HAVANA: Six months ago on Wednesday, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro stunned the world by announcing an end to their nations’ half-century of official hostility.

US travellers, politicians and executives flew to Cuba as if a Caribbean Berlin Wall had crumbled. Some business-backed interest groups lobbied Congress to end a more than 50-year trade embargo. American soccer and basketball stars played for excited crowds in Havana. The website Airbnb expanded to the island, listing thousands of private homes available for rent across the country.

US and Cuban diplomats went hunting for additional office space, readied flagpoles and ordered office supplies that say “embassy” instead of “interests section”. Yet, even as observers say a deal is imminent, a half year later the two governments have not taken the important but symbolic step of turning their “interests” offices into formal embassies in Havana and Washington.

“It shows you the complexity of this process,” said Jesus Arboleya, a political scientist and former Cuban diplomat in Washington. “If the first step has taken this much time, imagine the conflicts that can develop after it gets started.”

No embassy deal has been announced despite four rounds of wrangling over US diplomats’ freedom to travel around Cuba and import supplies. The issues on the table after the embassies open are far more complicated. They include talks on human rights; demands for compensation for confiscated American properties in Havana and damages to Cuba from the embargo; and possible cooperation on law enforcement that includes the touchy topic of US fugitives sheltering in Havana.

Plenty of people and groups oppose any US-Cuba warming, including some dissidents on the island, anti-Castro Cuban-Americans and some members of Congress who believe the new policy essentially rewards Communist leaders for decades of human rights abuses. Presidential Republican candidates like Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush of Florida have both come out firmly against rapprochement.

But polls say detente has strong public backing in both countries, leading many to believe the process is irreversible. “Even if it takes a while, for whatever reason, the embassy will open and relations will be re-established,” said David Fuentes, a parking lot attendant in Havana. “It just seems inevitable to me.”

Senator Jeff Flake, a key Republican advocate of better ties, met with Cuba’s foreign minister and first vice president over the weekend and told The Associated Press that an embassy opening date is “imminent”.

But some advocates fear the broader process is moving too slowly to guarantee that a future US president won’t be able to reverse Obama’s loosening of the trade embargo on Cuba, just as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did after openings by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Robert Muse, a Washington attorney specialising in US law on Cuba, said Obama deserves credit for his bold and unexpected opening with Cuba in December, but is also justly criticised for letting the relationship get bogged down in the minutiae of negotiations over embassy operations. “I would like to see the president maintain a pace of normalisation that will get him to his goal. The goal is the legacy of normalised relations between the US and Cuba,” Muse said. “You can’t negotiate your way to normalisation with Cuba in the time that Obama has to get this done.”

Advocates of normalisation face powerful brakes on progress in both countries. In Washington, anti-Castro lawmakers have attached riders to appropriations bills that would roll back Obama’s loosening of trade and travel. In Cuba, aging leaders fear swift, uncontrolled change that would cost them power and spawn disorder in a country that dreads the violence and inequality scarring some regional neighbours. That fear is heightened by the United States’ long history of trying to topple Castro and his brother Fidel. “I think we’re just realising the degree to which they spent 40-plus years with this being as deep into their DNA as imaginable,” said James Williams, head of Engage Cuba, a corporate-backed bipartisan group that launched pro-engagement lobbying efforts Tuesday. “We’re not just going to turn the lights on and it’s going to be fixed overnight.”

A few real links between the US and Cuba have nonetheless been forged since the announcement by Obama and Castro. US travellers can book lodging in Cubans’ homes through Airbnb; the cost of calls to Cuba dropped after a new international telecommunications deal; and a New York research centre will run a clinical trial of a Cuban lung-cancer treatment. The US has approved new ferry services from Florida to Cuba and opened the door to direct air service between the two countries.Amid those changes, there is a new sense of possibility and optimism among many in Cuba. But it hasn’t kept thousands more Cuban migrants than usual from heading to the United States to take advantage of preferential immigration rights they fear may soon disappear.

While US businesses say Cuba is showing itself to be receptive to new projects, it has yet to take any real measures to make them possible. Sarah Stephens, head of the pro-engagement Center for Democracy in the Americas and leader of dozens of US congressional trips to the island, said Cuban officials want to be equal partners in the future of a country that they believe should be more than just a market where American business can do what it wants. “It’s certainly the message that the Cuban officials are giving: ‘That if you want to engage with us, it’s going to take a while,’” she said.—AP

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2015

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