Colombia, Venezuela locked in vitriol over frontier

Colombia and Venezuela today exchanged heated recriminations over non-state armed groups thriving along their long and porous border, a potential flashpoint in a protracted struggle for political power in Caracas.

Colombia's defense minister Guillermo Botero, foreign minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo, the military high command and head of the national police summoned the media early today to lay out evidence they say proves that Venezuela is harboring and coordinating with the National Liberation Army (ELN) and other Colombian insurgents to plot attacks against the Colombian state.

Letters, photographs and videos unveiled today purport to show Colombian fugitives site-seeing, arranging medical care and coordinating training with political authorities in Venezuela, including former Zulia state governor Francisco Arias Cardenas, who is now Venezuela's ambassador to Mexico, a country which espouses non-intervention in Venezuelan affairs.

Colombia alleges that the ELN has at least 36 camps, 10 support networks, four financial areas and multiple clandestine airstrips across the border in Venezuela from where it manages drug trafficking and money-laundering operations.

The presentation came on the heels of Colombian president Ivan Duque's submission of a dossier of secret evidence on the matter to the UN last week. Although the document has not been made public, four of the photographs were later found to be of Colombian territory, not Venezuela. The head of intelligence for the armed forces, brigadier general Oswaldo Pena Bermeo, took responsibility for the error and resigned today.

"Criminal complicity between the Venezuelan regime and the terrorists is a fact," Botero said. "Venezuela is a sanctuary for them, they get health care, they have bank accounts and they own property, with absolutely nothing done by the authorities there. From there they plan and carry out attacks on people and strategic assets in Colombia."

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who is not recognized by Colombia, the US and most other Western countries as the country's legitimate head of state, seized on the spurious evidence to reiterate his denial of the accusations of support for Colombian armed groups. In a press conference in Caracas today, he blamed Bogota for failing to tackle coca production and the armed groups that he said have sown lawlessness on the border, where he vowed to beef up security.

Maduro denounced the recent revival of the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, better known as the Rio Treaty or its Spanish acronym TIAR, which Venezuela's opposition is hoping will encourage regional sanctions on Caracas and lay the groundwork for possible military intervention. "The TIAR will never be applied in Venezuela," Maduro declared, denouncing Duque and US president Donald Trump for allegedly fabricating evidence against his government. He also revived a recent controversy over photographs of Guaido alongside Colombian criminals, allegedly taken in February when he crossed into Colombian territory for a high-profile aid concert on the border. Guaido has said the men were strangers encountered along the informal border crossing.

Border disorder

The 2,200km border has long been a focal point of violence and smuggling of a range of goods, especially cheap Venezuelan fuel into Colombia where pump prices are closer to market rates. Colombian state-controlled Ecopetrol's Cano Limon-Covenas crude pipeline that runs along the border is an enduring target for bombings and illicit valves installed by armed groups such as the ELN and the former Farc group, which signed a peace deal with the the Colombian government in 2016. Farc dissidents are among the groups widely believed to have taken refuge in Venezuela.

In recent years, throngs of Venezuelan migrants have crossed into Colombia in search of food, medicine and jobs that have dried up in Venezuela. Close to 5mn migrants have fled Venezuela, with at least 1.5mn in Colombia alone, according to official data that likely underestimates the phenomenon.

Bogota is on the frontlines of a US-led international campaign to unseat Maduro in favor of Juan Guaido, the head of Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly who declared an interim presidency in January 2019. Since then, he and his mentor, the former political prisoner Leopoldo Lopez now holed up in the Spanish diplomatic residence in Caracas, are seeking to build up a government in exile, in anticipation of taking power once Maduro is forced out. The most prominent member of the parallel administration, Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann, stepped down last week.

The US maintains a skeleton diplomatic body in exile, dubbed the Venezuela Affairs Unit, at its sizable embassy in Bogota from where it monitors developments and helps to coordinate aid for the fledgling parallel government. The White House issued new sanctions guidance today, effectively extending a wind-down period for holders of Venezuelan bonds from 30 September to the end of March 2020, a narrow offshoot of its suite of financial and oil sanctions on Venezuela.

In his press conference this morning, Maduro reiterated a call to renegotiate all Venezuelan debt, an initiative that the country's broad array of creditors — including Wall Street investors, arbitration claimants, and Russian and Chinese oil-backed lenders, do not take seriously.