Posted on 11/28/2003 4:55:13 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela - Amid allegations that the Venezuelan government has given identity documents to foreign terrorists, President Hugo Chavez has put the country's immigration service in the hands of two young radicals, one of whom is close to the ousted Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
Hugo Cabezas and Tareck el-Aissami were appointed in the past two months as director and deputy director, respectively, of the Identification and Immigration Directorate, known as the DIEX after its initials in Spanish.
Their responsibilities include passports, voter identity cards and border security. Both men are former student leaders of groups accused of links to clandestine armed organizations.
"These appointments raise suspicions," said former Minister for Border Issues Pompeyo Marquez. "The risk is that they can play tricks both as regards elections and identity cards."
The DIEX appointments come at a sensitive moment in Venezuela's 2-year-old political crisis. Opposition leaders are to begin collecting signatures today to call for a national referendum to oust Chavez, with both sides fighting over the electoral process.
Venezuela is also facing mounting allegations by U.S. officials, and regional security analysts, over ties to terrorism. Middle Eastern terrorist groups operate "support cells" in Venezuela, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials. Left-wing guerrillas in neighboring Colombia also have training bases inside Venezuelan territory, they say. [SP Times emphasis]
The most serious claim, made recently in the pages of the news magazine, U.S. News & World Report, involves allegations that Venezuelan identity documents have been issued to foreigners, including some from "Middle Eastern nations that play host to foreign terrorist organizations."
While the Chavez government makes no secret of its left-wing revolutionary goals, officials strongly deny any terrorist connections.
Responding to the U.S. News & World Report article, Chavez accused the "extreme right" in the United States of "trying to justify anything: an assassination, a coup d'etat, an invasion" to remove him from power.
U.S. officials appear to be torn over how to handle relations with Chavez. The State Department prefers a cautious approach, anxious not to cause a greater rift with Venezuela, which supplies the United States with about 13 percent of total oil imports.
But some U.S. military officials are so concerned by developments in Venezuela that they would like to see the Bush administration take a tougher approach.
Some analysts say allegations against the Chavez government need to be considered with care. "It's become so politically divided you don't know who to believe," said John Shields, Americas editor of Jane's Sentinel Security Assessment, a leading global risk analysis firm based in London.
"There is gradually a picture building up here," he said, "but it's still a long way from being able to say that this guy (Chavez) is actually backing terrorists."
Since his election in December 1998, Chavez has refused to allow U.S. counter-drug surveillance over Venezuelan airspace, adopted a critical posture to free trade negotiations and embraced Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In 2000, Chavez became the first - and only - foreign head of state to visit Saddam Hussein in Baghdad during the period between the Gulf War and the allied invasion. Deeply critical of the U.S. action, he sought to have the post-invasion government excluded from meetings of the oil exporters cartel, OPEC, of which Venezuela is a founding member. He bitterly opposed the bombing campaign to remove the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Cabezas, 30, and el-Aissami, 28, are both radical "Chavistas" who emerged as student leaders at the University of the Andes in the city of Merida, about 300 miles southwest of the capital, Caracas.
The university city of Merida has for decades been a haven for guerrilla groups, both domestic and foreign. Venezuelan and Colombian guerrilla groups continue to maintain an armed presence at the university, with the alleged complicity of Merida state government officials, according to students and university officials.
Merida's governor is a former army officer close to Chavez, Florencio Porras. Cabezas was his private secretary until last year.
State officials deny the allegations. Even so, students and academics point to a dramatic upsurge in radical student activity during el-Aissami's two-year tenure as president of the student union. Prior to his departure in July, armed groups consolidated their presence in student residences, they say.
A report by the vice rectorate of academic affairs recently found that of 1,122 people living in a student housing complex, only 387 were active students. More than 600 are completely unconnected to the university.
While the university provides essential services at the residences, students have a say in room allocation and building security. Under el-Aissami's rule political control over the residences fell into the hands of extremists with criminal ties, according to students and university officials.
The current director of Student Affairs, professor Oswando Alcala, accused students under el-Aissami's leadership of turning the residences into a base for criminal activity.
"They use the residences to hide stolen cars. There's drug trafficking, prostitution," he said. "There are always weapons there. . . . They leave the residences, put on ski masks and do hold-ups in the street."
He added that the students appeared to have political backing. "All this is done with the full knowledge of the university and (Merida) state authorities," he said.
University directors had tried to intervene, but local judicial and law enforcement authorities declined to act, he said.
When Alcala voiced objections in May, students in ski masks surrounded his office armed with gasoline and tires, threatening to burn it down. A former guerrilla himself, Alcala scared them off, saying he wasn't afraid of a violent confrontation.
El-Aissami was soundly defeated when he sought re-election in July, with opponents winning more than 70 percent of the vote. After the election, the new student council found the union offices ransacked, with phones, fax machines, computers and files all missing.
The windows of the student union offices are still full of holes made by rocks and bullets during election campaign violence.
Cabezas and el-Aissami belonged to a radical group called Utopia, of which Cabezas was a founding member. It is suspected of links with a clandestine armed paramilitary group, the Bolivarian Liberation Forces, or FBL, which professes allegiance to Chavez.
No links between the FBL and Middle Eastern groups have been established, although some FBL communiques call for "popular war" against "imperialism and Zionism."
