COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA:
Why Did Chávez Mobilize
Troops?
Analysis by Humberto
Márquez
CARACAS, (IPS) -
When Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez
ordered the movement of
troops to the Colombian
border, newspaper
offices in Caracas
immediately began to be
flooded by phone calls
from people who talked
about a repeat of the "Malvinas
syndrome". But there may
be many reasons for the
leftwing president’s
decision, which could be
more political than
military.
Chávez ordered the
movement of troops
during his weekly TV and
radio programme on
Sunday, Mar. 2, after
Saturday’s bombing raid
by Colombian forces on a
Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC)
camp inside Ecuadorian
territory, in which the
rebel group’s "foreign
minister", Raúl Reyes,
was killed along with
two dozen other
insurgents.
The Venezuelan leader’s
decision, which raised
the stakes and further
heated up -- in the
words of Peruvian
President Alan García --
the serious diplomatic
conflict between
Colombia and Ecuador was
also Chávez’s way of
demonstrating in a
compelling manner that,
since he is involved in
the regional effects of
Colombia’s long-running
armed conflict, he must
obligatorily be involved
in any possible
solution.
Chávez’s move took
advantage of his
successful mediation of
the release of Colombian
lawmakers held hostage
for years by the FARC.
But above all, the
decision to beef up
troops along the border
with Colombia after that
country made an
incursion into
Ecuadorian territory
points to an escalation
of the conflict, which
would bolster Chávez’s
calls for the creation
of a group of countries
that could help broker
solutions to Colombia’s
armed conflict, along
the lines of the "Contadora
group".
Contadora was created by
democratic governments
in the region to bring
about peace in Central
America in the 1980s,
and the idea has now
caught the interest of
governments like those
of Brazil and France.
But due to his
antagonistic
relationship with Chávez,
Colombian President
Álvaro Uribe has flatly
opposed Venezuela’s
participation in such an
initiative.
Colombian analyst and
writer Plinio Apuleyo
Mendoza said the "Galtieri
síndrome" would explain
"Hugo Chávez’s latest
absurd move, in which he
threatened Colombia for
a problem that is none
of his business."
The analyst said Chávez
is thus "seeking to hide
the acute problems he is
suffering at home,
created by his
incompetence and his
histrionic
extravagances."
In April 1982 Argentina,
ruled at the time by a
dictatorship led by
General Leopoldo
Galtieri, occupied the
Malvinas/Falkland
Islands, a British
colony in the south
Atlantic that has long
been claimed by Buenos
Aires.
Observers ranging from
political leaders to
historians agree that
the invasion, which
failed after a bloody
war with Britain, was
aimed at overcoming the
internal crisis of the
military regime, which
had an appalling human
rights record.
The Malvinas defeat
crushed the power of the
Argentine military, and
accelerated the return
to democracy.
In December, Chávez
suffered his first-ever
defeat after 12
elections since 1998, in
a referendum on
controversial
constitutional reforms,
one of which would have
allowed him to run for
re-election in 2012.
And the badly weakened
and splintered
opposition movement,
which attempted to
remove him from power in
a short-lived 2002 coup
and a 2003 recall
referendum, is showing
signs of recovery, and
may win a few important
victories in the
November regional
elections. (Chávez
allies currently govern
most of the country’s
municipal and provincial
governments).
Despite record oil
revenues, there is
scarcity of certain
basic food items on
supermarket shelves,
inflation is higher than
20 percent a year, there
are street protests over
the government’s failure
to combat the country’s
high rates of violent
crime, and Chávez is
seeing his popularity
slide because people
increasingly blame him
for the lack of
solutions, pollsters
Alfredo Keller and Oscar
Schémel told IPS.
Opposition politicians
Julio Borges, the leader
of the centre-right
Justice First party, and
Ismael García of the
centre-left Podemos
party, which backed
Chávez until last year,
concurred in statements
to IPS that the movement
of troops to the
Colombian border is
aimed at diverting
attention from the
government’s "failure
and inefficiency" in
addressing social
demands.
