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Colombia: Growing Signs of Conflict's Regional Spillover
1 April 2002
Summary
The Bush administration is many months away from obtaining congressional approval for a plan to increase substantially U.S. military aid to Colombia. However, the Colombian conflict is already spilling over into neighboring countries with growing intensity, presenting U.S. planners with the likelihood of a significantly larger battlefield in which guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers will not be restricted by the territorial borders that constrain the Colombian army.
Analysis
As Colombia's conflict spills into countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela in the coming months, the possibility of diplomatic confrontations between Bogota and regional governments will increase, complicating the Bush administration's efforts to manage the regional political repercussions of a deeper U.S. military presence in Colombia. At the same time, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's (FARC) growing use of extra-territorial bases in Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela also is likely to raise levels of violence dramatically along Colombia's border regions with those countries.
The FARC's use of extra-territorial bases may give it some strategic advantages over the Colombian army in terms of staging attacks and withdrawing to secure locations where the army legally cannot pursue it. But it also is likely to trigger a buildup in border areas of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which unlike the Colombian army, will not stop its pursuit of the FARC at Colombia's national borders.
In fact, the regional spillover of FARC and AUC forces into neighboring countries could turn the border regions of these countries into bloody battlefields if the Colombian army and AUC cooperate in cross-border pincer attacks against FARC forces. It also could suck the military and border security services of other countries into armed engagements with Colombian combatants, and it may endanger the lives and property of civilian non-combatants in states and provinces that border Colombia.
The regional spillover has become more visible since the Colombian peace talks were scrapped Feb. 20. In the past month, Ecuadorian army patrols discovered an abandoned FARC camp in Sucumbios province, Peru's government confirmed it has indications of FARC incursions into Peruvian territory and Brazilian border police exchanged gunfire with a group of armed men believed to have been a FARC or AUC patrol that crossed into Brazilian territory.
Also, the FARC's 33rd Front launched an assault in Colombia on March 21 from inside Venezuelan territory, withdrawing into Venezuela to escape the Colombian army. This was the 33rd Front's first confirmed attack from a staging area inside Venezuela. However, Caracas officially denied Colombian military charges that FARC units are based inside Venezuela.
The FARC's deployment of forces into the border regions of neighboring countries is not necessarily part of a political strategy to expand into foreign territory. Rather, the cross-border deployments are more likely a defensive measure meant to improve guerrillas' security from pursuit, attack and surveillance by the Colombian army and also to protect critical corridors through which FARC personnel, weapons, drugs and other supplies travel into and out of Colombia.
It most likely is not a coincidence that the FARC's most frequent cross-border deployments recently have been to areas inside Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela. These countries are vital supply corridors for FARC forces in northern, eastern and southern Colombia. In the south, Ecuador's port of Esmeralda and border towns in the province of Sucumbios have been critical corridors for smuggling weapons, ammunition and explosives into Colombia. Additionally, Panama's southern Darien region has long been a supply corridor and rear-guard rest area for FARC units in northern Colombia.
However, the FARC's most important supply corridor today runs through Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez sympathizes openly with the guerrillas. Two years ago, Chavez denounced Colombia's ruling political establishment as "rancid oligarchs." In recent months, his regime has denied repeatedly that Colombian guerrillas operate in Venezuelan territory.
Nevertheless, on March 21, the FARC's 33rd Front launched an attack against targets near the Tibu and La Gabarra settlements in Colombia's Norte de Santander region from a staging area located more than one kilometer inside Venezuelan territory. Units of the Colombian army's Second Division interdicted the FARC force of approximately 150 fighters, and nearly 40 rebels and soldiers were killed during five days of fighting. When the FARC finally disengaged, it withdrew into Venezuelan territory and then fired homemade mortars at Colombian army units from a firebase about 600 meters inside Venezuela, according to Second Division Commander Gen. Martin Carreno.
Carreno's account was supported by Colombian Air Force Commander Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco, who told El Tiempo March 28 that the Colombian government has incontrovertible proof of a permanent FARC presence inside Venezuela.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel immediately rejected these allegations as "completely false" and "ill intentioned," according to the Caracas daily El Universal. Also, Venezuelan Interior and Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, who previously was Chavez's official presidential liaison to the FARC, deplored the "aggression" of the Colombian generals and suggested they were seeking foreign scapegoats to explain how the FARC's 33rd Front successfully ambushed the Colombian army at Tibu and La Gabarra.
However, current and former Chavez government officials contradict the Venezuelan government's denials that FARC forces have deployed into its territory. For example, a political situation report completed March 12 by the Defense Ministry's intelligence division warned that Colombian guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers are operating with growing impunity in the Venezuelan border states of Apure, Barinas, Portuguesa, Tachira and Zulia.
Moreover, on Feb. 28, the former head of the counterinsurgency division of the Interior and Justice Ministry's political police said in a Caracas television interview that Venezuela's border states were overrun by members of the FARC, the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group and AUC forces, and that the FARC's 33rd and 20th Fronts were operating permanently inside Venezuela.
The Chavez government's official refusal to acknowledge the 33rd Front's activities inside Venezuela could reflect Caracas' suspicions about the Colombian army's political motives. Venezuela's government, like the governments of Ecuador and Brazil, has long complained about the weak military presence on the Colombian side of the border. It also is possible that the Chavez government is deliberately turning a blind eye to the FARC's increasing activities inside Venezuela and will continue doing so as long as the FARC does not attack any Venezuelan military or police forces. After all, Chavez is believed to have a secret non-aggression pact with the FARC and the ELN.
However, if the 33rd Front and other FARC units keep using Venezuela as a staging point for launching attacks, a safety zone against hot pursuit by the Colombian army and for rest and resupply, the AUC will quickly deploy into Venezuela either directly or indirectly -- through Venezuelan paramilitary groups financed by Venezuelans and trained by Colombian AUC veterans.
If Chavez does little or nothing to stop the FARC, a diplomatic crisis between his regime and the governments of Colombia and the United States also may result. |
