Venezuelan new proxies in decision to drug trafficking and new border problems

A re-write of Venezuelan politics are done in these last months of political conflicts and intern political warfare, between Maduro and Guaidó, being supported by a lot of international agents. First is the Brazilian right wing government that supports the action of U.S.A. in region, supported also by the neighboor Colombia. Second is the Sino-Russian cooperation to guarantee that the legal proccess of election be respected (even if the election is fraudulent, the intern problems on these countries put them in a position of guarantee the proccess), and later on the guerrilla groups that are have a poltical side to maintain their criminal activities and keep receiving funds from the government.

The borders of Venezuela and Colombia became a very boiling cauldron to the geography and the geopolitics in South America, for the problem, not only of government, but a general problem for the society. Narco Trafficking and paralel blocs of guerrilla warfare and terrorism are seeking for a police in each region to promote their economic politics, illegal activities and criminal quarters.

Remembering that Colombia was always the owner of the most prohiminent groups of drug traffickers and armed guerrilla groups, but Venezuela financed the guerrillas for a private army and promoted a sub-division of their army in popular guerrilla and militias. Also Government works as a holding company for the drug traffick, promoting hub companies and a traffick joint venture, and outscourcing criminal activities with multinational groups, exemple is the ELN and ex-FARC members promoting activities contracted by Venezuelan government.

Now, the run for the new hegemony in drug traffick is depending on how the government will survive this illegitimacy and how the new governments will deal with the drug traffickers and how these guerrilla groups will survive the new paradigms.

The borders with Colimbia and Brazil are both guarded by military with the new governments supporting Guaidó and the illigimacy of Maduro, both countries are guarding the people from the borders, without possibility to these groups to scape from the country and also, without the possibility of guerrillas to have a direct clash with the national armies.

Government of Chavez and Maduro legitimated the guerrilla groups as an extension of their national armies and their power, using them, also, as militias, promoting control in countries and maintaining the farmes under the control of State. 

Also, the groups have political intentions on liberation on drugs and form an economy based on drug selling, and weapon traffick, international traffick, kidnaps and assassination, being used as mercenaries by government and outsourcing small groups to promote extension of their branches.

While receive the government funds to keep their illegal activities, the groups raised funds charging taxes from farmes and workers for their private jobs to promote security to them, and to obligate them to use their own machinary, working as a ciminal industry, or drug industry, and also, the recruitment of new members to strenghten the paramilitary activity, increasing fire power and operational capability.

Many of these groups are formed by ex special operations and military personal, that joined the guerrilla after the retirement or after the decision of the officials to not follow the national armies. These members have high level expertise and full capability of a direct clash between them and police or countries military.

The direct clash between them also can happen with the new 'dissidents' of the Venezuelan army, almost 1000 soldiers and officials left the borders to Brazil and Colombia in support of Juan Guaidó, against Maduro, and they have, beyond the military expertise, the knowledge of the geographical position and positions of the armies and guerrillas to promote a direct clash, information warfare and the nationalistic motivation on fight. 

Venezuela became a scenario for hybrid conflicts, the agents are governmental and ex public agents, international agents, military and political, and guerrilla, civilian warriors that promote an irregular scenario, with psywar and irregular conflicts, with criminal activities also, of kidnap, assassination and recruitment of international mercenaries.

FARC Dissident Groups Expand Criminal Empire from Venezuela

The FARC dissident group operating along the porous Colombo-Venezuelan border has corrupted elements of the Venezuelan government and police, as it solidifies control over drug trafficking routes.

https://panampost.com/editor/2019/03/18/farc-dissident-groups-expand-criminal-empire-from-venezuela/?cn-reloaded=1

Dissidents from Colombia’s Marxist rebel group the FARC are now building a powerful criminal network on the border with Venezuela, said a military source high in the ranks of the Colombian military. These dissident groups rejected the peace process initiated by former president Juan Manuel Santos and have returned to the lucrative drug trafficking trade.

Miguel Botache Santillana, alias “Gentil Duarte”, is now one of the dissidents of the former guerrilla group most wanted by the authorities. He has now assumed a position as top leader of the group that currently operates in eastern Colombia.

He is perceived to be such a threat that the administration of current president Iván Duque is offering a reward of 2 billion Colombian pesos (approximately USD $640,000) for his capture.

According to military intelligence, the guerrilla leader has sough shelter since November of last year in the vast expanses of the southern Venezuelan state of Amazonas. “Gentil Duarte” is coordinating the shipment of cocaine that is processed in Colombia and then deals directly with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, and various drug trafficking elements in Brazil.

