[Targan]

In my campaign the US abandoned the canal zone some time after the nukes started falling (I can't remember the date offhand but it was during 1998 or early 99) and no shipping passed through the canal for a while because the Soviets let it be known that they had seeded the canal itself and/or its approaches with nuclear mines.

By 2000 the French had taken control of the canal zone and had sent mine clearing crews through it. The French never made it public as to whether the Soviets had been bluffing about the nuke mines.

Some months after the regular US military had withdrawn from Panama a rag-tag group of US and allied spec ops and intel personnel (who came to be known colloquially as "Team Panama") conducted their own exfiltration of Panama and got back to the States partly by land and partly by sea. They had withdrawn to Panama from surrounding areas but had missed the main withdrawal of US forces (which had turned into a bit of a rout at the end, much like the last days of the US presence in South Vietnam in 1975). I've talked about Team Panama in the recent Special Forces thread.