ISSUES....
Inside,
confidential, off the record
Revealed
Revealed: Chávez role in cocaine trail to Europe
The
guerrilla group Farc has long been suspected of running the Colombian
cocaine
industry. But how does it move the drug so readily out of the
country? In a special investigation, John Carlin in Venezuela
reports on
the remarkable collusion between Colombia's rebels and its neighbour's
armed forces
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This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday February 03 2008
on p38 of the World news section. It was last updated at 00:10
on February 03 2008. Some fighters desert from the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) because they feel betrayed by
the leadership, demoralised by a sense that the socialist ideals
that
first informed the guerrilla group have been replaced by the
savage capitalism of drug trafficking. Others leave to be with
their families.
Still others leave because they begin to think that, if they
do not, they will die. Such is the case of Rafael, who deserted
last
September after 18 months operating in a Farc base inside Venezuela,
with which Colombia shares a long border.
The logic of Rafael's decision seems, at first, perverse. He
is back in Colombia today where, as a guerrilla deserter, he
will
live for the rest of his days under permanent threat of assassination
by his former comrades. Venezuela, on the other hand, ought to
have been a safe place to be a Farc guerrilla. President Hugo
Chávez
has publicly given Farc his political support and the Colombian
army seems unlikely to succumb to the temptation to cross the border
in violation of international law.
'All this is true,' says Rafael. 'The Colombian army doesn't cross
the border and the guerrillas have a non-aggression pact with the
Venezuelan military. The Venezuelan government lets Farc operate
freely because they share the same left-wing, Bolivarian ideals,
and because Farc bribes their people.'
Then what did he run away from? 'From a greater risk than the
one I run now: from the daily battles with other guerrilla groups
to see who controls the cocaine-trafficking routes. There is a
lot of money at stake in control of the border where the drugs
come in from Colombia. The safest route to transport cocaine to
Europe is via Venezuela.'
Rafael is one of 2,400 guerrillas who deserted Farc last year.
He is one of four I spoke to, all of whom had grown despondent
about a purportedly left-wing revolutionary movement whose power
and influence rests less on its political legitimacy and more on
the benefits of having become the world's biggest kidnapping organisation
and the world's leading traffickers in cocaine.
Farc has come a long way from its leftist revolutionary roots
and is now commonly referred to in Colombia and elsewhere as 'narco-guerrillas'.
Pushed out to the border areas, it has been rendered increasingly
irrelevant politically and militarily due to the combined efforts
of Colombia's centre-right President, Alvaro Uribe, and his principal
backers, the United States, whose Plan Colombia, devised under
the presidency of Bill Clinton, has pumped hundreds of millions
of dollars into the Colombian military and police. A large part
of Plan Colombia is designed to eradicate the vast coca plantations
cultivated and maintained by Farc and other Colombian groups.
However, the impact on Farc has been ambiguous: its chances of
launching a left-wing insurrection in the manner of Nicaragua's
Sandinistas in 1979 are nil, but then they probably always were;
yet it looks capable of surviving indefinitely as an armed force
as a result of the income from its kidnapping, extortion and cocaine
interests.
Helping it to survive, and prosper, is its friend
and neighbour Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan President sought to extract
some international credit from the role he played as mediator in
the release last month in Venezuelan territory of two kidnapped
women, friends of Ingrid Betancourt, a French citizen and former
Colombian presidential candidate held by Farc for six years. But
Chávez has not denounced Farc for holding Betancourt and
43 other 'political' hostages.
I spoke at length to Rafael (not his real name)
and three other Farc deserters about the links between the guerrilla
group and
Chávez's Venezuela, in particular their co-operation in
the drug business. All four have handed themselves in to the Colombian
government in recent months under an official programme to help
former guerrillas adapt back to civilian life.
