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Documents declassified by the United States earlier this week on its CIA-led Operation Condor revealed that Argentina was pushing the U.S. to lead an operation in Africa against Marxist forces.
OPINION:
Operation Condor: Cross-Border Disappearance and Death
Plan Condor was the term for a 1970s covert operation to rid U.S.-backed dictatorships of progressive opponents or to topple progressive governments outright in South America.
One of the released documents, a CIA intelligence memo titled, "Southern Cone Perceptions of U.S. Policies," said that Argentina blamed “Western weakness” on the lack of intervention in Africa to counter Cuba and the Soviet interference.
Argentina had “recently discussed taking a more active role in the nonaligned movement to counter Cuban activities,” said the memo. “The hardline attitude is taken by Army General (Orlando Ramon) Agosti, who commented earlier this year that Argentina's ‘armed forces wiped out a Marxist bridgehead without anybody's help or advice’ and that something should be done about Africa.”
Argentina was a part of the Non-Aligned Movement, formed to counter the two poles of the Cold War, from 1973 — shortly before the dictatorship seized power in a coup — until 1991. While Argentina is not known to have interfered in Africa, the U.S. did intervene in East Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya, as well as supporting counter-revolutionary forces in Angola and southern Africa.
According to a press release announcing the documents, the National Security Archive — an independent non-governmental research institute and library in Washington, D.C. — said the disclosures are among 500 pages on repression in Argentina during the military dictatorship in that country beginning in 1976.
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