In reaction to Uribe’s
announcement that he
would accuse Chávez
before the International
Criminal Court of
providing financial and
logistical support to
terrorist groups
(because of his alleged
but so far
unsubstantiated ties to
the FARC), Chávez
challenged the Colombian
leader: "let’s both
appear before the Court
to see who is condemned
for supporting terrorism
and genocide."
Chávez’s insults against
his adversaries are
well-known, like calling
U.S. President George W.
Bush a "devil" or
"alcoholic" or his
description of Uribe as
a "lying, criminal
mafioso and drug
trafficker, and pawn of
the (U.S.) empire."
The relations between
Chávez and Uribe had
their ups and downs
since 2002, until last
November, when the
Colombian president
abruptly cut short the
Venezuelan leader’s
efforts to mediate a
humanitarian exchange of
hostages held by the
FARC guerrillas for
imprisoned insurgents.
Despite Uribe’s
decision, the rebel
group has released six
hostages as a goodwill
gesture to Chávez in the
last two months.
Chávez "was very upset
over the death of Raúl
Reyes, which he saw as a
severe blow to the
group’s strategies, but
also because it occurred
just when he was
enjoying a political and
public relations victory
over Uribe by receiving
hostages handed over by
the FARC," Carlos
Romero, director of the
graduate programme in
International Studies at
the Central University
of Venezuela, told IPS.
Another aspect, which
was mentioned more than
any other by the
recently deceased
political scientist
Alberto Garrido, is that
Colombia is key to
Chávez’s aim to spread
his "Bolivarian
revolution" throughout
the region and build an
anti-U.S. alternative
power bloc in South
America.
The FARC are "an
important piece in the
confrontation or
asymmetric war that
Chávez sees as
inevitable between the
forces of the empire and
those of the regional
Bolivarian revolution,"
Garrido said in one of
his interviews with IPS.
Chávez, who says he does
not support the FARC, is
in favour of a
negotiated solution to
Colombia’s civil war. He
has stated that "it is
not possible to defeat
the guerrillas
militarily and they
cannot defeat the
government either."
The RCN media outlet in
Colombia quoted
unidentified military
sources who alleged that
Chávez moved troops to
Venezuela’s borders with
Colombia to protect FARC
chief Manuel Marulanda,
who is reportedly ill
and hiding out somewhere
in western Venezuela.
Whatever his reasons for
beefing up security
along the border, the
order was not, as many
say, an error by a
military leader (Chávez
is a retired
lieutenant-colonel), but
part of a strategy to
increase the sensation
of an escalation of the
conflict.
General Raúl Baduel, a
former Chávez supporter
and ex-defence minister,
criticised the "media
circus" and the public
announcement that troops
would be mobilised, and
other retired military
officers said the units
are not prepared to
engage in combat
immediately.
Whatever the case may
be, Chávez can now
include the withdrawal
or demobilisation of
those units as part of
any future agreement to
reduce tension in the
Andean region.
Possibly for that reason
as well, Bogotá decided
to continue ahead with
its plans to ask the
International Criminal
Court to bring genocide
charges against Chávez,
against the advice of
the Foreign Relations
Advisory Committee made
up of former Colombian
presidents and foreign
ministers.
The Organisation of
American States (OAS),
which discussed the
crisis this week, did
not refer to Venezuela
in its search for
solutions to the
conflict between Ecuador
and Colombia. But
Ecuadorian President
Rafael Correa believes,
as does Chávez, that the
crisis is not bilateral,
but regional.
In an interview with the
IPS correspondent in
Mexico, German political
analyst Heinz Dieterich,
who has inspired Chávez
in the past with his
theory on "21st century
socialism", agreed that
the Venezuelan leader
was seeking to use the
crisis to his benefit,
although he predicted
that the move could
contribute to the search
for peaceful solutions
to Colombia’s armed
conflict. |
