U.S. Plan Raises Ire in Latin America

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 8, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 7 -- A U.S. plan to deploy troops and station aircraft at several Colombian military bases has generated controversy across Latin America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warning that it could lead to war and the president of Brazil saying that he did not like the idea of an expanded U.S. presence in the region.

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said by phone from Washington on Friday that the plan would give the United States access to Colombian bases from which to carry out vital counter-drug surveillance flights over the Pacific, a conduit for cocaine smuggled to Mexico and on to the United States. "Our ability to have broad coverage in that area was important," he said.

But since Colombian authorities revealed details of the proposed agreement last month, Chávez has said the United States might use the bases as a platform for an invasion of his oil-rich country. "We're talking about the Yankees, the most aggressive nation in the history of humanity," Chávez said Wednesday in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

A woman in Rio wears a mask that reads in Spanish: "Get Uribe Out." Concerns about the U.S. anti-drug plan prompted Colombia's Uribe to visit other leaders. (By Ricardo Moraes -- Associated Press)

The reaction from Caracas was no surprise to Washington officials, whom Chávez frequently accuses of plotting against his government. But moderate, European-style leftist governments in South America, most of which have good relations with the United States, have also raised concerns that the proposed U.S. presence is greater than Washington needs for its anti-drug efforts.

Hurdle for Obama

That indignation poses a new challenge for the Obama administration, which has been trying to improve relations with governments that had openly opposed the Bush administration. But political analysts, as well as officials in Colombia, said the secretive nature of the talks between Washington and Bogota had proved counterproductive.

"There just didn't seem to be any serious consultation beforehand," said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, adding that the controversy "was completely avoidable."

On Friday, President Obama tried to soothe nerves in Latin America, telling reporters in Washington that the United States was simply upgrading its security agreement with Colombia. "There have been those in the region who have been trying to play this up as part of a traditional anti-Yankee rhetoric," Obama said, adding, "We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia."

The concerns expressed in the region prompted Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to embark on a three-day South American trip this week to reassure fellow leaders, including populists such as Bolivia's Evo Morales and moderates such as Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Morales and Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner did not offer support for a Colombian-U.S. deal, but Bachelet and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva toned down their initial criticisms to say that the proposal is a sovereign matter.

Still, after Uribe met with Lula in Brasilia on Thursday, Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, told reporters that his country had asked Colombia to be more transparent about the proposed accord. "We will have to see if that Colombian transparency satisfies, or does not satisfy, our doubts," Amorim said. The plan was expected to be the main topic of discussion when Latin American officials meet in Ecuador on Monday for a regional defense summit.

Colombian authorities said last month that under the accord, which may be signed this month and would last 10 years, U.S. aircraft could be stationed at up to five Colombian air bases and U.S. naval vessels could dock at two Colombian ports, one on the Caribbean and the other on the Pacific. Up to 800 U.S. military personnel and 600 private contractors could use the bases, meeting a cap of 1,400 that was set in 2000 when Congress approved $1.3 billion in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia. As of June 19, there were 268 U.S. military personnel in Colombia and 308 civilian contractors.

The Uribe administration has stressed that the bases would remain under Colombian command, with U.S. missions requiring Colombian approval and base security handled by Colombian troops. U.S. planes would be unable fly over a third country unless the United States had a separate agreement with that country. "These are not American bases, but Colombian," Gen. Freddy Padilla, chief of the armed forces, said Tuesday at a summit with U.S. military officers in the coastal city of Cartagena. "But we will provide the possibility for them to use our installations."

U.S. military officers and specialists working for U.S. companies that carry out anti-drug operations already use several Colombian bases.

Colombian officials said the base that would have the biggest U.S. presence under the accord is Palanquero, in Puerto Salgar, a steamy river town a four-hour drive from Bogota. Hundreds of service members can be housed there, and its hangars can accommodate more than 100 aircraft.

End of Ecuadoran Deal

The idea of using Colombian bases comes as a decade-long U.S. presence ends at the coastal air base in Manta, Ecuador, which U.S. forces used to patrol the Pacific. Then-candidate Rafael Correa railed against the U.S. presence during his 2006 presidential campaign and, once in office, did not renew an operating agreement with Washington.

Correa's government also accused U.S. forces operating out of Manta of having helped the Colombians carry out the bombing of a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last year that killed two dozen guerrillas.

The senior State Department official said talks with the Uribe administration over use of Colombian bases began "long before" Ecuador decided to end the U.S. presence at Manta. "We thought it made sense," he said.

Colombia's vice minister for defense, Sergio Jaramillo, said in an interview Friday that officials have become increasingly concerned about the smuggling of cocaine into Mexico via speedboats and semi-submersible vessels operating out of clandestine Pacific ports. "One must not underrate the significance or danger of losing the capability that the U.S. had in Ecuador," he said.

Jaramillo said the planes that had been in Manta "were the ones that were giving us the intelligence to do the interdiction operations we were doing in the Pacific."

