Lagniappe

 

 

Simon Romero: Did Venezuela try to arm rebels?

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, seen Wednesday in Brazil, has sought to counter the influence of the United States by forming his own leftist bloc in the region.

Files provided by Colombian officials from computers they say were captured in a March 1 cross-border raid in Ecuador appear to tie Venezuela's government to efforts to secure arms for Colombia's largest insurgency.

Officials taking part in Colombia's investigation provided The New York Times with copies of more than 20 files, some of which also showed contributions from the rebels to the 2006 campaign of Ecuador's leftist president, Rafael Correa.

If verified, the files would offer rare insight into the cloak-and-dagger nature of Latin America's longest-running guerrilla conflict. They would also potentially link the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador to the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is classified by Washington as a terrorist group and has fought to overthrow Colombia's government for four decades.

While it was impossible to authenticate the files independently, the Colombian officials said their government had invited Interpol to verify the files.

Both the United States and Colombia, Washington's staunchest ally in the region, have a strong interest in undercutting President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who has sought to counter the influence of the United States by forming his own leftist bloc in the region. But the Colombian officials who provided the computer files adamantly vouched for them.

The files contained touches that suggested authenticity: They were filled with revolutionary jargon, passages in numerical code, missives about U.S. policy in Latin America and even brief personal reflections like one by a senior rebel commander on the joy of becoming a grandfather.

Other senior Colombian officials said the files made public so far only scratched the surface of the captured archives, risking new friction with Venezuela and Ecuador, both of which have dismissed the files as fakes.

Colombia's relations with its two Andean neighbors suddenly grew hostile after Colombian forces raided a FARC camp inside Ecuador on March 1, killing 26 people, including a top FARC commander, and capturing the computers, according to the Colombians.

Though tensions ebbed after a summit meeting of Latin American nations in the Dominican Republic later in March, the matter of the computer files has threatened to reignite the diplomatic crisis caused by the raid.

Shortly after the crisis erupted, Colombian officials began releasing a small portion of the computer files, some of which they claimed showed efforts by Chávez's government to provide financial support for the FARC.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said that officials had obtained more than 16,000 files from three computers belonging to Luis Edgar Devia Silva, a commander known by his nom de guerre, Raul Reyes, who was killed in the raid. Two other hard drives were also captured, he said.

The correspondence also pointed to warm relations between Venezuela's government and the FARC.

One letter, dated Jan. 25, 2007, by Ivan Marquez, a member of the FARC's seven-member secretariat, discussed a meeting with a Venezuelan official called Carvajal. "Carvajal," Marquez wrote, "left with the pledge of bringing an arms dealer from Panama."

Officials here said they believed that the official in question was Gen. Hugo Carvajal, the director of military intelligence in Venezuela, a confidant of Chávez and perhaps Venezuela's most powerful intelligence official.

In other correspondence from September 2004 after the killing by the FARC of six Venezuelan soldiers and one Venezuelan engineer on Venezuelan soil that month, Carvajal's long-standing ties to the guerrillas also come into focus. In these letters, the guerrillas describe talks with Carvajal, Chavez's emissary to deal with the issue.

"Today I met with General Hugo Carvajal," a FARC commander wrote in one letter dated Sept. 23, 2004. "He said he guarded the secret hope that what happened in Apure," the rebel wrote in reference to the Venezuelan border state where the killings took place, "was the work of a force different from our own."

Officials in Carvajal's office at the General Directorate of Military Intelligence in Caracas did not respond to requests for comment on the letters.

Another file recovered from Devia's computers, dated a week earlier on Jan. 18, 2007, described efforts by the FARC's secretariat to secure Chávez's assistance for buying arms and obtaining a $250 million loan, "to be paid when we take power."

The FARC, a Marxist-inspired insurgency that has persisted for four decades, finances itself largely through cocaine trafficking and kidnappings for ransom. But other files from the computers suggested that Colombia's counterinsurgency effort, financed in large part by $600 million a year in aid from Washington, was making these activities less lucrative for the FARC, forcing it to consider options like selling Venezuelan gasoline at a profit in Colombia.

One piece of correspondence dated Nov. 21, 2006, and circulated among the FARC's secretariat, describes a $100,000 donation to the campaign of Correa, Ecuador's president.

Of that amount, $50,000 came from the FARC's "Eastern bloc," a militarily strong faction that operates in eastern Colombia, and $20,000 from the group's "Southern bloc," according to the document.

Simon Romero is well know journalist and correspondent of The New York Times in Andean countries, Romero wrote this story from Bogota. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.

Editor's Note:Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by The New York Times, on 03/30/2007. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers.

All comments posted and published on Petroleumworld, do not reflect either for or against the opinion expressed in the comment as an endorsement of Petroleumworld. All comments expressed are private comments and do not necessary reflect the view of this website. All comments are posted and published without liability to Petroleumworld.

Fair use Notice: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues of environmental and humanitarian significance. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.

All works published by Petroleumworld are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Petroleumworld has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Petroleumworld endorsed or sponsored by the originator.

Petroleumworld encourages persons to reproduce, reprint, or broadcast Petroleumworld articles provided that any such reproduction identify the original source, http://www.petroleumworld.com or else and it is done within the fair use as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Internet web links to http://www.petroleumworld.com are appreciated

Petroleumworld welcomes your feedback and comments: editor@petroleumworld.com. By using this link, you agree to allow E&P to publish your comments on our letters page.

Petroleumworld News 03/31/08

Copyright© 2008 respective author or news agency. All rights reserved.
We welcome the use of Petroleumworld™ stories by anyone provided it mentions Petroleumworld.com as the source. Other stories you have to get authorization by its authors.

 

Send this story to a friend

Your feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.

Write to editor@petroleumworld.com

Any question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com

Best Viewed with IE 5.01+
Windows NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels