Here Come Europe's Cubans

The Honecker regime offers "brains rather than bodies"

They fly wounded Afghan soldiers out for treatment to their own sophisticated medical facilities. They supply the Vietnamese with everything from military hardware to sewing machines. They advise and train Ethiopia's troops and police and provide the machinery for its new security and intelligence apparatus.

These ubiquitous benefactors of Third World countries are neither the Soviets nor the Cubans but the East Germans. In manifold ways that have been little noticed in the West, the German Democratic Republic has been extending its political reach around the globe. At least 5,000 military and civilian cadres are operating in more than a dozen different nations, dispensing an estimated $20 million in annual military aid and an additional $300 million in economic assistance. Western intelligence agencies discount rumors that East German soldiers and pilots have periodically fought alongside southern African rebels or with the troops of Marxist states like Angola. But no one disputes the fact that East Germany's noncombat military role--as a provider of materiel and advisers--by now equals that of Cuba, and that its political role is even more active than Havana's.

East Germany, in fact, has deservedly been called Europe's Cuba because of the surrogate role it performs on behalf of Soviet overseas policy. Hundreds of millions of marks are poured into Viet Nam, for instance, out of ideological duty rather than any visible profit. In other countries, especially in black Africa, East Germany is obviously acting for its own political prestige and economic gain. For example, it is able to sell profitable quantities of manufactured goods, which are well made but simply not sophisticated enough for European markets.

Currently, East German economic aid and military assistance extend to countries on three continents:

ASIA. East Germany's most recent aid efforts have supplemented the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Planes from the GDR have flown medicine and other supplies to Kabul, and have started to return to East Berlin a number of Afghan wounded. East Germany is reportedly helping the Kabul government revamp and upgrade its secret police apparatus, which has been in disarray since the December invasion. East Germany's assistance to Viet Nam dates back to the 1960s, and has multiplied ever since. Annual aid to Hanoi now totals tens of millions. East German assistance has also extended to Hanoi's client regime in Cambodia. Last month President Heng Samrin flew to East Berlin from Phnom-Penh to sign a 25-year friendship treaty.

LATIN AMERICA. East German largesse has been concentrated on Nicaragua, where the revolution last year provided an obvious target of political opportunity. Barely a week after Dictator Anastasio Somoza had fled the country, East German medical and economic assistance teams were in Managua establishing an early foothold. As one East German doctor admitted at the time: "We do not leave political considerations aside." Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto has called the GDR a "natural ally" of the Sandinista revolution, and last month a high-ranking delegation from Managua spent several days in East Berlin to sign a series of cultural and trade agreements.

AFRICA. The East Germans' broadest effort has been lavished here, ever since the signing of a 1959 economic cooperation agreement with Guinea's leftist President Sekou Toure. A large portion of the $200 million in annual aid that East Germany contributes to African states goes to health, education and agricultural projects, but the emphasis is still on arms. Military aid to the victorious liberation armies in the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique has paid off in close relations with both governments. In Angola, an estimated 1,000 German advisers work with the military and help train the police in everything from the setting up of detention centers to new interrogation techniques. In Mozambique, a comparable number of cooperantes, as the advisers are called, have forged Premier Samora Machel's former guerrillas into a modern army. They have also trained military propagandists as well as prison guards and helped to reorganize the foreign ministry. The main purpose of this "heavy politico-military" indoctrination, as one U.S. intelligence analyst describes it, is to "try to keep a Marxist regime ideologically clean, and train cadres who will keep the country a loyal client in the future."

Why the East Germans? Originally, Western analysts believe, their ambitious foreign role was motivated by a national inferiority complex, as a denigrated political offspring of the Soviet Union and a poor industrial also-ran compared with West Germany. The emerging countries and the liberation movements thus afforded the "other" Germany its first international acceptance and prestige. The East Germans eventually proved to be more diplomatic than the Soviets, who frequently antagonize their Third World hosts with chafing arrogance, and more efficient than the Cubans, who do not enjoy the same reputation for reliability and know-how. Concluded a U.S. intelligence analyst: "The Cubans provide bodies. The East Germans provide brains."

Nonetheless, the East Germans have encountered their share of setbacks. Their most serious diplomatic debacle has been in Zimbabwe, where they backed the wrong horse in the race to independence. On a good-will tour of Africa last year, East German Leader Erich Honecker cozied up to Guerrilla Leader Joshua Nkomo but antagonized Robert Mugabe, his Patriotic Front partner. The issue: Mugabe's refusal to criticize the Chinese invasion of Viet Nam on the logical ground that most of his arms had been supplied by Peking. To East Berlin's dismay, Mugabe went on to become the popularly elected Prime Minister. Vengefully, he barred East Germany from this week's Zimbabwe independence celebrations.

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