In Venezuela, though, Chávez scoffs at those arguments, his rhetoric ratcheting up in recent days since Colombia accused Venezuela of providing Colombian guerrillas with antitank rocket launchers.

Chávez denied the allegation and recalled his ambassador from Colombia. In the wake of the base controversy, he has announced an economic counteroffensive that includes suspending the participation of Colombia's state oil company in operations in Venezuela's richest oil belt. He also said plans to import 10,000 cars from Colombia had been called off and threatened to cut other Colombian imports.

"The only way this situation returns, let's say, to calm is for Colombia to refuse to give its territory to the United States," Chávez told reporters Thursday.

New Evidence of Venezuelan Aid for Colombian Rebels

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.

The materials point to detailed collaborations between the guerrillas and high-ranking military and intelligence officials in Mr. Chávez’s government as recently as several weeks ago, countering the president’s frequent statements that his administration does not assist the rebels. “We do not protect them,” he said in late July.

The new evidence — drawn from computer material captured from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — comes at a low point for ties between Venezuela and Colombia. Mr. Chávez froze diplomatic relations in late July, chafing at assertions by Colombia’s government that Swedish rocket launchers sold to Venezuela ended up in the hands of the FARC. Venezuela’s reaction was also fueled by Colombia’s plans to increase American troop levels there.

“Colombia’s government is trying to build a case in the media against our country that serves its own political agenda,” said Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, describing the latest intelligence information as “noncorroborated.”

Mr. Chávez has disputed claims of his government’s collaboration with the rebels since Colombian forces raided a FARC encampment in Ecuador last year. During the raid, Colombian commandos obtained the computers of a FARC commander with encrypted e-mail messages that described a history of close ties between Mr. Chávez’s government and the rebel group, which has long crossed over into Venezuelan territory for refuge.

The newest communications, circulated among the seven members of the FARC’s secretariat, suggest that little has changed with Venezuela’s assistance since the raid. The New York Times obtained a copy of the computer material from an intelligence agency that is analyzing it.

One message from Iván Márquez, a rebel commander thought to operate largely from Venezuelan territory, describes the FARC’s plan to buy surface-to-air missiles, sniper rifles and radios in Venezuela last year.

It is not clear whether the arms Mr. Márquez refers to ended up in FARC hands. But he wrote that the effort was facilitated by Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, the director of Venezuela’s police intelligence agency until his removal last month, and by Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, a former Venezuelan interior minister who served as Mr. Chávez’s official emissary to the FARC in negotiations to free hostages last year.

In the message, Mr. Márquez discusses a plan by Mr. Rodríguez Chacín to carry out the deal near the Río Negro in Amazonas State in Venezuela. Mr. Márquez goes further, explaining that General Rangel Silva gave the arms dealers documents they could use to move around freely while in Venezuela.

Intelligence of this kind has been a source of tension between Colombia and Venezuela, with the government here claiming the information is false and used to further political ends. Colombian officials, by contrast, argue that the intelligence proves that the FARC survives in part on its ability to operate from Venezuela’s frontier regions.

The latest evidence, suggesting that the FARC operates easily in Venezuela, may put the Obama administration in a tough spot. President Obama has recently tried to repair Washington’s relations with Venezuela, adopting a nonconfrontational approach to Mr. Chávez that stands in contrast to the Bush administration’s often aggressive response to his taunts and insults.

But the United States and the European Union still classify the FARC as a terrorist organization. The Treasury Department accused General Rangel Silva and Mr. Rodríguez Chacín last year of assisting the FARC’s drug trafficking activities, opening the officials to freezes on their assets, fines and prison terms of up to 30 years in the United States. Venezuela has said the men are not guilty of those charges.

“We do not comment on intelligence matters,” said Noel Clay, a State Department spokesman, in relation to the latest captured communications. A spokesman from the Colombian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the matter.

Computer records obtained in the Colombian raid in Ecuador last year appeared to corroborate the assertion that Venezuela helped the FARC acquire the Swedish-made rocket launchers at the heart of the latest diplomatic dispute between the two countries. The launchers were purchased by the Venezuelan Army in the late 1980s but captured in Colombia in combat operations against the FARC last year.

The FARC’s use of Swedish arms has an added dimension: the rebels kidnapped a Swedish engineer in Colombia in 2007, holding him hostage for nearly two years — during which he was reported to have suffered brain damage and paralysis from a stroke — before releasing him in March.

“The issue of these weapons is extremely serious for us,” said Tommy Stromberg, the political officer at the Swedish Embassy in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, which also oversees Sweden’s affairs in Venezuela. Mr. Stromberg said Venezuela had bought Swedish arms as recently as 2006. “We have asked Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry for clarification on how this happened, but have not had a response.”

The computer records from the raid in Ecuador last year also seem to match some of the information in the new communications under review by Western intelligence officials.

