BOGOTÁ, Colombia – Venezuela is waging its most planned military campaign in years, targeting what it says is a criminal group that operates within its border near Colombia, but also sends some 5,000 of its civilians to the neighboring country.
The attack – which began with several days of air strikes that security experts described as Venezuela’s biggest use of firepower in decades – represents a significant departure from the widely controlled approach it has long been taking against illicit organizations that flourish around the world. along its border.
For years, government officials under President Nicolás Maduro have tolerated and sometimes even cooperated with these armed groups, many with roots in Colombia, while transporting drugs and other contraband between nations.
Now it has attacked one of them, although the reasons remain unclear. Mr. Maduro said in recent days that the attack reflects his government’s policy of “zero tolerance towards irregular Colombian armed groups”.
Analysts are skeptical about the official explanation.
“We’ve never seen anything like this on this scale,” said Kyle Johnson, founder of Conflict Responses, a Bogota-based nonprofit organization focused on security issues, about fighting.
The military campaign began on March 21 in Apure, one of the country’s poorest states, and killed at least nine people that the Venezuelan government considers guerrillas and two of its own troops, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, said.
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 after a 2016 peace agreement.
The Venezuelan attack, centered around La Victoria, a city of about 10,000, targets a faction of FARC dissidents known as the Tenth Front, according to local residents, prompting security experts to suggest that they may have broken unwritten rules established by the Maduro government or its allies.
The air strikes that started the campaign were followed by ground fighting between the Venezuelan military and the Tenth Front, which “increased every day,” said Juan Francisco García, of the Venezuelan human rights group Fundaredes, which has an extensive communication network. in the region .
He described “a civilian population trapped between warring groups”.
In interviews, witnesses in and around La Victoria described the awakening on March 21 with the sound of government trucks passing through the city, followed by the roar of low-flying planes.
“It was still dark when I started listening to the trucks,” said Miguel Antonio Villegas, 66, the chief spokesman for the community council in La Victoria, who saw the military convoy through the window. Soon, he said, “the bombs started”.
When villagers woke up, Villegas said, they gathered outside and saw explosions in the east.
In the days that followed, Villegas said, the bombings continued in the area near La Victoria and soldiers began to invade the city, interrogating civilians and entering their homes, accusing them of collaborating with the guerrillas.
FARC dissidents apparently responded. Two days after the start of Venezuela’s military campaign, a bomb went off at the finance office and the city lost strength in an attack that Fundaredes assigned to the FARC group.
The next day, the bombing of government planes was so close to La Victoria that “even the ground moved,” said Villegas. Terrified, he filled a bag of belongings and ran away with two relatives to the bank of the narrow river that separates La Victoria from the Colombian city of Arauquita.
The bank was packed with neighbors who were also fleeing, said Villegas, who used a small boat to cross to Colombia, where he and his family remain.
Since then, the military has stepped up its presence in La Victoria, according to a civilian witness who asked not to be identified, fearing retaliation by Venezuelan security forces.
The man, who owns a small market, described soldiers surrounding the villagers, demanding identification, pinning them against the walls and pointing guns at them. In one case, he said, a resident was forced to kneel and was then beaten and detained.
A man who spoke to 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 a guerrilla, the group said. At least 11 civilians, the researcher said, were detained by Venezuelan security forces.
The Venezuelan government has appointed two prosecutors to investigate allegations of human rights abuses, the country’s attorney general, Tarek Saab, said. But the government also sought to limit news coverage of the military campaign, according to Fundaredes.
On Wednesday in La Victoria, Venezuelan authorities arrested two journalists from the Venezuelan channel NTN24 and two human rights activists from Fundaredes who were trying to document the crisis. They were kept for a day before being released, according to family and friends.
Tamara Taraciuk Broner, deputy director of Human Rights Watch for the Americas, classified the abuses documented by her organization as “a case study in the atrocities that the regime has been committing, and continues to do, with impunity”.
She continued: “This must be a wake-up call for the International Criminal Court, which has the duty and the power to criminally investigate those who are responsible for the most heinous international crimes.”
Isayen Herrera contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.