I also spoke to high-level security, intelligence and diplomatic
sources from five countries, some of them face to face in Colombia
and London, some of them by phone. All of them insisted on speaking
off the record, either for political or safety reasons, both of
which converge in Farc, the oldest functioning guerrilla organisation
in the world and one that is richer, more numerous and better armed
than any other single Colombian drug cartel and is classified as
'terrorist' by the European Union and the US.
All the sources I reached agreed that powerful
elements within the Venezuelan state apparatus have forged a
strong working relationship
with Farc. They told me that Farc and Venezuelan state officials
operated actively together on the ground, where military and drug-trafficking
activities coincide. But the relationship becomes more passive,
they said, less actively involved, the higher up the Venezuelan
government you go. No source I spoke to accused Chávez himself
of having a direct role in Colombia's giant drug-trafficking business.
Yet the same people I interviewed struggled to believe that Chávez
was not aware of the collusion between his armed forces and the
leadership of Farc, as they also found it difficult to imagine
that he has no knowledge of the degree to which Farc is involved
in the cocaine trade.
I made various attempts to extract an official
response to these allegations from the Venezuelan government.
In the end Foreign
Minister Nicolás Maduro made a public pronouncement in Uruguay
in which he said, without addressing the substance of the allegations,
that they were part of a 'racist' and 'colonialist' campaign against
Venezuela by the centre-left Spanish newspaper El País,
where I originally wrote about Farc and the Venezuelan connection.
What no one disputes, however, is that Chávez
is a political ally of Farc (last month he called on the EU and
US to stop labelling
its members 'terrorists') or that for many years Farc has used
Venezuelan territory as a refuge. A less uncontroversial claim,
made by all the sources to whom I spoke (the four disaffected guerrillas
included), is that if it were not for cocaine, the fuel that feeds
the Colombian war, Farc would long ago have disbanded.
The varied testimonies I have heard reveal that the co-operation
between Venezuela and the guerrillas in transporting cocaine by
land, air and sea is both extensive and systematic. Venezuela is
also supplying arms to the guerrillas, offering them the protection
of their armed forces in the field, and providing them with legal
immunity de facto as they go about their giant illegal business.
Thirty per cent of the 600 tons of cocaine smuggled
from Colombia each year goes through Venezuela. Most of that
30 per cent ends
up in Europe, with Spain and Portugal being the principal ports
of entry. The drug's value on European streets is some £7.5bn
a year.
The infrastructure that Venezuela provides for
the cocaine business has expanded dramatically over the past
five years of Chávez's
presidency, according to intelligence sources. Chávez's
decision to expel the US Drug Enforcement Administration from his
country in 2005 was celebrated both by Farc and drug lords in the
conventional cartels with whom they sometimes work. According to
Luis Hernando Gómez Bustamante, a Colombian kingpin caught
by the police last February, 'Venezuela is the temple of drug trafficking.'
A European diplomat with many years of experience
in Latin America echoed this view. 'The so-called anti-imperialist,
socialist and
Bolivarian nation that Chávez says he wants to create is
en route to becoming a narco-state in the same way that Farc members
have turned themselves into narco-guerrillas. Perhaps Chávez
does not realise it but, unchecked, this phenomenon will corrode
Venezuela like a cancer.'
The deserters I interviewed said that not only
did the Venezuelan authorities provide armed protection to at
least four permanent
guerrilla camps inside their country, they turned a blind eye to
bomb-making factories and bomber training programmes going on inside
Farc camps. Rafael - tall and lithe, with the sculptured facial
features of the classic Latin American 'guerrillero' - said he
was trained in Venezuela to participate in a series of bomb attacks
in Bogotá, Colombia's capital.
Co-operation between the Colombian guerrillas and
the Venezuelan government extended, Rafael said, to the sale
of arms by Chávez's
military to Farc; to the supply of Venezuelan ID cards to regular
guerrilla fighters and of Venezuelan passports to the guerrilla
leaders so they were able to travel to Cuba and Europe; and also
to a reciprocal understanding whereby Farc gave military training
to the Bolivarian Forces of Liberation, a peculiar paramilitary
group created by the Chávez government purportedly for the
purpose of defending the motherland in case of American invasion.
