3-04-08, 10:06 am
Original source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs
On Saturday, the Colombian air force attacked a FARC camp site in Ecuador, a mile from the Colombian border resulting in the death of Raul Reyes (Luis Edgar Devia Silva), the second in command of the FARC, and seventeen other members of his unit. Both Ecuador and Venezuela reacted with outrage, with Ecuador immediately recalling its ambassador (Venezuela previously had done so) and ordering their troops to their respective borders with Colombia in response to the air strike and subsequent incursion by Colombian helicopters ordered by President Alvaro Uribe into Ecuador.
What is particularly worrisome about this entire scenario is the strong possibility of U.S. involvement in the incident and what role, if any, Southcom had in planning, supplying and carrying out the operation. There are good grounds to speculate that the entire game plan seems to have been carried out at too sophisticated a level by a Colombian military which normally is dismissed as incompetent, corrupt, drug sodden and ill-deposed to risk dangers.
While there is no evidence to buttress such surmises, the U.S. role could have involved the supply of intelligence based on satellites and heat sensors, a supply of smart bombs and the seconding of some of the scores of U.S. trainers in the country to cooperate in carrying out the initiative. In addition, there could have been possible authorization of the use of Black Hawk helicopters provided under the auspices of Plan Colombia, the multi billion dollar U.S. military aid program which transformed Colombia into being the third largest recipient of such U.S. assistance in the world. Caracas and Quito have called the attack “cowardly and cold” and have argued that Ecuadorian air and ground space were clearly violated and there was no justification for such foreign military action on Ecuadorian soil. Chávez also said that if such an attack had been duplicated on Venezuelan soil, Caracas would consider declaring war on Colombia.
Ecuador has withdrawn its ambassador to Colombia, expelled the Colombian ambassador in Quito, while Venezuela has ordered 10 battalions to the border for possible military action.
There is no question that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has dangerously escalated the tension now mounting in the northern arc of South America. Uribe’s decision to take such violent action just at the time that the tempo of FARC’s release of some of the estimated 750 hostages it was holding was being stepped up, has to be seen as a very strange development when one considers that the Colombian President had previously sacked Chávez last November for his successful record in arranging the release of several hostages thus, there may be other matters on Uribe’s agenda rather than just hostage release. Uribe is also risking the $6 billion a year in bilateral trade between Venezuela and Colombia and he may be hoping that Chávez’s decision to send 10 battalions of troops to the Colombia-Venezuela border may be put to good use in convincing Congressional Democrats to give up their opposition to approving the bilateral free trade agreement that the Bush administration has signed with Bogota, due to Colombia’s stalwart fight against “terrorism.” The Democrats now oppose such passage because the Colombian security forces have a repellant reputation for gunning down the country’s labor leaders.
The question is how prudent was Uribe’s dangerously precipitous action. Without question, Colombia’s Darth Vader has ordered operations before that have violated the territorial boundaries of his neighbors, such as using Colombian intelligence forces to collaborate with Venezuelan mercenaries to penetrate that country’s territory to abduct the FARC`s Rodrigo Granda, who later was released after France’s Nicolas Sarkozy persuaded Uribe to let him go after Colombia’s tensions with Caracas continued to escalate.
From Council on Hemispheric Affairs
