Here’s an unset­tling update on the ongo­ing push to over­throw the Maduro gov­ern­ment in Venezuela and replace it with a West­ern-backed gov­ern­ment led by Juan Guai­do. The Update has a dis­tinct Bay of Pigs feel to it: Reuters is report­ing on groups of Venezue­lans oper­at­ing in Colum­bia and open­ly plan­ning on a mil­i­tary over­throw of Maduro. It’s also being called “Oper­a­tion Venezuela.” The idea is to seize towns on the bor­der and even­tu­al­ly march to Cara­cas.

It does­n’t sounds like a large num­ber of indi­vid­u­als yet. At least not offi­cial­ly. The reporters spoke with eight peo­ple who claimed to be defec­tors from Venezue­lan police, army and intel­li­gence ser­vices and claimed to have around 150 peo­ple in total. But this pre­sum­ably isn’t the only group of this nature giv­en that 1.2 mil­lion Venezue­lans have crossed into Colom­bia in recent years and the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment has an arrange­ment with the Venezue­lan oppo­si­tion to pro­vide dis­si­dent mil­i­tary offi­cials with food and hous­ing, and the right to work. In addi­tion, more than 1,400 mem­bers of the nation­al guard and oth­er mem­bers of the armed forces have left Venezuela for Colom­bia fol­low­ing the con­flicts over the aid con­voys in recent months. The leader of the Venezue­lan group, ex-army sergeant, Eddi­er Rodriguez, claims they have been meet­ing with dif­fer­ent “resis­tance” groups in Colom­bia.

It’s impor­tant to note that the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment does­n’t appear to be back­ing this scheme and claims that any groups that take up arms will be con­sid­ered para­mil­i­taries and be sub­ject to arrest. Keep in mind that the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment is clear­ly in sup­port of see­ing Guai­do replace Maduro since it backed the recent over­throw attempt. But Colom­bia is also one of the coun­tries that’s going to be most direct­ly impact­ed by a civ­il war next door. So it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see what kinds of legal tricks are used to jus­ti­fy the Colum­bia state tol­er­at­ing this scheme.

Crit­i­cal­ly, this group of 150 peo­ple has explic­it­ly pledged their loy­al­ty to Juan Guai­do. Recall how Guai­do and the oppo­si­tion have always left open the option of ask­ing the US for mil­i­tary sup­port, an idea that appears to have the sup­port of John Bolton. Plus, Erik Prince has been pro­mot­ing the idea of using a force of Latin Amer­i­can mer­ce­nar­ies. Also recall how Guai­do was open­ly sur­prised by the lack of mil­i­tary sup­port for his calls to over­throw Maduro. It sounds like Guai­do might final­ly have some sort of Venezue­lan mil­i­tary force of his own being cob­bled togeth­er, albeit a rather rag­tag force.

How is this group plan­ning on over­whelm­ing the much larg­er Venezue­lan mil­i­tary? Well, the group claims that part of their plan is to get the sup­port of mem­bers of the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary after some sort of armed inva­sion has begun. Rodriquez claims they’ve already made con­tact with gar­risons inside Venezuela and that many were ready to fight once the oper­a­tion began. Keep in mind that the attempt­ed coup at the end of April involved sim­i­lar pledges from inside the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary that did­n’t pan out. So if you thought the last attempt to con­vince the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary to over­throw Maduro seemed like a high risk gam­bit with low chances of suc­cess, get ready for the much blood­i­er armed inva­sion ver­sion of that scheme:

Reuters

From Colom­bia, Venezue­lan defec­tors arm them­selves to ‘lib­er­ate’ their home­land

Helen Mur­phy, Luis Jaime Acos­ta

May 28, 2019 / 8:40 AM

CUCUTA, Colom­bia (Reuters) — Wear­ing cam­ou­flage shirts and com­bat boots, a Venezue­lan mili­tia group stands in for­ma­tion in the Colom­bian city of Cucu­ta as their com­man­der, a for­mer Venezue­lan army sergeant, out­lines plans to seize towns across the bor­der before head­ing to Cara­cas to help oust Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

Eight men, who said they were defec­tors from Venezue­lan police, army and intel­li­gence ser­vices, had gath­ered near the two nations’ tense fron­tier, from where they said they will lead an attack aimed at over­throw­ing Maduro and hand­ing the reins of pow­er to oppo­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do.