“This is facilitated with the complicity of the Venezuelan National Guard, which controls shipment routes allowing for transportation of tons of the alkaloid,” said an intelligence source of the Public Force to Time.

As a form of payment, the guerrilla leader receives long-range weapons, which enter Colombia in order to provide military support to  dissident groups in southeastern regions of Colombia, including Guaviare, Guanía, Vichada, Putumayo, and part of Meta.

Different investigations have indicated that these weapons enter the black market from the weapons caches of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB). Another strategic ally involved in the purchase of weapons is Syria.

The dissidents, according to the investigation, have taken advantage of the crisis in Venezuela to gain strength in exchange for food, clothing, protection, and small cash payments. In this realm, Géner García Molina, alias “Jhon 40”, who serves as a lieutenant of “Duarte”, plays a key role in the area.

For more than two years he has been based in Venezuelan territory where he has been able to consolidate an armed structure that numbers close to 300 men, the majority of which are Venezuelans. He is known to have considerable experience that he inherited in the ranks of the FARC guerrillas, which includes moving the product for ultimate expert. He has extensive strategic knowledge of the river corridors that lead from the states of Vichada and Guainía to the state of Amazonas in Venezuela.

Under his command, he enjoys extensive control of drug trafficking routes, as well as illegal mining, especially the region which has been called “the mining arc of the Orinoco,” where experts estimate that Venezuela may have its largest reserves of gold, as well as the lucrative mineral coltan.

“Duarte” was involved in the dialogues in Havana, but decided to depart from the process because interpreted the abandonment of weapons as a surrender on the part of the guerrillas. Given the current unease that several high-ranking FARC members have expressed with the peace process, including Iván Márquez and “El Paisa”, it has begun to be speculated that the dissidence may be preparing “Plan B” of the FARC in case the implementation of the agreement fails.

The FARC has longstanding ties to both Hugo Chavez, and now Nicolas Maduro, and has been able to maintain a powerful role in the lawless border regions, where Colombia and Venezuela traditionally have little government presence.

The groups that could sink Colombia’s dispute with Venezuela into utter chaos

https://colombiareports.com/the-groups-that-could-sink-colombias-dispute-with-venezuela-into-utter-chaos/

Multiple illegal armed groups on the border between Venezuela and Colombia could turn diplomatic tensions between the two countries into armed conflict.

Discussions of a conflict involving just Venezuelan, Colombian, and US military forces are drastically oversimplified, as they appear to ignore the unhinged armed groups operating in the area.

These groups have the military power to disrupt any organized attempt to resolve the situation in Venezuela through Colombian and/or US intervention.

Colectivos in Venezuela can vaguely refer to community groups with a shared purpose, such as organizing neighborhood social events, but the term has come to be more closely associated with armed groups organized to support the so-called “Bolivarian Revolution” of late President Hugo Chavez and the PSUV party of Nicolas Maduro.

The colectivos began as neighborhood militias that were supported by Chavez and helped carry out government policy and social programs, but were also trained and armed by the government to defend the revolution if necessary.

Many of these groups organized into powerful paramilitary groups that have clashed with the security forces that once trained them. They often combine political and criminal activities, levy “taxes” on businesses and criminal organizations operating in their territory, while still receiving government funding.

Human Rights Watch has reported that government security forces have allowed these militias to attack protesters and journalists, and at times openly collaborated with them.

Colectivo “Tupamaro” runs its own political parties, is amply funded by the government and forms a significant force near the Colombian border. The group is one of the oldest and most powerful in Venezuela. Tupamaro is closely linked to former Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto, according to an according to the International Crisis Group. When Barreto was mayor, some 7000 members of this colectivo were on the municipal payroll, including top members of the police force and the deputy director of public safety.

Tupamaro is currently involved in a turf war in the border state of Tachira. In 2016, Tupamaros deputy Cesar Vera was gunned down outside a corner store in state capital Tachira, allegedly by a Venezuelan member of Colombian paramilitary group AGC.

There are many more colectivos operating in the area, but reliable intelligence information is lacking because of the dangers of working in the border region. An unidentified colectivo recently attacked and robbed a Swiss freelance journalist who was en route to cover the aid standoff at the border.

Vice News spoke to masked colectivo members on the border, reporting that there were 300 active members monitoring the border near Cucuta. One interviewed member said they were trained for combat by the government and willing to fight to the death because they believe they will be persecuted under a new government.

Bolivarian Militia

Last year, Maduro announced a campaign to increase the Bolivarian Militia to 1.6 million and made multiple pledges to provide each member with a gun. This nationwide militia is considered the reservist force of the military.

