The US Invasion of Panama
The United States invaded Panama in December 1989 to arrest its head of state on drug charges. Manuel Noriega had been on the CIA payroll for years while running Panamanian military intelligence, and had been useful in the Contra war and in relations with Havana; he had also been trafficking cocaine, which Washington knew and tolerated until it did not. He was indicted in Florida in 1988, annulled an election he lost in May 1989, and had himself declared head of government in December, when the assembly also declared a state of war with the United States. The trigger was the killing of an American officer at a roadblock. Operation Just Cause put some 27,000 troops into the country on 20 December, in the first combat use of stealth aircraft and the largest American airborne operation since the Second World War. The poor neighbourhood of El Chorrillo, next to the Panamanian Defence Forces headquarters, burned; estimates of Panamanian civilian deaths run from the official 202 to figures in the thousands, and the count has never been settled. Noriega took refuge in the papal nunciature, which the Americans surrounded with loudspeakers playing rock music at high volume for days, and surrendered on 3 January. He was tried in Miami, imprisoned for seventeen years, extradited to France and then to Panama, and died in 2017. The General Assembly voted 75 to 20 that the invasion was a flagrant violation of international law. The canal was handed over on schedule in 1999.
- Year: 1989 CE
- Category: War