For example, a message obtained in the Ecuador raid and written in September 2007 contained an earlier reference to the arms deal discussed recently by the FARC. In the earlier message, Mr. Márquez, the rebel commander, referred to dealers he described as Australian, and went into detail about the arms they were selling, including Dragunov rifles, SA-7 missiles and HF-90M radios, the same items he discusses in the more recent communications.

Another file from the Ecuador raid mentioning an offer from the FARC to instruct Venezuelan officers in guerrilla warfare matches recently obtained material from a rebel commander, Timoleón Jiménez, that says the course took place. Other communications refer to FARC efforts to secure Venezuelan identity cards in a plan overseen by General Rangel Silva, the former Venezuelan intelligence chief.

In other material captured as recently as May, Mr. Márquez, the rebel commander, said Mr. Chávez had spoken personally with Mr. Jiménez, expressing solidarity for the FARC’s struggle. Then Mr. Márquez went into more mundane matters, referring to unspecified problems the FARC had recently encountered in La Fría, an area in Venezuela near the border with Colombia.

Venezuelan State That Chávez Family Rules Is Rife With Kidnapping

By SIMON ROMERO

BARINAS, Venezuela — Stretching over vast cattle estates at the foothills of the Andes, Barinas is known for two things: as the bastion of the family of President Hugo Chávez and as the setting for a terrifying surge in abductions, making it a contender for Latin America’s most likely place to get kidnapped.

An intensifying nationwide crime wave over the past decade has pushed the kidnapping rate in Venezuela past Colombia’s and Mexico’s, with about 2 abductions per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Interior Ministry.

But nowhere in Venezuela comes close in abductions to Barinas, with 7.2 kidnappings per 100,000 inhabitants, as armed gangs thrive off the disarray here while Mr. Chávez’s family tightens its grip on the state. Seizures of cattle ranches and crumbling infrastructure also contribute to the sense of low-intensity chaos.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

“This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power as the rest of us fear for our lives,” said Ángel Santamaría, 57, a cattleman in the town of Nueva Bolivia whose son, Kusto, 8, was kidnapped while walking to school in May. He was held for 29 days, until Mr. Santamaría gathered a small ransom to free him.

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family.

“With each day that passes,” the governor said recently, “Barinas is safer than before.”

Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed.

In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.

Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men.

One opposition leader, Wilmer Azuaje, detailed to prosecutors and legislators what he said was more than $20 million in illegal gains by the family since the president’s father was elected governor in 1998. But in a brief review of those claims, National Assembly, under the control of Chávez loyalists, cleared the family of charges of illicit enrichment.

“In the meantime, while the family wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism, we are descending into a neo-capitalist chaos where all that matters is money,” said Alberto Santelíz, the publisher of La Prensa, a small opposition newspaper.

One reason for the rise in kidnappings is the injection of oil money into the local economy, with some families reaping quick fortunes because of ties to large infrastructure projects.

A new soccer stadium, built under the supervision of Adelis Chávez’s at a cost of more than $50 million, is still unfinished two years after its first game in 2007, joining other white elephants dotting Barinas’s landscape. Nearby lies the unfinished Museum of the Plains, intended to celebrate the culture of the president’s birthplace. A sprawling shopping mall stands half-completed after its backers fled a shakedown by construction unions.

More than a decade into the Chávez family’s rule in Barinas, the state remains Venezuela’s poorest, with average monthly household income of about $800, according to the National Statistics Institute. Kidnapping, once feared only by the wealthy, has spread in Barinas to include the poor. In one case this year of a 3-year-old girl kidnapped in the slum of Mi Jardín, the abductor, when told that the only thing of value owned by the girl’s mother was a refrigerator, instructed her to sell it to pay the ransom.

Kidnapping specialists here said the abductors were drawn from two Colombian rebel groups, a small Venezuelan guerrilla faction called the Bolivarian Liberation Front, other criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Just a fraction of the kidnappings result in prison sentences.

“With impunity rampant in Barinas, how can our governor say with a straight face that people are kidnapping themselves?” asked Lucy Montoya, 38, a hardware store owner whose sister, Doris, a 41-year-old mother of three, was kidnapped in March.

Doris Montoya’s abductors have not freed her or communicated with her family since receiving ransom money in May, Lucy Montoya said, adding, “The government’s handling of this crisis is an affront to our dignity as human beings.”

Meanwhile, new figures show kidnappings climbing to 454 known cases in the first six months of 2009, including about 66 in Barinas, compared with a nationwide 2008 estimate of between 537 and 612. But officials acknowledge that the true figures are probably higher because many cases are never reported.

Here in Barinas, victims seethe over the inaction of the president and his family. “Our ruling dynasty is effectively telling us we are expendable,” said Rodolfo Peña, 38, a businessman who was abducted here last year. “The only other plausible theory,” he said, “is that they are too inebriated by power to notice the emergency at their feet.”