IPS-English COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA: Why Did Chávez Mobilise Troops?
 
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:09:05 -0800

 
Analysis by Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Mar 7   (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.


*****
+ A Nation Torn - More IPS News on Colombia  (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/colombia/index.asp)


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