Colombia urges US to name Caracas a terror sponsor

Colombia is lobbying the US government to designate neighboring Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that would lay a political foundation for potential military strikes as Caracas deploys troops to the border.

Tensions between Colombia and Venezuela have escalated sharply since 29 August, when dissident leaders of the former guerrilla group Farc issued a renewed call to arms against the Colombian state. Farc dissidents and other Colombian insurgent groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) have long taken refuge in Venezuelan territory. But Colombia's government and armed forces now say that the illegal armed groups are actively cooperating with the Venezuelan government, financed by widespread drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion inside Colombian territory, including oil pipeline attacks. Many Venezuelans have joined their ranks for economic gain as the crisis in their country has intensified.

In a national address after the Farc dissidents disavowed a 2016 peace deal with the Colombian government, President Ivan Duque accused Venezuela of violating UN Security Council resolution 1373 of 2001 that prohibits member states from aiding terrorist groups.

Colombia, along with the US and dozens of other Western countries, early this year withdrew recognition of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in favor of Juan Guaido, the head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, whom they recognize as the country's interim president.

Bogotá is making its case against the Maduro government as thousands of Venezuelan army troops reinforced by air defense missile systems are being deployed to the border.

The deployment is focused on the border states of Tachira and Apure, defense ministry and presidential palace officials have told Argus. More troops will be dispatched this week to engage in military exercises in the month of September, they said.

The Venezuelan forces now on the border are equipped with Russian-made Igla-S portable missile launchers and S-300 surface-to-air anti-aircraft missile systems.

The S-300 systems had been deployed since last year mainly around the Caracas metropolitan area, but some were sent west last week amid heightened defense ministry concerns that the Colombian air force could launch targeted attacks against Colombian guerrillas inside Venezuela, the officials said.

Colombia's US-trained and equipped military, hardened by decades of internal conflict, set a precedent in 2008 with a targeted air attack against a guerrilla camp in neighboring Ecuador that killed a top Farc commander.

Although Venezuela's armed forces are considered fragmented and poorly trained and equipped, a single Venezuelan armed strike or even a military flyover in Colombia — beyond the cross-border incursions that regularly occur— could detonate a wider conflict.

Venezuela's disputed government has military and logistical support from Cuba and Russia. Dozens of Russian and Cuban weapons technicians and infantry advisers, some outfitted in Venezuelan army uniforms, were sent to army forward bases in Tachira in what appears to be the first deployment of foreign military advisers embedded with Venezuelan army infantry units.

At least 3,000 armed members of Colombia's ELN and Farc militant groups are currently in Venezuela, mainly in camps located near the border in the states of Apure, Bolivar, Tachira and Zulia, according to two dissident Venezuelan army officers critical of the Maduro government's support of the Colombian rebels.

In response to a prominent Colombian press report over the weekend about alleged Venezuelan cooperation with the insurgent groups, the Venezuelan government today asserted that Colombia itself is abetting terrorism by harboring Venezuelan exiles intent on toppling Maduro.

Maduro's saber-rattling against Colombia and his open embrace of the militants come amid heightened internal tensions within Venezuela's armed forces where longtime defense minister Vladimir Padrino appears to have fallen out of favor with Maduro since his alleged involvement in a short-lived military uprising on 30 April.

Maduro now increasingly relies on the support of armed forces strategic operations commander admiral Remigio Ceballos, and armed forces chief of staff major general Jesus Suarez Chourio. Last week Ceballos issued orders to all army and national guard units at the border to avoid armed engagements with ELN and Farc units, and instead to offer these groups material and training support.

Cool on Avengers

Wary of being drawn into another overseas conflict, the US administration has so far been cool to Colombia's case for toughening its stance on Caracas, but no steps have been ruled out in the face of Maduro´s persistent hold on power.

Washington's goal is to establish a transitional government that will ensure a return to democracy in Venezuela through free elections, the US State Department's Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams said at a public event in Brussels today. The US is aiming for a political change, not vengeance, said Abrams, who was in Brussels to push for aligning EU sanctions on Venezuela with the stronger US stance.

In the latest tweak to its Venezuela sanctions regime, the US Treasury's sanctions office clarified today that former Venezuelan government employees and contractors will be exempted from President Donald Trump's executive order blocking the US-based property and assets of the Maduro government. The exemption does not apply to individuals directly placed on the US sanctions list. The measure likely is meant to encourage more defections from the Maduro government, which have so far been significantly below US expectations.