Developments in Apure: Venezuela’s Defense of its Sovereignty and Colombia’s Disguised Aggression
By Carlos Arellán – Mar 25, 2021
With what happens in Apure state, Venezuela, it is evident that in Colombia politicians do not govern, but are a race of bureaucrats who could well be more useful if they dedicated themselves to writing novels of magical realism.
While Venezuela has defended itself since last Sunday against the incursion of Colombian terrorist groups, from Bogotá they affect an overactive consternation to the forcefulness with which our military neutralizes the blows of their internal violence.
The operation to defend Venezuelan sovereignty has highlighted two things: the Bolivarian determination to protect its territory, and correspondingly, the acrobatic talent of Colombia to contradict itself without removing make-up.
Duque’s government, after claiming ad nauseam that Venezuela was a supposed FARC-free camp, now worries that Venezuela “will defend itself a lot” once its criminal groups cross the border.
Colombian manipulation
One of the Venezuelan officials to warn about, and highlight this overactive Colombian consternation was the Minister of Communication Freddy Ñáñez who, after underlining Bogota’s concern “for the humanitarian effects of the military operation on the civilian population,” reminded them that, strangely, the same government that normalizes the execution of minors in military operations, and that dispatched the scandal with the striking justification that those killed were “war machines,” is worried about the violence in Venezuela against civilians, while none has been reported so far.
At the same time Ñáñez put on the table the suspicious coincidence with which Colombia and the US SouthCom are concerned. The Minister states that both actors “have established a theater of operations in the broad common border to attack Venezuela.”
The authorities of our country say that the aggression of Colombian paramilitary groups, behind the apparent façade of being “dissidents from the FARC,” is a maneuver, a “false positive.”
Caracas denounces that it is an irregular and malicious export of the Colombian internal conflict to our country, to justify an attack on Venezuela with the deployment of the narrative that “such would be the presence of guerrilla groups, that our country would have lost control of the territory.”
Ñáñez compared the incursion of Colombian terrorist groups into Apure with the failed mercenary invasion of [Operation] Gideon almost a year ago.
A hybrid war
Meanwhile, the Chief General and Minister for Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, highlighted that the FANB’s sovereign defense operation is fighting a group posing as guerrillas; that they intend to install themselves in our territory and build a drug trafficking structure that operates for the Colombian state and the United States to continue attacking our country.
At the same time, what is happening in Apure is a new episode in a hybrid war. One that is not only measured in the real theater of operations but also in the media; who is stronger to impose the anti-Venezuelan narrative.
The victory over narco-terrorist groups in Colombia will only be complete if, in addition to defeating them by force, public opinion is convinced that Venezuela is assisted by the justification that this entire operation is an ambush manipulated with lies.
Featured image: File photo courtesy of RedRadioVE.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
