The INF treaty between the USA and the USSR ratified in Moscow on 29 May
1988 establishes the start of the dismantling of the SS 20 and Cruisenuclear missile bases. The signing by Gorbachev and Reagan gives hope
for a new phase in history in which the two main powers favor diplomacy
and peace. It won't be like that. --- Even before the signature, NATO
started an aerospace enhancement program by deciding to transfer the
deadly F-16 fighters to Italy, and the first rumors indicate the Comiso
base as the next orphan of Euromissiles. But the uncertainties about the
divestment lead to preference for Isola Capo Rizzuto, in Calabria, where
billion-dollar contracts are immediately distributed to the main
Ndrangheta gangs.
The Mediterranean is a hot front, with Libya being a NATO target,
already bombed in '86, when it responded with the launch of two Scud
missiles; thus in the spring of '89 major military maneuvers took place
off the Gulf of Sirte, confirming the strategic centrality of Sicily.
Meanwhile, members of the Italian Communist Party make their historic
entry into the NATO parliament.
When the Berlin Wall fell between 9 and 10 November 1989 and the
crumbling of the so-called socialist countries began, NATO did not
consider its role exhausted, but decided to set itself up as the
Gendarme of the World; looks - without any more counterweights - to the
strategic areas of the Middle East and the Gulf rich in oil (according
to the Carter doctrine, areas of vital interest for the United States)
on which the US and Western economy depend, as the new prey to be
subjugated, and gives rise to a new era of wars (which primarily kill
the hopes of peace and liberation starting with Palestine and Lebanon),
and of militarization, as in Sicily, where the forces that had opposed
its presence ask for its reconversion of the bases, including Comiso,
still active one year after the INF treaty: the last cruises will only
leave on 26 March 1991. But on 14 June 1990 in Erice, with NATO general
secretary Werner present, prime minister Andreotti declares: " you can't
throw an umbrella when it's not raining."
One of the first tests of strength was the Gulf War following the Iraqi
occupation of Kuwait, with the invasion of the rich emirate on 16
January 1991 by a coalition of 35 states (including Italy with almost
2000 soldiers, a naval force and Tornado fighters) led by the USA under
the auspices of the UN. It is Operation Desert Storm, which inaugurates
the US global wars.
Poor Sicily: it has no hope of freeing itself from the Americans. The
anti-war demonstrations, some in front of the Sigonella base ("Neither
with Saddam nor with NATO" they shout), the tail end of the fight in
Comiso, are no longer alive. Meanwhile, with the excuse of the terrorist
threat, the government sends 46,000 soldiers and 30,000 policemen and
carabinieri to the South, in addition to the military forces already
present in the territories with a strong mafia presence.
Once the war was over in Palermo, the meeting of ministers of the
Western European Union on 25-29 March 1991 discussed the strengthening
of common defence, technological rearmament, the creation of rapid
engagement forces and an increase in military spending. The choice of
Sicily is more than a signal, it is a condemnation! The "Southern flank
of NATO" returns to the center of rearmament policies; the summit of the
"NATO planning group" meeting from 17 to 19 October 1991 in Taormina
deals with: Albania, Yugoslavia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
Libya, transfer of fighter-bombers from Northern Europe to the South and
to Sicily, the search for a legitimation of NATO operations outside the
geographical area of the pact countries. And on the island, construction
work is underway on the largest US communications base in the
Mediterranean (NRTF n.8) in Niscemi, Sigonella is being strengthened,
where the F-16s will finally arrive, while the conflict in Bosnia
explodes in the now former Yugoslavia and Herzegovina, the first war on
European territory after 1945: it will last three and a half years,
under NATO bombing.
But it was the summer of '92, with the massacre in Via D'Amelio on 23
May in which judge Falcone, his wife and his escort were killed, and
that of 19 July in which judge Borsellino was blown up, that brought the
military occupation of Sicily: 7000 soldiers guarding the streets as in
the times of the states of exception at the end of the 19th century;
Operation Sicilian Vespers, like the contemporary Forza Paris in
Sardinia, wants to show the iron fist of the State in irredeemable
territories. It is of no use, but it is a warning to the Sicilians: that
they do not raise their heads, that they do not dare to complain about
the blow of the Amato government! And it is a Sicilian minister, as in
tradition, the socialist Andò, head of Defense, who manages the
militarization phase of the island, where a new enemy appears: the
African and Albanian immigrants.
In the former Yugoslavia the West, supported by the Vatican, fans the
flames, incites "good" nationalisms against "bad" ones, experiments with
the invention of a new enemy: Serbia; with Libya always in the
crosshairs, therefore the Islamic fundamentalists already supported when
it came to countering the Soviet presence.
In this context, the US Department of Defense launches the doubling of
the Sigonella base, projecting Sicily towards the wars of 2000, and
assigns the contract for workers to the Cooperative Bricklayers and
Cementists of Ravenna, "a sign that Washington is not nourished by any
doubt about the Atlantic loyalty of companies linked to a part of the
Italian left currently in government" (Prodi government). The Sicilian
base, as explained by Antonio Mazzeo (1), the main support to the VI
Fleet in the Mediterranean, has strengthened its operational functions
during the Gulf War and operations in Bosnia, and hosts 4,500 military
personnel, nuclear-capable air and anti-submarine squadrons, F-16 and
F-111 fighter-bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, in addition
to the Naval Engineers battalion; the naval communications station of
Niscemi depends on it; the presence of around 100 nuclear warheads has
been estimated there. Although it is officially a NATO base with an
Italian presence, the United States enjoys maximum operational freedom
there, which was only undermined once, in 1985, when the Craxi
government blocked the kidnappers of the Achille Lauro on Italian soil.