Chávez's contacts with Farc are conducted via one of the
members of the organisation's leadership, Iván Márquez,
who also has a farm in Venezuela and who communicates with the
President via senior officials of the Venezuelan intelligence service.
As a Farc deserter who had filled a senior position in the propaganda
department said: 'Farc shares three basic Bolivarian principles
with Chávez: Latin American unity; the anti-imperialist
struggle; and national sovereignty. These ideological positions
lead them to converge on the tactical terrain.'
The tactical benefits of this Bolivarian (after
the 19th-century Latin American liberator, Simón Bolívar)
solidarity reach their maximum expression in the multinational
cocaine industry.
Different methods exist to transport the drug from Colombia to
Europe, but what they all have in common is the participation,
by omission or commission, of the Venezuelan authorities.
The most direct route is the aerial one. Small planes take off
from remote jungle strips in Colombia and land in Venezuelan airfields.
Then there are two options, according to intelligence sources.
Either the same light planes continue on to Haiti or the Dominican
Republic (the US government says that since 2006 its radar network
has detected an increase from three to 15 in the number of 'suspicious
flights' a week out of Venezuela); or the cocaine is loaded on
to large planes that fly directly to countries in West Africa such
as Guinea-Bissau or Ghana, from where it continues by sea to Portugal
or the north-western Spanish province of Galicia, the entry points
to the EU Schengen zone.
A less cumbersome traditional method for getting the drugs to
Europe in small quantities is via passengers on international commercial
flights - 'mules', as they call them in Colombia. One of the guerrilla
deserters I spoke to, Marcelo, said he had taken part in 'eight
or nine' missions of this type over 12 months. 'Operating inside
Venezuela is the easiest thing in the world,' he said. 'Farc guerrillas
are in there completely and the National Guard, the army and other
Venezuelans in official positions offer them their services, in
exchange for money. There are never shoot-outs between Farc and
the guardia or army.'
Rafael said he took part in operations on a bigger scale, their
final objective being to transport the cocaine by sea from Venezuelan
ports on the Caribbean Sea. His rank in Farc was higher than Marcelo's
and he had access to more confidential information. 'You receive
the merchandise on the border, brought in by lorry,' he said. 'When
the vehicle arrives the National Guard is waiting, already alerted
to the fact that it was on its way. They have already been paid
a bribe up front, so that the lorry can cross into Venezuela without
problems.
'Sometimes they provide us with an escort for the next phase,
which involves me and other comrades getting on to the lorry, or
into a car that will drive along with it. We then make the 16-hour
trip to Puerto Cabello, which is on the coast, west of Caracas.
There the lorry is driven into a big warehouse controlled jointly
by Venezuelan locals and by Farc, which is in charge of security.
Members of the Venezuelan navy take care of customs matters and
the safe departure of the vessels. They are alive to all that is
going on and they facilitate everything Farc does.'
Rafael described a similar routine with drug operations
involving the port of Maracaibo which, according to police sources,
is 'a
kind of paradise' for drug traffickers. Among whom - until last
week when he was gunned down by a rival cartel in a Venezuelan
town near the Colombian border - was one of the 'capos' most wanted
internationally, a Colombian called Wilber Varela, but better known
as 'Jabón', which means 'soap'. 'Varela and others like
him set themselves up in stunning homes and buy bankrupt businesses
and large tracts of land, converting themselves almost overnight
into personages of great value to the local economy,' a police
source said. 'Venezuela offers a perfect life insurance scheme
for these criminals.'
This 'tactical' convergence between the Venezuelan armed forces
and Farc extends to the military terrain. To the point that, according
to one especially high-placed intelligence source I spoke to, the
National Guard has control posts placed around the guerrilla camps.
What for? 'To give them protection, which tells us that knowledge
of the tight links between the soldiers on the ground and Farc
reaches up to the highest decision-making levels of the Venezuelan
military.'
