Posts tagged venezuela
Is Colombia Finally Safe From Hugo Chavez?
0270 days
by Tom Germain
in News
Juan Manuel Santos had barely taken possession of the Casa de Nariňo in Bogota as Colombia’s new president in 2010 and he was already inviting his Venezuelan counterpart to a very public summit in Santa Marta. Was it not Hugo Chavez who had said during Colombia’s elections that if Santos won, there would be war? For years, the strongman in Caracas had made it a sport of insulting and threatening Santos and his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, whom he often referred to as a mafioso. Why would Colombia extend an olive branch to an unrepentant enemy?
The Santa Marta meeting seemed a farce, Chavez taking the podium for hours, as if it was an episode of his Alo Presidente TV show back home. Santos looked effete. His strategy was obviously to assuage a belligerent foe as well as try to recover some of the estimated 800 million dollars owed by Venezuelan businesses to suppliers in Colombia, already hurting from the Great Recession. It has become almost surreal since then, both leaders referring to each other as best friends, and Santos going as far as saying he now believes Chavez’ claim that there are no FARC terrorist bases in Venezuela despite strong evidence to the contrary, including spy satellite photos of such camps, courtesy of the USA. Mutual gestures of goodwill have come in the form of extraditions, Venezuela sending a FARC ideologue to Colombia, and in turn, Santos ordering drug lord Walid Makled sent to Caracas rather than the United States, its closest ally.
As if that wasn’t enough, the treaty allowing US forces to use bases within Colombia which had so provoked Chavez’ ire has been suspended indefinitely (though there have been claims that it was a sham agreement conjured by Uribe to dissuade Chavez from any thoughts of military intervention). More recently Santos declared that Colombia indeed has an armed insurgency within its borders, departing from Uribe’s policy that all rebel groups in the country are narco-terrorists without any political goals. Previously, it was only Chavez and his acolytes who lent political credo to the FARC and ELN.
Is this all an elaborate subterfuge aimed at buying time? Time to finish the job of eliminating the illegal armed groups still terrorizing large swaths of rural Colombia? Time to upgrade Colombia’s armed forces against any future aggression? Or is this yet another instance of one nation trying to appease a neighboring mad man, a strategy which has never succeeded in all of history? It is difficult to believe that democratic countries could put their trust in a leader such as Chavez, who sees himself as the modern reincarnation of Simon Bolivar, who liberated a large swath of South America by military means in the 19th century, all the while the modern version is destroying all semblance of democracy in his own country. To make matters more worrisome, Chavez has been consistently beefing-up the non-defensive capabilities of his armed forces as well as forging alliances with every blacklisted dictator on the planet, including the currently beleaguered Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.
Let’s hope Santos knows what he’s doing.
The Odds of Chavez Invading Colombia Increase
0552 days
by Tom Germain
in News
The news just came in that Venezuela’s strongman, Hugo Chavez, is preparing for war and has ordered his army to position itself across the length of the border the country shares with Colombia. The pretext for this troop deployment is Chavez’s claim that outgoing Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is capable of anything in his final days in office (his term ends August 7), including launching an attack against Venezuela. Earlier this month, Chavez severed diplomatic ties with Colombia when Uribe announced publicly that he had irrefutable evidence that FARC and ELN, the Colombian rebel groups, have bases deep inside Venezuelan territory, and are aided and abetted by Venezuelan authorities.
Chavez’s exaggerated and irrational grandstanding is nothing new, having called for preparations for war with Colombia repeatedly over the past two years. Chavez has continuously referred to the neighboring nation as the puppet of the “empire”, namely the United States. Every leader in history who traveled the road to dictatorship has needed a scapegoat to justify drastic measures or distract public attention from the failure of his policies. Chavez finds himself at a crossroads on September 26 when parliamentary elections are scheduled*. Chavez currently enjoys an absolute majority in Venezuela’s parliament, as all opposition parties boycotted the previous elections in 2005. Chavez’ s opponents have no intention of sitting this one out, and it’s widely believed that his Bolivarian party will lose badly, a direct result of the hardships endured by common Venezuelans, enraged by the collapsing economy, scores of business and property expropriations on Chavez’s personal orders, massive radio and TV station shutdowns or takeovers, not to mention chronic electricity and food shortages.
It is therefore predictable that he might do anything, to paraphrase Chavez himself, to prevent his power base and his plan to transform Venezuela into a Cuba-like state from being eroded September 26. He could corrupt the vote, jail the opposition on trump charges (his favorite is conspiracy to assassinate him), or , and this is what I fear, fabricate a threat to national security that warrants canceling the election. His stars are currently aligned should he choose to do the latter: Uribe, his arch enemy, is about to be replaced by Santos, who has used a conciliatory tone; the USA, his only real military worry, is perceived as being weak under President Obama and doesn’t have the stomach to intervene militarily in the region, especially since Chavez currently enjoys the support of Russia.