Juan Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Penne Biden Center and former national security official in the Obama administration told the Miami Herald that while the world is focused on what soldiers are doing, the actions of the militias and the colectivos are the real wild card at the border.

You have the colectivos and the Bolivarian militia, which some people estimate is 1.7 million civilians. Those groups are not trained … and all it takes is one person to fire a shot.

Juan Gonzalez

Cartel de los Soles

The “Cartel the Suns,” refers to loosely associated factions within Venezuela’s armed forces that traffic drugs, people and other contraband across the border. According to the US government, they have collaborated with the FARC in the past, trading cocaine for weapons.

The term does not refer to a cartel in the traditional sense- the Cartel of the Suns is amorphous and loosely organized. These groups are well armed and trained and also fiercely loyal to Maduro.

National Liberation Army (ELN)

The ELN is Colombia’s last standing guerrilla group and have operated extensively in both Colombia and Venezuela for decades.

An investigation by trans-national crime website InSight Crime discovered ELN activity in more than 12 Venezuelan states, where the group allegedly engages in a wide range of criminal activities to fund their armed uprising against the Colombian government. They have also moved in to fill the power vacuum left by the FARC in many of the border zones where national authorities are traditionally weak.

According to Bram Ebus, an investigator of the International Crisis Group, the ELN now controls drug trafficking corridors from Colombia across Venezuela, and into Guayana.  The guerrillas have also taken control of illegal mining operations, allegedly run in collusion with the military, in the southern part of the country that were previously controlled by Venezuelan gangs.

“Now it is not so so much that they use Venezuela only to rest. They are basing a big part of their operation there. It is difficult to see them as a solely a Colombian group when a large part of their troops are in Venezuela,” Ebus said.

Former ELN commander Carlos Velandia said in October last year that 70% of the ELN had for more than 40 years operated in both Venezuela and Colombia, and would join in a civil war on the side of the “Bolivarian revolution.”

Venezuelan “contras”

More than 700 members of the Venezuelan military have jumped the border over the past month, of whom some have told press that they are organized and willing to take up arms to support opposition leader Juan Guaido’s bid to oust Maduro.

A plan to use 200 exiled soldiers against the Venezuelan national guard that was preventing aid from entering the country was stopped by the Colombian government at the last minute, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.  The plan was reportedly led by retired General Cliver Acala.

The United States’ special envoy to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, was a key player in a similar covert ploy to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua by using similar dissident military forces in the 1980s.

The US-backed contras were responsible for the mass assassination of civilians, massacres and torture.

FARC dissidents

Colombia’s FARC guerrilla group FARC demobilized in 2017, but FARC dissidents maintain a significant presence in the border region, particularly in the south where the dissident “Southwestern Block” refused to demobilize, and retained their arms and military structure.

According to the International Crisis Group, these dissident FARC guerrillas taken over mining operations in the south of Venezuela, and is now trafficking gold, cocaine and arms between the two countries.

The FARC’s 33rd and 10th Fronts initially took part in the peace process, but abandoned it, citing government non-compliance. They have since tried to retake control over the border region, respectively in Norte de Santander and Arauca.

Medellin mafia

Social media reports also show armed groups that appear to be from Medellin planning to charge across the border and “heat things up.” The group’s leader is using military gestures and jargon.

Más pruebas. ¿Por qué este señor con acento paisa, voz de mando y gestos militares está dirigiendo el grupo? (Pista: los paramilitares colombianos son, en realidad, mercenarios). Pd: vean el reloj… ese no es precisamente un "joven desesperado por el hambre". pic.twitter.com/DBA2IxDQgh

— ¡A la carga! (@gaitan_presente) February 24, 2019

It is unclear why these presumed members of the Oficina de Envigado have shown up at the border.

AGC / Libertadores del Vichada

Drug trafficking paramilitary group “Libertadores de Vichada,” a.k.a. “Los Puntilleros,” are a remnant of the demobilized far-right AUC paramilitary umbrella organization from eastern Colombia. They control drug trafficking routes into Venezuela and Brazil.

The Libertadores are an associate of the AGC, the group that allegedly killed a Tupamaro leader last year, but they are unlikely to engage in any military activity unless their economic interests are threatened.

Bolivarian Liberation Forces (FBL)

The FBL is a paramilitary group that has traditionally supported the Chavez government and has avoided conflict with government security forces. They primarily operate in western Venezuela along the border with Colombia, especially in Tachira, the state that borders Colombia’s Norte de Santander province, and Apure, the state that borders Arauca.

The group gained prominence in 1992 when they attacked government officials considered corrupt. Their main source of funding is kidnapping and extortion. They have occasionally come into conflict with Colombian guerrilla groups who also operate in the border area.