In Venezuela, the drug wars know no borders

By Juan Forero <a href=www.sun-sentinel.com>The Sun-Sentinel-The New York Times Posted June 14 2003

LA COOPERATIVA, Venezuela · More than ever, Colombia's 39-year-old civil war is spreading beyond its porous borders, bringing to its five neighbors a troubling brew of armed leftist rebels, right-wing death squads, drugs and refugees.

Increasingly, the guerrillas have set up camps and the drug traffickers used by both sides to support their forces have opened transport corridors through isolated jungles in other countries as a Washington-backed drug eradication program in Colombia has intensified. The refugee problem is also spilling over, with more than 300,000 Colombians having crossed into Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela in the last four years, according to United Nationsestimates that have not been publicly released.

The problems are most pronounced in Venezuela, where a 1,400-mile border has become a flash point between the left-leaning government of President Hugo Chávez and its ideological opposite in Colombia under President Alvaro Uribe.

The complications were obvious on a recent day in this hamlet just inside Venezuela. Only miles from a Venezuelan military base, a ragtag band of about 10 Colombian rebels took a break, supremely at ease as they lolled on makeshift beds, their Kalashnikov assault rifles hung from wooden posts. They swatted mosquitoes as they chatted with foreign visitors.

"We are here because the people wanted us here, so we have come," said the commander, who identified himself as José. He was referring to the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who became a regular presence four years ago and have been increasingly welcomed by poor Venezuelans and Colombian refugees.

In late March, with the world focused on the war in Iraq, Venezuelan military aircraft bombed and strafed this outpost. The target was not the leftist rebels, who regard Chávez as something of a hero, but the Colombian paramilitary group that had pursued the guerrillas across the border.

Colombian officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders condemned the bombing as an intervention by Chávez in Colombia's war. Venezuela angrily rejected the criticism, saying Colombia had failed to control its borders and allowed both sides to bring their conflict across the scarcely patrolled frontier.

The spread of the conflict led to a hasty meeting in April between Chávez and Uribe, who promised to work together.

In recent months, vast fields of Colombian coca, the tropical plant that yields cocaine, have been sprayed from the air and destroyed. In response, growers and traffickers have relied increasingly on border areas -- in some cases, in other countries -- to plant and transport illegal crops and drugs, Colombian and U.N. officials say.

In turn, the guerrillas and paramilitary groups -- both classified as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department -- intrude, fighting over control of the crops, the drug trafficking corridors and the field hands for harvesting.

According to Colombian intelligence reports and Venezuelan landowners, Colombian guerrillas kidnap ranchers, extort money from businessmen and traffic in drugs. Colombian intelligence reports also say that the rebels have set up temporary camps in at least three Venezuelan states, eluding Colombian forces and their de facto paramilitary allies.

"It is an area that allows them to rest, to reorganize and regain momentum to again come back into this country," a Colombian general said in a telephone interview.

Venezuelan landowners and merchants who live along the border have accused the Venezuelan military of ignoring or colluding with rebels. It is unclear whether that is government policy, but U.N. officials, Venezuelan farmers and aid groups report that Venezuelan military units have tolerated the rebels for years.

The Venezuelan government denies partisanship. It has 20,000 troops along the frontier, and will send 4,000 more, officials say. "It is not true what they say," said the commander of a marine patrol on the Gold River. "We repel both of them, the guerrillas and the paramilitaries."