El-Aissami is of Syrian origin, although born in Venezuela. His father, Carlos el-Aissami, heads the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath Party, while his great-uncle, Shibli el-Aissami was a leading ideologue and assistant secretary-general of the Baath Party in Baghdad, under Saddam Hussein.
Tareck el-Aissami declined to be interviewed for this article, saying he was not authorized to speak publicly. He promised to arrange an interview with Cabezas, the DIEX director. However, subsequent phone calls, both to el-Aissami and to the information ministry, failed to elicit an official response.
Carlos el-Aissami, father of Tareck, did agree to an interview, in which he defended his son as an outstanding student and denied the presence of Arab terrorist groups such as al-Qaida in Venezuela.
Both men attended a joint press conference with the Iraqi ambassador in Caracas March 27, to express their opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and their "solidarity" with "the defenseless Iraqi people."
Regarding the links between the Baath Party and President Chavez's political movement, he said the two were "united by the common cause of nationalism and the anti-imperialist struggle."
He produced an article he had written, entitled "Proud to be a Taliban," in which he refers to George W. Bush as, "genocidal, mentally deranged, a liar and a racist," and to the leader of al-Qaida as "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden."
He also questioned whether bin Laden was really responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, asking, "Couldn't it be that they (the U.S. government) invented that themselves so as to have an excuse (to invade Afghanistan)?"
Critics accuse Cabezas and el-Aissami of carrying out a government plan to politicize the control over the country's institutions, to thwart opposition efforts to remove Chavez.
"Chavez goes from phase to phase," said Alberto Garrido, a leading political analyst. "He changes the heads of the DIEX because a tougher phase is coming. In the crucial jobs only the toughest individuals are left."
God give them the courage to face the chaos Chavez will rain on them.
Tastes great? or less filling?
Chavez has always been one of those nationalists for whom there can never be full expression of their national and personal glory while the US sits on its throne. Hence his reflexive need to team up with every anti-US, anti-West force he can find. It isn't enough to lead Venezuela to prosperity if it leaves the US still free to operate in the hemisphere.
If Chavez destroys Venezuela in the process, it is a price worth paying for the greater good, at least in Chavez's calculation.
The article states that we hesitate to move against him because of his control of vast oil reserves, but that is typical journalistic mental-shorthand. He can't cut us off. Oil being fungible, it doesn’t matter who he sells to. And he has to sell.
Furthermore, Venezuela is heavily invested in the US, owning three large refineries and a chain of gas stations.
The problem is that they have wrecked their oil industry by sins of omission and commission alike. Earlier, when they were able to pump their full quota, they called for production cuts while playing games to hide the fact that they were not cutting production themselves. Now that they have wrecked their industry and can't pump as much, they are calling for cuts in hopes that the others will cut production and, in so doing, help them to maximize profit on their reduced production. The others will promise to do it, but won't follow through.
OPEC's best hope is to keep production down by attacking pipelines in Colombia and Iraq, as you point out, and by setting environmental groups to harry and obstruct pipeline projects in Ecuador, and Bolivia, and the Caspian. You will never see an environmental group suing to stop a pipeline project in Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia, or Russia either for that matter. China is looking to build a mega pipeline of its own, but while it must surely endanger some kind of high desert rodent the environmentalists will not sue to shut it down either.
The fact that certain OPEC nations have turned to war as an extension of trade policy makes them, in effect, guilty of piracy. They are pirate nations. The NGOs, environmental and otherwise, whose mass demonstrations and lawsuits have the same effect of stopping competing oil sources from coming on stream, are effectively allied with OPEC although they would never say so aloud.
This is the way war is fought in the 21st Century. Guerrillas, lawyers in three-piece suits, environmentalists, peasant demonstrators blocking roads, student rioters, all coordinate to concentrate control of energy sources in anti-Western hands. Whether their motives are purely commercial, I doubt, but that their war against the West has a very commercial advantage is undeniable. But it is an advantage only if you are fundamentally anti-West.
That a Wahab or Shia cleric would be an anti-West reactionary is no surprise. The surprise is the strange amalgam of Marxism and distorted nationalism that has led Chavez into their camp. He's deranged, of course. But when millions share your psychosis, its a religion.
Bump!
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More from the recall.
Venezuelans Sign Petitions Seeking Hugo Chavez's Recall ***Chavez predicts opponents won't collect enough signatures for a recall vote. He vowed Friday to win the next presidential elections in 2006 and to hand power over to another "revolutionary in 2013."
"There's no turning back," Chavez said.
Opposition leaders claimed Friday's turnout was overwhelming.
"I saw lines that extended several blocks today. It was impressive," said opposition lawmaker Geraldo Blyde, who called last week's pro-Chavez drive "small and sullen."
Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel played down Friday's turnout, saying it was being exaggerated by opposition-aligned news media.
"They're trying to fool a lot of people using the media, but these ploys always fail," Rangel said.
The opposition also sought recalls against 34 pro-Chavez lawmakers.
Venezuela's labor ministry filed a formal complaint alleging that business owners were forcing employees to sign against Chavez. Opposition leaders accused state security forces of seizing petitions at some booths.
Election officials said they were investigating both claims.***
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