Dub­bing their planned offen­sive “Oper­a­tion Venezuela,” the ex-army sergeant, Eddi­er Rodriguez, said there were around 150 men ready to take part with his group. Reuters was unable to inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm the sta­tus of the eight men or the size of the mili­tia.

“Our goal is to lib­er­ate the coun­try,” said Rodriguez, 37, who said he is cur­rent­ly work­ing as a secu­ri­ty guard in Bogo­ta. “We’re troops will­ing to give our lives if nec­es­sary, all 150 of us.”

...

Vic­tor Bautista, bor­der direc­tor for Colombia’s for­eign min­istry, said any groups who actu­al­ly took up arms would be con­sid­ered a para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion and would be detained by author­i­ties if they were found.

“That would be total­ly reject­ed by our gov­ern­ment and ful­ly tak­en up by the appro­pri­ate author­i­ties to apply cor­re­spond­ing legal mea­sures,” said Bautista.

A Colom­bian intel­li­gence offi­cial, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said the intel­li­gence ser­vice had detect­ed an unspec­i­fied num­ber of Venezue­lan mili­tia groups in the coun­try but could not act against them because they had not yet com­mit­ted any crimes. Sep­a­rate­ly, a high-lev­el Colom­bian gov­ern­ment offi­cial who asked not to be named said arrestable offences could include ille­gal pos­ses­sion of weapons and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit a crime.

An esti­mat­ed 1.2 mil­lion Venezue­lans have crossed into Colom­bia in recent years, flee­ing a painful reces­sion and hyper­in­fla­tion in their home­land that has left mil­lions of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from hunger and short­ages of basic goods. They include increas­ing num­bers of defec­tors from the armed forces, some of whom are form­ing mili­tias with the inten­tion of push­ing for the over­throw of Maduro.

While such mili­tias are vast­ly out­num­bered in the face of Venezuela’s 150,000-strong mil­i­tary, the men told Reuters they were will­ing to face any con­se­quence if they can rid their coun­try of Maduro’s gov­ern­ment, under­scor­ing the frus­tra­tion and des­per­a­tion of many Venezue­lan migrants.

Guai­do cit­ed the con­sti­tu­tion in Jan­u­ary to assume an inter­im pres­i­den­cy, say­ing Maduro rigged last year’s elec­tion. He has appealed to Venezuela’s armed forces to turn against Maduro.

The Unit­ed States and most West­ern nations have rec­og­nized Guai­do as the South Amer­i­can country’s right­ful leader. Maduro accus­es him of being a coup-mon­ger and so far has retained the loy­al­ty of the bulk of the armed forces.

Rodriguez said his group had been meet­ing dif­fer­ent “resis­tance” groups in Colom­bia. He did not pro­vide fur­ther details of those groups, or of how they planned to cross the bor­der and launch an attack.

He said they had acquired hand­guns, eas­i­ly avail­able along the bor­der, and were seek­ing to raise funds to buy fur­ther weapons, explo­sives, bul­let-proof vests, food and water.

‘MINIMAL BLOODSHED’

Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Ivan Duque has rec­og­nized Guai­do as Venezuela’s right­ful ruler and brand­ed Maduro a dic­ta­tor. Maduro sev­ered diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with Colom­bia after Duque backed oppo­si­tion efforts to bring U.S. aid into the coun­try in Feb­ru­ary, although Duque has ruled out sup­port­ing any mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion.

