Washington silent on attack at U.S. Embassy

Posted on Tue, Jun. 17, 2008
By EDUARDO E. GAMARRA

On June 9, another U.S. Embassy suffered an attack by an enraged mob that threatened to burn the building down if the ambassador was not thrown out of the country. This time the riot occurred in La Paz, Bolivia, and not in a far away Middle Eastern or African capital.Washington has remained silent except to express its gratitude to the Bolivian police for protecting the building and at the same time expressing its support for the protesters’ right to demonstrate without violence. Ambassador Phillip Goldberg, who has been under extreme pressure since his arrival in Bolivia two years ago, failed in his mild-mannered attempt to explain that political asylum is granted not by the Bush administration but by the judiciary, an independent branch of government.

Among other things, the mob — some 80,000 strong according to the Bolivian government, but more like 20,000, according to independent news reports — was protesting against the United States for granting political asylum to former Minister of Interior Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, who has resided in Miami since his flight from Bolivia in 2003.

Far from peaceful

This Miami resident is accused of leading the military against protesters during the October 2003 riots that culminated in the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and in the deaths of 56 people under circumstances that remain unclear. The Evo Morales administration and an international coalition of regime-supporting NGOs have politicized the issue to such a degree that the possibility of an independent investigation into the October events inside Bolivia is impossible.

By the same token, it is equally likely that neither the former president nor Sánchez Berzaín would ever face an impartial judge in Bolivia. Morales has done his utmost to bring the judiciary under the control of his party, the Movimiento al Socialismo. If anything, the protest may have in fact strengthened the claim that led to the granting of political asylum to Sánchez Berzaín in 2007.

The demonstration was far from peaceful. Protesters arrived en masse from the neighboring city of El Alto, where the tragic October 2003 events occurred. The protesters quickly abandoned their peaceful intentions and began to strike police officers guarding the building with sticks, stones, fireworks, dynamite caps and anything else they could get their hands on. At one point a burning tire was hurled at the police unit’s commander. And, soon thereafter, pepper gas was sprayed into the face of the police officers who responded with tear gas to disperse the crowd.

At least a dozen officers reported injuries and another dozen protesters suffered from tear gas poisoning, according to media reports. The violence launched against the police officers was reminiscent of the violence that many of these very same protesters used in October 2003. Roberto de la Cruz and Edgar Patana — two prominent El Alto leaders who were also heavily involved in the October 2003 violence — promised to return until either Goldberg is expelled from Bolivia or the embassy is burned down.

Why stage the riot now?

The next day, Morales summoned Goldberg to explain the asylum decision. After the meeting, the Bolivian government said it found the explanation unsatisfactory.

The government’s reaction, however, is suspect. The decision to grant asylum to Sánchez Berzaín was well known in and out of Bolivia for at least six months. So why stage the riot this past week?

The march itself appears to have been egged on, if not staged, by the Morales government. And, this kind of mob action is not new. During the past two years, the government created and financed »social movements» that have been trucked and bused all over Bolivia to intimidate, harass and even take violent action against government opponents. What is new is that these movements are now taking on the U.S. Embassy.

Should the U.S. government be concerned? The violent protest is the boldest of a number of other anti-U.S. actions since Morales took office in January 2006. The issue is not whether Sánchez Berzaín deserves asylum. That is an issue that U.S. courts have already settled. It is also not a question of correcting the alleged wrongs committed by the United States against Bolivia over the course of history. At issue is whether governments in the region should go around attacking the embassies of countries with which they have significant differences.

Washington must carefully reexamine its options, because its silence following repeated Morales’ provocations — insults, unfounded accusations and now a violent protest — cannot really be considered a policy worthy of the name. It is especially important that members of Congress observe the situation not only through the eyes of groups who have cast Morales as the Bolivian Mandela and the mobs who carry out community justice as »social movements» seeking to redress historical grievances.

Absolute policy vacuum

At the very least, the State Department should summon the Bolivian ambassador to explain his government’s funding and staging of the riot. The department might even consider asking the Organization of American States to look into the incident. In the meantime, Congress should also begin to explore serious options given the absolute policy vacuum that the White House has imposed on the hemisphere.

The leadership in Washington should not wait until the likes of Patana and de la Cruz, who enjoy the support of the Morales government, follow through with threats to burn down an embassy before developing a real policy to face the challenge presented by the Morales government. And, while Washington figures out a response, perhaps others in the region might want to think about how they might respond if their embassies are attacked by angry mobs mobilized by the host government.

Eduardo A. Gamarra is a professor of political science at Florida International University.