What to do about Venezuela
- aided, abetted, and comforted international Islamist terrorist organizations:
- permitted Hamas and Hezbollah to operate freely on Isla Margarita, a Venezuelan island in the Caribbean, including allowing Hezbollah to run an Arabic-language radio propaganda station;
- provided official, manufactured Venezuelan identities and travel documents to key Muslim operatives wanted in the United States, including individuals who trained with September 11 hijackers and carried out a foiled grenade attack against a British airliner;
- openly sympathized with the attacks on American and Coalition troops in Iraq, Iraqis serving in their new government, and Iraqi civilians who participate in the new democracy.
- aided and abetted regional narcotics traffickers and narcoterrorists:
- stopped key cooperation against drug trafficking and organized crime, including termination of the construction of radars to monitor the border area;
- forbade U.S. reconnaissance flights for drug control policy (after more than a decade of cooperation with previous Venezuelan governments).
- aided and abetted narcoguerrilla groups seeking to overthrow the government of Colombia:
- allowed the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) to operate camps across the border from Colombia;
- ordered the army not to interfere with FARC guerrillas in Venezuelan territory;
- invaded Colombian territory to provide air cover to FARC units infiltrating from Venezuela;
- allowed key FARC and ELN (National Liberation Army) combatants and commanders to live and operate freely in Caracas; some stayed at luxury hotels and received the equivalent of diplomatic treatment; one spoke on the floor of the Venezuelan National Assembly; one, the foreign minister of the FARC, was living openly with state sponsorship;
- has allowed arms and supply shipments to the FARC, once sporadic, to take place on an almost daily basis.
- developed a coherent, populist political ideology and political action apparatus to spread political subversion in other countries:
- “Bolivarianism” is a pan-South American hybrid of Maoist and Castroite political theory and political action, Marxist internationalism, and Andean and indigenous “nationalism” that is replacing Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism as the region’s main, transnational, aggressive ideology.
- Bolivarianism includes the use of covert political action, political subversion and violence against neighboring countries:
- the Fifth Republic Party is a cover to infiltrate political warfare operatives into other countries, including Colombia;
- the Venezuelan regime is financing and organizing the radicalization of indigenous movements throughout the Andean region, including Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia;
- the regime is threatening small countries across the Caribbean with Bolivarian violence;
- the regime aided the overthrow of Bolivia’s pro-U.S. President Sanchez de Losada in 2003, and the impending overthrow of the current president by helping Bolivian coca growers to build a grassroots protest movement that has effectively shut down much of the country;
- the regime has been inspiring, advising, materially assisting and financing radical parties and movements across the hemisphere to build a bloc against the U.S. and its allies:
- it has used the “Forum of São Paulo” network of former terrorist and guerrilla movement leaders under the tutelage ofBrazil’s ruling Workers’ Party;
- it has funded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador;
- “Bolivarian Circles” enforce the imposition of the ideology
- FARC personnel reportedly have trained Bolivarian Circles;
- The president has funded the creation of Bolivarian Circles among Venezuelan émigrés in Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and the United States. There are currently no fewer than 20 such groups in the United States.
Senior Analyst for Strategy
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