Uncomfortable Occupation

Two weeks after U.S. military forces invaded Panama, the first American troops were pulled out of the country as two batteries of Army artillery, 141 soldiers, returned home to Fort Ord, near Monterey. The Bush Administration publicized the withdrawal to show that the process of getting our troops out of Panama is under way. But the sad truth is that U.S. soldiers are likely to be in Panama a long time, and the continued occupation runs the risk of counteracting the good that came from the brief war that toppled Gen. Noriega.

In point of fact, the military side of the Panama invasion was handled with relative ease. Resistance by Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces and civilian militia ended within a few days, an indication of how shallow the thuggish dictator’s popular support was. Unfortunately, the looting and chaos that followed the collapse of the PDF, which also controlled all of Panama’s police, created a challenge that few military planners had anticipated. So we now see the incongruous image of American soldiers, in jungle gear and faces painted for camouflage, patroling the streets of Panama City like traffic cops.

American soldiers are not trained to be cops. Or diplomats, for that matter, as should be obvious after several troubling incidents that occurred after military resistance ended and Noriega found refuge in the papal nunciature in Panama City. The initial American response to finding Noriega--surrounding the building, shooting out the street lights around it, then blaring loud music at the facility at all hours to disorient the occupants--was military. It took a couple of days for U.S. officials to realize that what they had on their hands was a sensitive diplomatic standoff that could better be handled by lowering the volume a bit.

This past weekend’s raid by American troops on the residence of Nicaragua’s ambassador to Panama was another case of military priorities taking precedence when the rules of diplomacy should have prevailed. Whatever suspicions U.S. officials may have harbored towards Nicaraguan diplomats in Panama, these diplomats are entitled to the same protection and courtesy that U.S. diplomats demand, and receive, in trouble spots all over the world. The military raid on the Nicaraguan ambassador’s residence was such an egregious violation of those rules that even President Bush was forced to publicly call it “a screw-up.” But the raid was only the most publicized of several incidents in which American troops in Panama took actions that, while understandable in strictly military terms (such as stopping and searching diplomatic vehicles and detaining diplomatic personnel for brief periods of time) could undermine the long-term goals of U.S. policy, not just in Panama but elsewhere around the world.

The primary goals in Panama are political and diplomatic--getting the new government of President Guillermo Endara to work and getting the Endara government accepted as legitimate by other countries. The dilemma that the Administration faces is that an overwhelming U.S. presence is both helpful and a hindrance.

Endara might not survive without the United States behind him. Panama is all but broke after years of Noriega’s thievery and a U.S. economic boycott. The government money Endara has at his disposal comes from accounts controlled by U.S. officials. American troops keep law and order in most parts of Panama because the effort to build the remnants of the PDF into a new police agency, called the Popular Force, has been halting at best.

Yet the longer the United States props Endara up, the more other nations, and especially Panama’s wary Latin American neighbors, will regard him as an American puppet. And the longer U.S. forces stay in Panama, the more they dissipate the genuine relief, even gratitude, with which the troops were greeted by Panamanians in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.