Rafael told how he had travelled once by car with Captain Pedro
Mendoza of the National Guard to a military base outside Caracas
called Fuerte Tiuna. He entered with the captain, who handed him
eight rifles. They then returned to the border with the rifles
in the boot of the car.
Rafael said that members of the National Guard also supplied Farc
with hand grenades, grenade-launchers and explosive material for
bombs made out of a petrol-based substance called C-4.
An intelligence source confirmed that these small movements of
arms occurred on a large scale. 'What we see is the drugs going
from Colombia to Venezuela and the arms from Venezuela to Colombia.
The arms move in a small but constant flow: 5,000 bullets, six
rifles. It's very hard to detect because there are lots of small
networks, very well co-ordinated, all of them by specialists in
Farc.'
Rafael worked directly with these specialists,
both in the arms and the drugs business, until he decided the
time had come to change
his life. 'In June and July I had received courses in making bombs
alongside elements of Chávez's militias, the FBL. We learnt,
there in a camp in Venezuela, how to put together different types
of landmines and how to make bombs. They also taught us how to
detonate bombs in a controlled fashion using mobile phones.'
They were training him, he said, for a mission
in Bogotá.
'They gave us photos of our targets. We were going to work alongside
two Farc groups based in the capital. The plan was to set off bombs,
but as the date dawned I began to reflect that I could not continue
this way. First, because of the danger from the military engagements
we had with the ELN [another formerly left-wing guerrilla group]
on the border over control of the drug routes and, second, because
it now seemed to me there was a very real risk of getting caught
and I believed I had already spent enough years in jail for the
Farc cause. It was also highly possible that the security forces
in Bogotá would kill me. That was why at the end of August
I ran away and in September I handed myself in.'
A European diplomat who is well informed on the drug-trafficking
business generally, and who is familiar with Rafael's allegations,
made a comparison between the activities of Farc in Venezuela and
hypothetically similar activities involving Eta in Spain.
'Imagine if Eta had a bomb-making school in Portugal inside camps
protected by the Portuguese police, and that they planned to set
off these bombs in Madrid; imagine that the Portuguese authorities
furnished Eta with weapons in exchange for money obtained from
the sales of drugs, in which the Portuguese authorities were also
involved up to their necks: it would be a scandal of enormous proportions.
Well, that, on a very big scale, is what the Venezuelan government
is allowing to happen right now.'
'The truth,' one senior police source said, 'is
that if Venezuela were to make a minimal effort to collaborate
with the international
community the difference it would make would be huge. We could
easily capture two tons of cocaine a month more if they were just
to turn up their police work one notch. They don't do it because
the place is so corrupt but also, and this is the core reason,
because of this "anti-imperialist" stand they take. "If
this screws the imperialists," they think, "then how
can we possibly help them?" The key to it all is a question
of political will. And they don't have any.'
A similar logic applies, according to the highest-placed
intelligence source I interviewed, regarding Farc's other speciality,
kidnappings.
'If Hugo Chávez wanted it, he could force Farc to free Ingrid
Betancourt tomorrow morning. He tells Farc: "You hand her
over or it's game over in Venezuela for you." The dependence
of Farc on the Venezuelans is so enormous that they could not afford
to say no.'
A nation at war
· Colombia, the centre of the world's cocaine
trade, has endured civil war for decades between left-wing rebels
with roots
in the peasant majority and right-wing paramilitaries with links
to Spanish colonial landowners.
· Manuel 'Sureshot' Marulanda named his
guerrilla band the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in
1966.
· Farc is thought to have about 800 hostages.
The most high-profile is Ingrid Betancourt, 45, held since 2002.
· Every Farc member takes a vow to fight
for 'social justice' in Colombia.
· About a third of Farc guerrillas are thought
to be women.
· Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez
is pushing for 'Bolivarian socialism', while Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe
is a free-market conservative.
John Carlin / The Observer/
Sunday February 3, 2008/ Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Petroleumworld
News 02/11/08
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