[Marxism] War and Peace in the NW corner of SA

[Anthony Boynton <northbogota@xxxxxxxxx>]

Today there was an enormous concert for peace on the
border between Venezuela and Colombia. The stage was
actually on the 'Simon Bolivar International Bridge'
which crosses the Tachira river between the Colombian
city of Cucuta and the Venezuelan city of San
Cristobal. The crowd of several hundred thousand lined
the river banks on both sides of the river, and the
stage. The weather was very, very hot. Juanes, Juan
Luis Geurra (the only war in the family according to
Carlos Vives), Carlos Vives, Ricardo Montaner,
Alejandro Sanz, Juan Fernando Falco, and Miguel Bose
played. Shakira didn't but sent a message. For anyone
who knows Latin American and Spanish popular music
these are big names. (Politicians were not invited,
specifically Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who
asked for an invitation.)

The name of the concert was "Peace without frontiers".
Each of the artists spoke about the theme, making the
concert as much a poltiical demonstration as it was a
major musical event. 

The event was broadcast live on every major TV outlet
in Colombia, and on many radio stations. I do not yet
know about coverage in Venezuela and other nearby
countries. 

Virtually the entire city of Bogotá watched or
listened. Even die hard soccer fans listened to the
concert on the radio while they watched the football
games on TV.

The concert crossed political boundaries and
demonstrated that the one strongly held desire of
almost everyone in this country - left, right, and
decline to think - is for peace.

That is a big problem for the US embassy, the
Pentagon, and the Bush White House, as well as for
their friend in Colombia President Alvaro Uribe.

While the political equation in Colombia is strongly
against a war, the military equation is a little
different. Below is an article comparing the military
forces of Colombia and Venezuela.

****

Raid spotlights Colombia, Venezuela's different
military philosophies
By Phil Gunson and Pablo Bachelet, McClatchy
Newspapers Fri Mar 14, 2:13 PM ET

WASHINGTON ? Colombia's military recently had one of
its finest moments: the killing of a senior leader of
FARC, a resilient guerrilla group that had never lost
a member of its top leadership in combat.

At the same time, U.S. officials and military analysts
say, Venezuela fumbled an effort to rush troops and
tanks to the border with Colombia in response to the
deadly March 1 attack, on a FARC camp in Ecuador .

The Colombian raid triggered a short-lived crisis. But
military experts say it also showed the contrasting
security philosophies of Venezuela's socialist
President Hugo Chavez and Colombia's conservative
President Alvaro Uribe .

Colombia , with U.S. help, has assembled a nimble
infantry-based and intelligence-reliant
counterinsurgency force capable of striking at
guerrilla units and leaders deep in the jungle.

The Venezuelans have done just the opposite: They've
spurned all contacts with the U.S. military and
instead opted mostly for big-ticket purchases of
Russian fighters, attack helicopters and submarines
while forming, training and arming reserve and militia
units loyal to Chavez.

The result is that Venezuela's military is impressive
on paper but also in many ways a paper tiger,
according to defense experts, shaped more to preserve
Chavez's grip on power than to fight an effective war.

Colombia , said John Cope , with the Institute for
National Strategic Studies of the National Defense
University , has become "an extremely good
professional force," while the Venezuelan army is
"trying to figure out the ins and outs of an approach
to a military organization that puts a high emphasis
on civic action and humanitarian issues? which means
they're probably not spending an awful lot of time
training."

The contrast of the two militaries is more than an
academic exercise. Few analysts believe that Chavez, a
fiery critic of U.S. policies, will provoke a war
against Uribe, a stalwart Washington ally.

Rather, the concern is that someone could light a
match in the still-combustible environment.

"I think the real concern is not that Chavez intends
to provoke a war, although that can't be ruled out,
but that there's more of a possibility that, with all
the rhetoric he's using, that some bright young
lieutenant colonel will decide to take action on his
own and cause a skirmish that could escalate," said a
senior U.S. intelligence official, who agreed to be
interviewed on condition of anonymity.

Observers on both sides of the border are busy
updating the facts and figures on the two forces.

In sheer manpower, Colombia has an edge. Jane's
Sentinel Security Assessment places the Colombian
armed forces, not including Colombia's sizable police
force, at 263,000, more than double Venezuela's
115,000.

Colombia's forces are modeled on the U.S. military,
with seven army divisions, three naval units and eight
air commands being coordinated by five geographically
based U.S.-style joint commands. According to Jane's,
the idea is to ensure closer cooperation between the
different branches of the military.

In a process that began before Uribe took office in
2002, the Colombian military has shifted its focus on
counterinsurgency and counter-drug-trafficking,
putting together helicopter-based and other highly
mobile battalions and special-forces units.

Many of the units have been trained by the 500 or so
U.S. advisers in the country with part of the
estimated $600 million in military aid that Washington
provides annually to Colombia .

Colombian and U.S. officers also maintain a Joint
Intelligence Center in the southern base of Tres
Esquina , which gathers information from
communications intercepts and images from U.S. spy
planes, listening stations and satellites, according
to Jane's.

True to its counterinsurgency strategy and its partly
mountainous, partly jungle terrain, Colombia has no
combat tanks.

In contrast, Chavez has severed all military ties with
the United States , which in turn has stopped selling
him weapons and replacement parts.

Chavez has promoted the concept of asymmetric warfare,
essentially preparing reserves and militias for a
guerrilla war against an invader, presumably U.S.
troops. Observers say he could end up creating a
militia force of some 300,000.

But his regular armed forces are regarded as
logistically challenged, and U.S. officials believe
the army struggled to move its tank units toward the
Colombian border after Chavez gave the order on March
2 . Venezuela has nearly 200 French AMX-30, AMX-13 and
British Scorpion 90 tanks.

Half of the army's six divisions are based in the
western half of the country, closest to the border
with Colombia .

There are also doubts about the military's equipment
maintenance. A foreign military officer who asked not
to be identified because of the sensitivity of his job
said the gun-sights on some of the tanks had been
rendered inoperable by attempts to service them
without help from foreign technicians.

"It's all image," said Cope, who added that Chavez
seems more interested in reorganizing the military so
that it's less of a threat to him. The military
briefly forced Chavez from office in 2002.

The growing militia units can quickly mobilize to
defend his government should the regular military turn
against him, Cope said, and Chavez has pulled together
the better-trained units from all branches under one
"operational strategic command."

Venezuela has a big edge over Colombia in the air. It
has purchased 10 Russian-made Mi-35 "flying tank"
attack helicopters that can carry eight soldiers and
have both anti-tank and air-to-air capacity.

Right after ordering the 10 battalions to the
Colombian border, Chavez also threatened Uribe with
"sending over the Sukhois"? advanced Russian
fighter-bombers that make the Colombians' aged French
Mirages and Israeli Kfirs look puny.

Colombia recently acquired 15 155mm cannon from Spain
to offset a perceived Venezuelan artillery advantage.
And in February, it spent $200 million to purchase 24
newer Kfir C10 fighters.

Colombia's Cessna A-37B Dragonflies and Brazilian
Super Tucano turboprops, which bombed the camp in
Ecuador with lethal accuracy, could be blasted out of
the sky by the two dozen Sukhois-30s purchased by
Chavez, but Venezuela's pilots are still reported to
be training to fly them.



      
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