- AFP/ Juan BarretoIf plans for an oil embargo fail, Chavez may look to repay
Venezuela's more radical 'allies' by assisting terrorists
Posted on 02/20/2003 3:03:28 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
As Washington prepares a high-stakes military venture in the Persian Gulf, a growing physical threat is being posed by Iraq, Libya and Iran to the soft underbelly of the United States. Hundreds and possibly thousands of agents from rogue Arab nations are working hard to help President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela take control of South America's largest oil industry and create al-Qaeda-friendly terrorist bases just two hours' flying time from Miami.
Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.
"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.
Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.
- AFP/ Juan Barreto
If plans for an oil embargo fail, Chavez may look to repay
Venezuela's more radical 'allies' by assisting terrorists
Last Jan. 10, 18 Libyan technicians flying in from Tripoli via Frankfurt, Germany, were received at the Caracas airport by Ali Ahmed, head of Libya's "Commission" in Venezuela. He was accompanied by the parliamentary whip of the ruling Venezuelan Revolutionary Movement (MVR), Cilia Flores. Nicolas Maduro and Juan Baruto, two other bosses of the MVR party militias (the Circulos Bolivarianos) who had paid an extended visit to Tripoli in 2000, also were on hand to smooth the way for the Libyans coming off Lufthansa Flight 534.
The Libyan agents were identified as: Alsudik Alghariy, Elmabruk Najjar, Koaled Adun, Zeguera Adel, Sherif Nagib, Abubaker Benelfgh, Nabiel Bentahir, Abdulfat Enbia, Waldi Majrab, Amhamed Elkum, Abdulgha Nashnush, Mohamed Romia, Abdurao Shwich, Abdulnass Elghanud, Ezzedin Barhmi, Abdulssa Seleni, Hassan Gwile and Mhemmed Besha.
The high level of security provided for the Libyans' arrival was intended to avoid the havoc of previous days when the entry of Iraqi and Iranian groups touched off a riot. As word of the landing of 20 Iranians had spread through Simón Bolívar International Airport on Jan. 8, crowds of infuriated travelers banged counters and cigarette urns and chanted "Get out! Get out!" to protest what many Venezuelans perceive as foreign interference in their country's affairs.
The uproar became such that one delegation had to be ushered through the presidential ramp to avoid immigration or customs checks, sources in Venezuela's military-intelligence department, DIM, tell Insight. Some of the Iranians, now holed up at a Caracas hotel, are reported to be hesitant about conducting their mission of reactivating installations of Venezuela's recently nationalized oil company, PDVSA.
Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.
Military sources also report that the recently arrived group of Libyans is billeted at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira, which they share with Cuban commandos who have been conducting strike-breaking operations around the nation's oil ports. Local units of the National Guard, the branch of the Venezuelan armed forces responsible for internal security, were reported to be refusing government orders to repress strikers.
According to Capt. Jose Ballabes of the merchant-marine union, the Cubans improvised floating concentration camps on board oil tankers, threatening officers and crews to get them to move the paralyzed vessels. When the Venezuelans still resisted, "such methods as sleep deprivation, often used against political dissidents in Cuba, are being systematically employed against our people," says Ballabes.
Sources in Venezuela's merchant navy name two of the Cuban agents on the tankers as Arturo Escobar and Carlos Valdez, who were presented as "presidential advisers" operating with DISIP. Venezuela's internal-security organization now is reported to be controlled by a command cell of undercover officers from Fidel Castro's military-intelligence service. Venezuelan sources say the Cuban operatives also run a computerized war room inside Chavez's presidential palace, Miraflores. It is in this war room that the repressive policies now afflicting the country have been planned, according to serving officers in the Venezuelan army, navy and national guard consulted by Insight.
The Libyans, like the Cubans, are specialists in military intelligence and security, but are described as computer specialists brought in to operate and reprogram crashed systems at the oil refineries, according to industry sources.
"The West must expect deepening relations between Venezuela and Islamic states," says professor Elie Habalian, a specialist in petroleum economics and a consultant to PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez Araque, who is identified by Venezuelan military sources as a one-time communist guerrilla chief. Aided by Cuban intelligence and Islamic workers, the government has managed to get oil production back up to 34 percent, a level sufficient to supply basic domestic needs. "It's a war between two models," continues Habalian, "one seeking total control over oil policy and the liberal international policy represented by PDVSA's previous management" effectively eliminated by the government, which has ordered the mass dismissal of 7,000 oil-company employees.
Interfacing of Venezuela's oil industry with the radical state systems also facilitates plans for a possible oil embargo against the United States in the event the military assault on Iraq is prolonged. While international oil experts consider such a scenario unlikely due to Venezuela's desperate need for export earnings, Venezuelan opposition leaders fear that Chavez could take advantage of a conflagration in the gulf to consolidate his dictatorship with the support of Cuban and Arab agents already in place.
"Chavez has violated the constitution on 34 counts and is moving to nationalize banking," says a leading member of Venezuela's business community. "He has packed the high courts with his judges, neutralized the army and turned the national assembly into a rubber-stamp parliament. All that's left to do is shut down the independent media and decapitate the opposition." According to this source, Chavez is most likely to move when world attention is fixed on Iraq.
If the strike temporarily has undercut Venezuela's capacity to use the oil weapon, Chavez can pay back his radical Arab allies by supporting terrorist attacks against the United States. In the wake of claims by former presidential pilot Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo that Chavez contributed $1 million to al-Qaeda, police sources in Caracas tell Insight that a highly fanatical cell of Islamic activists already is operating from a sports complex in the old downtown section of the capital protected by armed units of the Circulos Bolivarianos.
Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.
The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs.