Bearing in mind the considerable efforts Chavez has made to undermine the stability of Colombia over the years, one might get the sense that an eventual expropriation of the neighboring country could be one of his Bolivarian plans. There’s little doubt Chavez shelters, finances, and arms rebel groups on a continuing basis, and has intentionally sabotaged commerce between the countries in order to divide public opinion among Colombians (the strategy worked). He also meddled in Colombia’s presidential elections this year by proclaiming that if Santos won, there would surely be war (it didn’t work, Santos won by a landslide). Venezuelan police also regularly incarcerate ordinary Colombians living in, or visiting Venezuela, accusing them of espionage. Lastly, Chavez has relentlessly vilified and insulted Colombian dignitaries, especially Uribe, both on his daily TV show, Alo Presidente, as well as on the international stage.
This is one time I’m hoping I’m wrong, however even if I am about the timing, I have absolutely no fear of equivocation when I say that Chavez will eventually seek to emulate his imaginary mentor, Simon Bolivar, and “liberate” South America.
Venezuela “Expert” Appointed as the Next Ambassador to Colombia
1636 days
by Tom Germain
in News
In a move seen as a confirmation that Washington is awakening to the threat posed by the Chavez regime in Venezuela, US president Barack Obama recently nominated Peter Michael McKinley as ambassador to Colombia. McKinley, currently ambassador to Peru, was born in Venezuela, and is said to be an expert on matters regarding Colombia’s troublesome neighbor. His resume includes a book he wrote on the colonial history of Venezuela.
McKinley will replace outgoing ambassador William Brownfield, who is extremely well known and liked in Colombia. McKinley will assume office when Colombia’s new president will be known, which according to current opinion polls may well be the Green party’s Antanas Mockus, a center-left candidate. Mockus has publicly expressed admiration for Venezuela’s dictator, Hugo Chavez, later attempting to mitigate what he had said. Chavez has for several years taken a hard line against Colombia, disrupting virtually all trade between the countries, and recently meddled in the electoral process, claiming that there would be war if Mockus’ main rival, Juan Manuel Santos, was elected. Polls began to favor Mockus immediately after Chavez’ statement.
McKinley will take his post at a time of turmoil, with increasing worries about what Chavez’ next move will be, and an uncertain future political direction in Colombia, the Unied States’ most important South American ally. Venezuela’s military build-up and alliances with Russia and Iran, as well as the spread of his leftist anti-American Bolivarian revolution in Latin America are high on Washington’s list of worries.
Patrick Duddy is the current US ambassador to Venezuela. He was expelled by the Chavez regime in September of 2008 on accusations of planning a coup against the Venezuelan leader. Diplomatic relations with Venezuela were not restored until eight months later, in July of 2009, under the Obama administration, when Duddy was returned to his former post after intense negotiations. In view of the precarious position of the mission in Caracas, having a Venezuela-literate representative in Bogota becomes critical.
The New Face of the Colombian Cocaine Trade
2649 days
by Tom Germain
in Narc & Farc
Colombia has fought and won an arduous battle spanning decades against the cocaine cartels that had at one time reduced the country to a failed state. However, it did not win the war. It’s estimated that more cocaine is being exported from Colombia than ever before. If the ring leaders are all dead or in jail, how is this possible?
Photo by Rotorhead
The void left by the cartels’ dismantling was quickly filled by a multitude of smaller criminal gangs, disbanded paramilitary, as well as the armed rebels of the FARC and ELN, who have formed an alliance. The cocaine trade is far too lucrative to not attract new players, despite the heightened risks. Since their enormous size proved to be the undoing of the cartels, it was only logical that the new organizations would seek to function as a series of disconnected cells, making them less vulnerable. The most fundamental change is the high level of cooperation that exists nowadays among criminal groups. Whereas the cartels feuded constantly in the 80′s and 90′s, often informing the authorities on one another, the tendency now is to network. One organization might specialize in production, another refining, and a series of others handle the distribution. Even the execution of enemies is handled by specialized organizations disconnected from the illegal drug trade, such as the feared Oficina de Envigado.
Another major difference is that the Colombians no longer control all foreign distribution. Home grown traffickers in Mexico, the most important drug route into the biggest market, the United States, have developed organizations so large and powerful that they can only be called cartels. A completely new development is the alliances secretly forged between the armed rebel groups in Colombia, now major players in the drug trade, and the government of Venezuela, and, by proxy, its allies Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. The FARC and ELN are known to funnel considerable amounts of drugs without hindrance through Venezuela.
