Venezuela launches biggest military campaign in decades and thousands flee the country

Venezuela is waging its most organized military campaign in years against what it claims to be a criminal group operating inside its border near Colombia. In this effort, it also caused the theft of around 5,000 of its own civilians to the neighboring country.

The assault – which began with days of airstrikes that security experts have described as the biggest use of Venezuelan military capacity in decades – represents a significant change from the largely indifferent approach you have long taken to the illicit organizations that flourish along your border.

For years, officials in President Nicolás Maduro’s government have tolerated, and at times even cooperated, with these armed groups, many of which had roots in Colombia, as they transported drugs and other contraband between them. country.

Now he went after one of them, although it’s not entirely clear why he did it.

Maduro has said in recent days that the attack reflected his government’s policy of “zero tolerance for irregular armed groups in Colombia”.

Analysts are skeptical of the official explanation.

“We’ve never seen anything like it on this scaleSaid Kyle Johnson, founder of Conflict Responses, a Bogotá-based nonprofit focused on security issues, fighting.

The military campaign began on March 21 in Apure, one of the poorest states in the country, and killed at least nine people the Venezuelan government considers guerrillas and two of its own personnel.said Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.

Several Colombian rebel groups have operated in Venezuelan territory in recent years, including dissident members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who refused to lay down their arms following the 2016 peace agreement.

The Venezuelan assault, centered around La Victoria, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants, was directed against a dissident FARC faction known as the Tenth Front, according to local residents, leading security experts have suggested they may have broken unspoken rules set by the Maduro government or its allies.

The airstrikes that started the campaign were followed by ground combat between the Venezuelan army and the Tenth Front, which “escalates every day,” said Juan Francisco García, of the Venezuelan human rights group. the Fundaredes man, who has an extensive communication network in the country. Region.

He described a “civilian population that finds itself in the midst of the war situation of these groups”.

In interviews, witnesses in and around La Victoria described waking up on Sunday March 21 to the rumble of government trucks passing through town, followed by the roar of low-flying planes.

It was “still dark when I started hearing noises from the trucks,” said Miguel Antonio Villegas, 66, a main spokesperson for La Victoria Town Council, who saw the military convoy through his window. Soon after, he said, “the bombing started.”

When the villagers woke up, Villegas said, they gathered outside and saw the explosions just to the east.

In the following days, Villegas said, shelling continued in the area near La Victoria, and the soldiers began to enter the town, interrogating civilians and entering their homes, accusing them of collaborating with the guerrillas.

Apparently, FARC dissidents responded. Two days after the start of the Venezuelan military campaign, a bomb exploded in the tax office and the city was left without electricity in an attack that Fundaredes attributed to the FARC group.

The next day, the bombardments by government planes were so close to La Victoria that “even the ground was moving,” Villegas said. Terrified, he packed a backpack with his things and fled with two parents to the bank of the narrow river that separates La Victoria from the Colombian town of Arauquita.

The shore was full of neighbors who also fledsaid Villegas, who used a small boat to cross Colombia, where he and his family stayed.

The military has since stepped up its presence in La Victoria, according to a civilian witness who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from Venezuelan security forces.

The man, who owns a small shop, said the soldiers corner the villagers, demanded that they show their identities, immobilize them against the walls and point their weapons at them. In one case, he said, they forced a resident to kneel, then beat him and detained him.

Another man who spoke with a Human Rights Watch researcher said that four members of his family – his mother, father, brother and uncle – were killed by Venezuelan security forces, who accused the family of being guerrillas, the group said. At least 11 civilians, the investigator said, had been arrested by Venezuelan security forces.

The Venezuelan government has tasked two prosecutors to investigate allegations of human rights violations, the country’s attorney general Tarek Saab said. But the government also tried to limit media coverage of the military campaign, according to Fundaredes.

Wednesday, in La Victoria, Venezuelan authorities arrested two journalists from the Venezuelan edition of Colombian channel NTN24 and two human rights activists from Fundaredes who had attempted to document the crisis. They were held for a day before being released, according to their family and friends.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, described the abuses documented by her organization as “a case study of all the atrocities the regime has committed and continues to commit with impunity.”

And I add: “This should be a wake-up call for the International Criminal Court, which has the duty and the power to criminally investigate those ultimately responsible for the most heinous international crimes.“.

© The New York Times