A 40-hectare estate on the sparsely populated peninsula of La Guajira near the border with Colombia is another suspected training base for Islamic terrorists. Equipped with highly modern communications systems, including satellite dishes and parabolic antennae, the complex belongs to an Arab-owned company called Jihad, which is registered as a home-appliance dealership.
Chavez's international plans may have suffered a diplomatic setback recently when he failed in an effort to include any of his rogue allies in a "Group of Friends of Venezuela." He wanted Cuba, Algeria and China to form part of the U.S.-backed watchdog committee of governments designed to support efforts by the Organization of American States to guarantee democratic liberties and future elections. But as war in the gulf absorbs U.S. attention, the group may come under the decisive influence of its other senior partner, Brazil. While that country's elected president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, appears to have put himself in the center-left and to be aligning his policies with the West, some of his key advisers object.
Chief among them is Marco Aurelio Garcia, a hard-line Marxist with close ties to Cuba and Colombian narco-guerrilla organizations, who is slotted for a top job in the foreign ministry. He already has used his influence to secure delivery of more than 500,000 barrels of oil to Venezuela to help Chavez get through the most critical moments of the strike. One of Aurelio Garcia's closest contacts is Mohammed Latifi, a powerful figure in Tehran's ruling circles who proposes an international oil boycott of the United States and is connected with terrorist networks.
Martin Arostegui is a free-lance writer for Insight magazine.
All four victims frequented Plaza Altamira, the site of more than 120 days of protests against Chavez' government. The dead military men had also joined a call for popular resistance led by anti-Chavez Gen. Enrique Medina. A 14-year-old girl who apparently witnessed at least one of the killings was hospitalized after being shot, but is talking, police said.***
University Rector Giuseppe Gianetto told Union Radio that 18-year-old Ricardo Sanchez, an international studies major, was kidnapped by agents as he left an opposition youth protest in Caracas on Wednesday. Sanchez was blindfolded, beaten and burned with an object before agents released him early Thursday in a Caracas slum, Gianetto said. Sanchez was under the protective custody of university attorneys who were filing a complaint with the attorney general's office.
"This kind of vile and cowardly torture hasn't been seen in this country for a long time," said Gianetto. "Not even youths can use their constitutional rights to go out and protest peacefully."
"There wasn't any detention of any student," the Interior Ministry official said in a telephone interview.[End]
We are facing in South America the same threat that was present in Central America in the 1980s, only much, much worse.
We had better get on the stick and cleanup quick in the Middle East and cut off the money to these terrorsts, especially that from Iran.
Gaddhafi needs another warning, and quick. He isn't out of the woods with sanctions yet. Some special Forces could blow up production in his country and put him on notice.
This article also points out the under-the-radar plotting of China with our enemies. Wampanoah (sp) needs to be sent packing out of the Canal Zone.
Pray for our President. He has threats on every front.
We need to help the Venezualans. They will take care of the Arab/Muslims in their country, but we need to aid them IMMEDIATELY!!!
Armed Men Capture Venezuela Strike Leader*** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Armed men, apparently from the Venezuela state security police, on Thursday captured a business chief who led a strike against President Hugo Chavez after a judge ordered him and a union boss arrested for rebellion, opposition leaders said.
Eight heavily armed men grabbed Carlos Fernandez at a restaurant in eastern Caracas early and fired shots in the air to keep back protesters before bundling him into a car, witnesses and opposition representatives said.
Foes of Chavez quickly condemned the order to detain Fernandez, the head of the Fedecamaras business chamber, as intimidation by the leftist leader they accuse of wielding power like a dictator.
"This is one more demonstration of intimidation," said opposition negotiator Rafael Alfonzo. "This is completely outside of the law," he said.
A judge told state television that Fernandez and union chief Carlos Ortega, who spearheaded the two-month opposition strike started in December to try and oust Chavez, were ordered detained for civilian rebellion, sabotage and other charges.
An official from the security police could not immediately confirm that officers from the agency were involved in the incident.***
Chavez's "constitution" is a farce instituted by Chavez himself in December 1999, a year after he was elected, to extend his hold on power. Chavez supporters, who controlled 121 of 131 National Assembly seats, rammed the document through the legislature. It was later approved in a national referendum in which over half of the electorate stayed away from the polls. The new "constitution" dissolved the senate, extended the president's term from five to six years, gave greater power to the military, tightened state control over the oil industry, and limited the central bank's autonomy.
The document includes a "truthful information" press provision. It also allows the president to run for a second term, so Chavez can stay in power "legally" for up to 13 years. What happens at the end of the 13 years? No one knows, but it's important to remember that Chavez has tried to take power by force before, staging two failed coups in 1992.
Chavez's contempt for the rule of law is astounding. In the ongoing general strike, he has sent out troops to seize private gasoline-delivery trucks and ordered military commanders to ignore court orders to return the trucks to their owners. He has also seized control of the Caracas police department and defied a court order to return the department to the city's mayor's control. "A country where the judicial system is not autonomous and must submit to the executive is not democratic," said strike leader Carlos Ortega, president of the country's largest labor federation. "Listen well, Venezuela and the world: There is no democracy here."
There is little doubt how most Venezuelans feel about Chavez: They hate him, and for good reason. Many of his former supporters now consider him a dictator. His approval ratings have fallen to around 30 percent from a high of 80 early in his regime. His statist policies have brought the country to the brink of ruin. During Chavez's tenure, the Venezuelan economy has taken and nosedive -- GDP shrank by 7.1 percent just in the first half of this year -- and continues its descent. Meanwhile, his government has been selling 53,000 barrels of oil to Cuba a day at bargain-basement prices.***
I have seen what looks to be the same 8-point medallion on Khadaffi.
Do you know what it signifies?
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