB (3 pieces) (as of 2018).

The army has old Soviet T55 and T62 tanks.

Role in business

Since the end of support from the Soviet Union and the other Eastern Bloc countries around 1990, the armed forces have developed into the central player in the Cuban economy, which initially served primarily to secure their financing. Military companies have formed numerous joint ventures with foreign investors, e. B. in tourism , but also run large farms. These structures are outside of central government planning and are managed with greater economic freedom. According to observers, the military-entrepreneurial complex forms its own “state within a state”. In 2011, the Economist estimates that around 40 percent of economic power was under the control of the armed forces, whose central holding, GAESA, is headed by Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja , a son-in-law of President Raúl Castro . In connection with the lifting of the US sanctions in 2016/17, more recent sources assumed that the military accounted for 60 percent of the economy. The holding company includes the tourism company Gaviota , the supermarket chain Tiendas de Recuperacion de Divisas (TRD) and the Banco Metropolitano , which handles the holding's finances. In addition, the Ministry of Sugar, Fisheries and Transport, Habanos SA and the computer import company Grupo de Electrónica de Cuba are or have been run by senior military officials.

The procurement of foreign currency was part of the military's activities as early as the 1980s: the best-known example was Cuba's involvement in the international drug trade, for which the popular war hero General Arnaldo Ochoa was sentenced to death in a highly controversial trial in 1989 .

Role in politics

High representatives of the military are represented in the most important political positions even more clearly than in business. This phenomenon, which has already been evident since the gradual ousting of the initially civilian government by Fidel Castro in the course of 1959, has been intensified by new appointments since his brother Raúl took over the presidency. Both the Council of Ministers and the Politburo of the Communist Party consist mainly of members of the armed forces.

Similarly named troops in other countries

In Guatemala there was a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement of the same name that was active during the civil war. The name overlap can be explained not least by the support of Cuba.

Later, other guerrillas followed it up when they came up with a name. B. the FARC in Colombia .

literature

Web links

Commons : Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

Ted A. Henken: Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook , ABC-CLIO, 2007, ISBN 978-1851099849 ( Kindle edition):

  1. ↑ Item 2667
  2. ↑ Item 2700
  3. ↑ Item 2710

Other:

  1. ^ The World Factbook
  2. ↑ Maniobras militares en Cuba, que se prepara ante "agresividad" de Bush ( Memento of January 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Europa Press in Cubanet.org of December 2, 2004
  3. ↑ Michael Zeuske : Insel der Extremes - Kuba im 20. Jahrhundert , 2nd edition (2004), page 331.
  4. ^ A b Peter Gaupp, San José: Raúl Castro's antiques | NZZ. Retrieved April 10, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Cuba necesita modernizar sus arsenales de época soviética pero carece de recursos (Spanish) in RIA Novosti of May 4, 2011, accessed on May 21, 2011
  6. ^ The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS): The Military Balance 2018 . 1st edition. Routledge, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-85743-955-7 (English, January 2018).
  7. ↑ Bert Hoffmann : How reformable is Cuba's socialism? (PDF; 218 kB) Study for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , May 2011, accessed on May 21, 2011
  8. ^ Corruption in Cuba: The cleanup continues (English) In: The Economist, May 5, 2011, accessed May 21, 2011
  9. ↑ Cuba: As in the Cold War , Die Zeit, June 17, 2017
  10. ^ The Cuban Military in the Economy ( Memento of March 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) , Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami , accessed on October 11, 2014