The connections with the Catania mafia gangs in the management of
contracts are well known. (2)
The US base, that of Augusta and that of Aviano, will be protagonists of
the Kosovo war, with the bombings of Belgrade and Serbia in 1998-99,
still under a left-wing government led by Massimo d'Alema, with the
Sicilian Sergio as deputy Mattarella.
Parallel to the strengthening of Fortress Europe led by NATO-Mirikana in
the 1990s, the process of European political-economic integration
continued with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, preceded by the
operational integration between the police forces of the various states:
the Greek, Portuguese, Andalusian, Extremaduran, Irish, Calabrian,
Sardinian, Sicilian are considered "peripheral crown" (Censis 1988),
i.e. marginal areas without even an agricultural vocation, reservoirs of
manpower (and votes). This is while the USSR and Eastern Europe are
crumbling, giving rise to new frontiers, state apparatuses, armies,
national conflicts, neoliberal and/or totalitarian systems.
Militarism and mafia are the infamous spiral that continues to suffocate
Sicily. Not a day goes by without an ambush, a murder, an attack (400
deaths in 1989 alone); a war entirely internal to the mafia system,
which involves the friends of power when they don't do their job as
fifth columns well, but rages against the real enemies who denounce and
mess up the games: after Spampinato, Francese, Impastato, Fava, it is
the turn of Mauro Rostagno, killed in the night between 26 and 27
September 1988 in Valderice (TP), and then it will be the turn of Beppe
Alfano in '93 in Barcellona (ME).
But the mafia is not the anti-state, since it finds its raison d'être in
the State, and the legalistic narrative as opposed to mafia illegality
is destined to be one of the greatest toxic mystifications. Even more so
since the weight of state legality continues to crush the aspirations of
the Sicilian people; the connections with the mafia massacre, with the
various domes, even by the government of the second post-tangentopoli
republic itself, in close continuity with the Andreotti governments,
have been shown to be systemic; the fight against the mafia cannot be
delegated to the State. Unfortunately, there is no substratum of popular
self-organization spread across the territories capable of acting as a
barrier to the mafia presence and taking away space and power: an
anti-mafia from below. These are reflections that emerged in Catania in
1988 when the first self-managed social center (Experia) was established
in a neighborhood with a high mafia density (3) where labor and
consensus were reproduced in popular sectors to which the capitalist
economic system and the State they took away all hope. It is here that a
mafia is nurtured which, due to the type of business and the ruthless
methods used, has degenerated into pure gangsterism. (4)
The obtuse underestimation of the mafia coincides with the
overestimation of the Northern power: "In Milan - writes Giorgio Bocca
(5) - the mafia must respect legal capitalism. It will reinvest its
profits in many ways, but according to the rules of the game which here,
unlike Palermo, are still normal." Thus the mafia becomes an element of
racism against "southern Lebanon": in the North there is normal
corruption, in the South there is a problem of police and repression,
and new tools are needed: the DNA, the DIA, the super prosecutors .
However, nothing is done to improve the conditions of that mass of
marginal proletariat that provides consensus and manpower to the mafia;
the State represents the main supplier of labour, while unions, parties,
the church, with their clientelism and interclassism, are the main
accomplices. A chorus calling for emergency, more police, less
guaranteeism (cancel the Gozzini law), strong measures, like the
President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga himself. Then on March 12,
1992, Salvo Lima, leader of the Andreotti supporters in Sicily, was
killed: the mafia struck one of the best friends to terrorize the
government and open negotiations under the coup threat (we were in the
middle of the P2 scandal). Cossiga resigned two months later, ahead of
his natural deadline. Another month, on May 23, Falcone was killed in
Capaci; two more months and it's Borsellino's turn in via D'Amelio. The
popular response that follows is unable to extricate itself from the
legalistic and pro-institutional network in which it is caged, and ends
up being complementary to the anti-mafia police monopoly.
The arrest of Totò Riina (15 January 1993) and his successor Bernardo
Provenzano (11 April 2006) demonstrate how Cosa Nostra survived the
arrest of its leaders, and also (see the excellent murders) how much the
apparatus colluded state. After Riina's arrest, he actually raised the
bar with the attacks and massacres in Rome, Florence and Milan between
May and July '93. There is talk of a coup, a front of national unity
calls for strong powers. Behind this scene, negotiations are taking
place between the mafia and the state (government, services and army
leaders) for a mafia pax that also loosens the conditions of detention
of the bosses under 41 bis. Even the Andreotti trial, which debuted in
the same months and ended in 2004, abundantly highlights the close
connection between political power and mafia apparatus. But the State
does not put itself on trial even when it comes to a person who has been
prime minister seven times, and finally issues a sentence that confirms
his responsibility for the crime of mafia-type criminal association, a
crime however barred due to the expiry of the terms. Cosa Nostra in the
meantime changes sides, taking on a central role in the entry into the
field of Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia. The marriage between the
mafia and the state still has a future ahead of it. On the most
militarized island of Italy, where Italian and American secret services,
civilians and military operate, if the Cosa Nostra bosses can remain at
large for so long (Riina 24 years, Provenzano 43 years, Messina Denaro
30 years), something will want to say the least.
Pippo Gurrieri
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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