While the flamboyance and brashness of a Pablo Escobar wouldn’t work today, bribery and blackmail are still widely used by drug traffickers to facilitate their business. Politicians, judges, the police and military, as well as ordinary people are still routinely approached with an offer of “la plata o el plomo” (the money or the bullet), despite the Uribe’s government’s great strides in rooting out corruption. It’s no mystery that the routine extradition of captured major drug traffickers to the USA to be prosecuted there is the only way to insure they won’t manipulate the corrupt Colombian justice system rather than a favor to the United States. Even ordinary Colombians are useful to the traffickers, as they cannot only be used to transport drugs, but also to launder money by putting their names to business contracts and property. Every year, billions of dollars in drug money is invested in this way, and it makes it very difficult for the authorities to discover the real owners, despite laws that allow the state to summarily seize such assets once the link is uncovered.
The new Colombian traffickers have become more sophisticated in their smuggling methods as well, building countless million dollar submersibles that can transport a ton of cargo virtually undetected. They’ve also found every unimaginable way to camouflage drugs, including sewing them into the bellies of pets and corpses. For every kilo intercepted, there’s countless others that make it through. Cocaine isn’t the only drug marketed by the drug traffickers, as they’ve diversified into heroin and marihuana, which are also easy to grow in the vast, mountainous tropical forests of Colombia.
The most wanted list of drug traffickers currently features Daniel El Loco Barrera, who is considered the most powerful drug lord in the country, particularly in the north. Barrera has been particularly successful at making alliances with other illegal groups, including the FARC. Another being actively hunted for is “Comba“, who leads Los Rastrojos and controls most of the production centers and routes of the deep south. Others facing capture and extradition are top FARC commanders, including Alfonso Cano, the maximum leader, and Ivan Marquez.
Drug trafficking is still a massive problem for Colombia, hampering its efforts to clean its international image and spur foreign investment, not to mention tourism. Few are those who believe it can ever be eradicated while the drugs are in demand in developed countries, particularly the USA. However, the Colombian government, with the help of the US financed Plan Colombia, now has the upper hand and the country can never again be overrun to its very core by drug lords.
Hugo Chavez Raises the Stakes, Again
0667 days
by Tom Germain
in News
Immediately after Vladimir Putin’s visit to Caracas last week, the Russian prime minister announced that he and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had an agreement for the sale of over five billion dollars in armament to the South American country. This exceeds the 4.4 billion dollars in Russian military hardware Venezuela has acquired since 2005. The new arms deal provides Venezuela with a credit line in excess of two billion dollars.
Photo by Nikita Golovanov
The rapid arms build-up initiated by the leftist leader has many foreign observers preoccupied, as Venezuela isn’t in any danger of being aggressed by any other country, despite Chavez’ wild claims of a Colombian-American conspiracy. Acquiring such an arsenal could be a sign that Chavez plans to use it for offensive purposes at some future date, most probably against neighboring Colombia, a country for which Venezuela as well as allies Ecuador and Nicaragua had secretly drafted an invasion plan in the recent past. Such a scenario is made more plausible by the current perception that Colombia’s ally, the United States, has lost interest in the region under president Obama, and would shy away from intervening militarily in any conflict. It’s conceivable that Venezuela, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, may seek to gain a direct access to the Pacific Ocean and the lucrative Chinese market, something that would become a reality if it controlled Colombia.
The list of Venezuela’s new arms purchase includes submarines, tanks, combat helicopters, troop transport aircraft, as well as long range mobile artillery. Another thirty bilateral accords were signed during the Putin-Chavez meeting, including one that paves the way for Russian firms to build oil refineries in Venezuela, as well as develop the enormous Hunin-6 oil field. Acquiring its own refining facilities is of particular strategic significance for Venezuela, as this will end its dependence on American refineries. Another deal struck during the meeting was one with far more reaching consequences in terms of future US-Venezuela policy: Russian technological assistance in constructing its first nuclear power plant. Could “Iran West” be far off?
Bolivian president, Evo Morales, a staunch Chavez supporter, was also present at the summit and sealed an agreement that will allow Moscow to build its first ever air base in South America, a refueling stop for Russian military aircraft. Morales also signed deals for co-development of gas fields in his country. Russia under Putin has been seeking to restore the global clout it enjoyed in the days of the USSR, as well as diminishing US influence. In Chavez and his allies, Putin has found willing partners and has given the United States a body blow in its own hemisphere. For Chavez, the protection afforded by a Russian alliance will give him more maneuvering room in his own plans for regional dominance. Not to be outdone, Putin is showing signs of reaching out to Venezuela’s enemy and the US’ most important South American ally, Colombia, with an offer of aid against terrorism and perhaps other incentives, expected to be discussed with to outgoing president Alvaro Uribe during his upcoming visit to Moscow. Could Colombia pact something with Russia as insurance against Venezuela, perhaps also motivated by Washington’s waning interest in its key ally since George W Bush left? Lest we forget, Colombians are still waiting for passage of the long promised free trade agreement, and Plan Colombia, Washington’s anti-drug war help, saw cuts last year.
Washington’s response to recent events has been muted. If it can’t see beyond its own domestic problems, the US could well be witnessing the beginning of a new cold war, born right in its own backyard!
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