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VENEZUELA: Drug
Trafficking Getting Worse, Says U.S. Report
By
Danielle Kurtzleben and Ali Gharib*
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Governmental corruption and
the refusal to cooperate with U.S. counter-drug
efforts are worsening a ballooning drug trafficking
problem in Venezuela, according to a new report by
the investigative office of the U.S. Congress.
The report, released Monday by the Government
Accountability Office (GAO), may further fray
long-tense relations between the two countries which
had appeared to improve modestly since the
inauguration six months ago of President Barack
Obama.
The report says that gains from the U.S.'s
six-billion-dollar Plan Colombia counternarcotics
programme are being undermined by Caracas's
"permissive environment" for Colombian insurgent
groups, notably the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), a left-wing guerrilla group that
supports itself in part through drug production and
trafficking.
"According to U.S. officials, a high level of
corruption within the Venezuelan government,
military, and other law enforcement and security
forces contributes to the permissive environment,"
said the report.
Venezuela's 2,000-km-long border with Colombia has
long been a preferred route for Colombian drug
runners. But shipments of cocaine from Colombia to
Venezuela skyrocketed from 60 metric tonnes in 2004
to 260 metric tonnes in 2007, said the GAO.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denied the GAO's
findings as they were leaked to various press
outlets over the past several days, calling the
study a smear and accusing the U.S. of hypocrisy
because drug trafficking is fuelled by U.S. demand.
"This is a tough issue for the U.S. to lecture Latin
America about because the U.S. hasn't done its
part," said Michael Shifter, vice president for
policy at the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a think
tank here. "It's both demand, and it's a failure of
law enforcement here, too. The U.S. also deserves to
be criticised."
In the past, the U.S. and Venezuela have cooperated
in anti-drug efforts, but as the relationship
deteriorated, cooperation fell off, culminating in
Chavez's 2005 expulsion of U.S. Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA) officials from Venezuela, accusing them
of espionage.
Chavez said that Venezuelan anti-narcotics efforts
have continued without the U.S. But the GAO report
claimed that Venezuelan security forces are known to
take bribes in exchange for facilitating drug
shipments or, upon seizing drugs, either returning
them to the traffickers or keeping them.
"[The U.S. State Department] reports that members of
the special counternarcotics units of the National
Guard and the Federal Investigative Police often
facilitate or are themselves involved in drug
trafficking," said the report. "In addition,
although the Venezuelan government reports that it
seizes cocaine and incinerates it, some may be taken
by Venezuelan officials or returned to drug
traffickers."
According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC)
2009 World Drug Report, seizures of cocaine in
Venezuela dropped from 58 metric tonnes in 2005 to
fewer than 32 metric tonnes in 2007.
Perhaps the strongest charge made by the report is
that Venezuela provides a "lifeline" to the FARC and
other groups.
"By allowing illegal armed groups to elude capture
and by providing material support, Venezuela has
extended a lifeline to Colombian illegal armed
groups, and their continued existence endangers
Colombian security gains achieved with U.S.
assistance, according to U.S. and Colombian
government officials," the report asserts.
"For any government to support a group like the FARC
is very serious," Shifter told IPS. "Being involved
in the drug trade is something that is of concern,
but it's not limited to Venezuela. Support for the
FARC has more serious political and strategic
considerations."
"The findings of this report have heightened my
concern that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with
the United States on drug interdiction is related to
corruption in that country's government," said Sen.
Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate
Foreign Relations committee who commissioned the GAO
report.
Tensions between Washington and Caracas came to a
head in September 2008, when Venezuela expelled the
U.S. ambassador, accusing him of spying. The U.S.
followed suit by expelling the Venezuelan
ambassador.
U.S.-Venezuela relations have since softened; Chavez
applauded Barack Obama's election in 2008, and the
two leaders greeted each other warmly at the April
Summit of the Americas.
Ambassadors in both countries were reinstated in
June.
Lugar, a moderate Republican who, among other
things, has called for moving toward normalising
relations with Cuba, had asked the GAO to determine
whether Venezuela was "in the process of becoming a
narco-state, heavily dependent (on) and beholden to
the international trade in illegal drugs".
"The report's findings require, at a minimum, a
comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward
Venezuela," Lugar said late last week when the GAO's
findings first became known.
"President Chavez has recently approved the
re-establishment of our respective ambassadors. I
hope he sees this as an opportunity to further
dialogue in areas of common interest, but also in
matters of sharp differences," Lugar added.
The recent agreement to return ambassadors marked
the latest step in a gradual détente between Caracas
and Washington since Obama became president. But
tensions seem to be on the rise again, particularly
in the wake of the ongoing political crisis over the
coup d'etat against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
While both Obama and Chavez have called for Zelaya's
re-instatement, Chavez's call for more aggressive
actions as well as his charges that U.S. government
agencies were behind the coup itself and his strong
scepticism of the mediation undertaken by Costa
Rican President Oscar Arias have clearly irritated
Washington.
It is in that context that the latest report is
expected to be seized on by anti-Chavez forces here,
led by hard-liners in the Cuban-American community,
such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and former
Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs,
Otto Reich, who gave strong backing to the coup
attempt against Chavez and who has also spoken out
against Zelaya, depicting him as a puppet of the
Venezuelan leader.
That characterization of Zelaya during the Honduran
crisis has been used as well by prominent
neo-conservative commentators in the Wall Street
Journal, the Washington Post, the National Review,
and the Weekly Standard who see "Chavismo" as the
greatest threat Washington faces in the Americas and
who have also played up Chavez's alleged friendship
with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The latest edition of the Standard, for example,
features a cover photo of an embrace between Zelaya
and Chavez entitled "Comrades in Arms" and
sub-titled "On Hugo Chavez's Honduran Adventure".
Adam Isaacson, a Latin America specialist at the
Centre for International Policy, said that the
report should be of concern to Venezuela itself.
"Venezuela has this rapidly growing problem, and
won't even deal with the DEA," he told IPS.
"Venezuela should be worried as well. If you have
that amount of cocaine going through the country,
you're risking ending up like Mexico, with powerful
organised crime and violence. No leader wants
violence."
Rather than siding outright with narco-traffickers,
it's likely that Venezuela doesn't have the internal
security capacity to deal with the problem, Isaacson
said, noting that despite large oil revenues, Chavez
has not properly addressed public safety.
"You've seen it happen in Colombia, Mexico and
Central America. A country not set up to combat the
money of crime and narco-trafficking just gets
steamrolled by it. That could be what you're seeing
in Venezuela."
*Jim Lobe contributed to this story. |
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