PERSONAL SECURITY A PANAMA PROBLEM

By Bob Van Leer

  (PANAMA CITY, PANAMA, OCT. 19, 1990) - "That's a bunch of crap". Col. Jack Prior, deputy commander of the U.S. Military Support Group, Southern Command, U.S. Army, lost his cool when I asked him to comment on reports from Panamanians that Gen. Noriega and his Panama Defense Force (PDF) were nurtured by the U.S. military.

  Prior, and his public relations aide responded that we don't have anyone on the payroll to violate human rights. Prior acknowledged that the Panama Canal treaty required the U.S. military to assist in readying Panama forces to take over protection of the canal.

  He said the U.S. did give the PDF training but in July, 1989, all assistance was suspended. Prior said in recent years Libya was training the PDF. Opinions from our group after the session were that the colonel protested too much.

  Our only meeting today was with Col. Prior at Ft. Amador in a building turned over to Panama in 1979 as part of Pres. Jimmy Carter's Panama Canal treaty. The building is just across the street from the U.S. Southern Command headquarters. Southcom, as the Southern Command is know, is responsible for Central America, south of Mexico, and all of South America.

  Bullet holes, patched with cement, show along the building. All the buildings we have seen so far turned over to Panama by the U.S. show signs of neglect of maintenance. Prior said his group is charged with assisting Panama to move to a democratic society. His group was at 1800 persons and is now down to 375 and is to be down to 24 by the end of the year and then go out of business.

  Prior is optimistic about Panama, saying the Panamanians are a sophisticated people with an affluent upper class and upper middle class. The Indarra administration has good long-term vision and the economy is showing 6-7 percent growth now. Prior said the population in general is very pro-U.S. he said a referendum of the people just after the "Just Cause" invasion would have approved statehood for Panama. Prior looked for a bright future for the country if squabbling can be avoided. He doesn't believe there is any organized plot against the government.

  He criticized U.S. housing rebuilding efforts as being too slow. He feels the people in the Albrook hangars are getting too comfortable. He said the housing and care they are getting is superior to where they came from. Prior's estimate of Panamanian casualties during "Just Cause" is "somewhere around 500". He said there was military action in only a very few places.

Cleaning up PDF

  A controversial policy is the way the former PDF is being dealt with. He asked the rhetorical questions, "What do you do with 12,000 men whose only skill is knowing how to pull a trigger?" Of the PDF leadership, 30 are under arrest.

  All at the general, colonel and lt. colonel level have been purged. Purges of lower ranks vary from 57 percent of majors to 17 percent of sub lieutenants and vetting continues. He said basically the effort is to change the PDF to a civilian police force.

  His group is working on civilian problems including schools, hospitals and other services. He called the work improving schools "a winner", with a lot of reward for a small expenditure. (The Panama education ministry earlier complimented the military's work with schools.)

  Questioned about U.S. troops trashing three floors of our hotel, the Marriott, he said Noriega's men were known to be in the hotel and there are procedures for going into rooms where you may expect hostilities.

  One is to throw in a hand grenade first. Prior commented dryly, "This tends to damage the furniture".

On To Colon

  After the Southcom meeting we took a bus tour across the isthmus to Colon, the Atlantic terminal of the canal. The road starts by paralleling the canal but then climbs through jungle to the continental divide at 365 meters before dropping down to canal level again.

   The canal is not a ditch dug across the isthmus. A dam was built on the Chagres River forming, at that time, the largest man-made lake in the world. The lake is most of the canal. At each end are locks to raise and lower ships 85 feet to lake level.

  Panama won't be able to gain much tourist traffic, other than cruise ships through the canal, until it solves the problem of personal security. Our bus driver would not let us walk around the streets of Colon. He stopped the bus directly in front of a restaurant and could only go in, eat, and immediately board the bus again. He said Colon is worse than Panama City.

  On the return trip we took a side detour to Madden Dam which forms the lake that supplies water to operate the canal. (The canal locks are operated entirely by gravity water flow - no pumping is needed.) Our driver stopped at a view point but would not let us get out to take pictures. He said we were isolated and it would be dangerous. Driving through a good residential area in Colon we saw two private security guards with shotguns doing beat patrols in mid-afternoon.

  A decorative sight along the road was dozens of purple and gold robed penitents making a pilgrimage to Puertobello Church. Our driver said they were going to the church for a ceremony Sunday to the Black Christ saint who is believed to have washed up on the shore. The driver said they will all gather at the church Sunday when the image of the saint will be paraded through town at the head of a processional of the colorfully garbed penitents.

Jan. School Vacation

  School children were out early and our guide said they were taking exams. The school vacation here is January, February, and March.

  Panama has no paper money, U.S. dollars are used. Panama does have coins, called Balboas, which are issued in denominations the same as U.S. Coins and are interchangeable with them. Either kind of coins operates coin machines. But this doesn't help when there are signs on the hotel Coke machines saying the machines are not stocked because of a shortage of cans.

  This evening our group gathered at the hotel for a final critique. Tomorrow we head for Miami and home. As we were to gather, the lights in this hotel when off.

  Of the three hotels we have stayed in, all three have had power failures. This one lasted only an hour.

  Mike Buffington of Georgia had compiled statistics on our tour. He said we had gotten information from 36 people in 20 different activities during our tour.

  There were more physical problems among members of the tour than any one we have gone on before. Of our 19 members, 14 have had problems, either diarrhea or colds, mostly the former.

  The consensus was that this was a successful tour with a few problems that were structural. The two day stop in Venezuela was too short and another day would have been helpful.

  A real question to me, as we leave Panama, is what will happen to the canal if it is turned over, as scheduled by treaty, to the Panamanians on the first day of the year 2000. Not much we have seen gives a whole lot of confidence in Panama being able to operate the canal by itself.