More than 1,400 mem­bers of the nation­al guard and oth­er mem­bers of the armed forces have left Venezuela for Colom­bia since Maduro’s troops vio­lent­ly drove back the aid con­voys, accord­ing to Colombia’s migra­tion office.

As per an agree­ment with the Venezue­lan oppo­si­tion, Colom­bia pro­vides dis­si­dent mil­i­tary offi­cials with food and hous­ing, and the right to work.

In an inter­view in Cara­cas, Guai­do said that if any decid­ed to take up arms that would be due to Maduro’s refusal to agree to free and fair pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

“This reflects the dis­con­tent that there is in the armed forces: sol­diers look­ing for alter­na­tives and solu­tions because Maduro has shut off the elec­toral option,” Guai­do told Reuters.

He did not imme­di­ate­ly reply to a request for com­ment on Bautista’s asser­tion that groups who took up arms in Colom­bia would be detained.

...

On April 30, Guai­do attempt­ed to ral­ly Venezuela’s armed forces to rise up, but only a few dozen sol­diers and one top gov­ern­ment offi­cial defect­ed. The mil­i­tary top brass reaf­firmed their loy­al­ty to Maduro.

Over the years, Maduro — and for­mer Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez — won the loy­al­ty of the armed forces in part by pro­mot­ing hun­dreds of offi­cers to the rank of gen­er­al and reward­ing them with lucra­tive posi­tions in state-run enti­ties, like oil com­pa­ny PDVSA.

Rodriguez’s team said they have made con­tact with gar­risons in Venezuela and many were ready to fight once the oper­a­tion began. He did not pro­vide details about spe­cif­ic gar­risons and Reuters could not inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the infor­ma­tion.

“They’re wait­ing for us to enter to make their troops avail­able (to fight),” said Pedro Mene­ses, an indus­tri­al engi­neer and rights work­er who said he man­aged the militia’s logis­tics. “We want to do this with min­i­mal blood­shed.”

For­mer Sergeant Major Efren Fer­nan­dez, who desert­ed to Cucu­ta in Feb­ru­ary, told Reuters that he was also ready to fight for Guai­do.

“Mr Pres­i­dent Guai­do, rely on our sup­port,” he said. “Here are your sol­diers ready for bat­tle, for com­bat.”

———-

“From Colom­bia, Venezue­lan defec­tors arm them­selves to ‘lib­er­ate’ their home­land” by Helen Mur­phy, Luis Jaime Acos­ta; Reuters; 05/28/2019

“Wear­ing cam­ou­flage shirts and com­bat boots, a Venezue­lan mili­tia group stands in for­ma­tion in the Colom­bian city of Cucu­ta as their com­man­der, a for­mer Venezue­lan army sergeant, out­lines plans to seize towns across the bor­der before head­ing to Cara­cas to help oust Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.”

They’re quite open about the plan: start with seiz­ing towns across the before before head­ing to Cara­cas. And for this plan, they want funds to buy fur­ther weapons, explo­sives, and bul­let-proof vests. So this par­tic­u­lar group appears to already be armed and is appar­ent­ly not the only group of this nature oper­at­ing in Colom­bia:

...
Eight men, who said they were defec­tors from Venezue­lan police, army and intel­li­gence ser­vices, had gath­ered near the two nations’ tense fron­tier, from where they said they will lead an attack aimed at over­throw­ing Maduro and hand­ing the reins of pow­er to oppo­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do.

Dub­bing their planned offen­sive “Oper­a­tion Venezuela,” the ex-army sergeant, Eddi­er Rodriguez, said there were around 150 men ready to take part with his group. Reuters was unable to inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm the sta­tus of the eight men or the size of the mili­tia.

“Our goal is to lib­er­ate the coun­try,” said Rodriguez, 37, who said he is cur­rent­ly work­ing as a secu­ri­ty guard in Bogo­ta. “We’re troops will­ing to give our lives if nec­es­sary, all 150 of us.”

...

Rodriguez said his group had been meet­ing dif­fer­ent “resis­tance” groups in Colom­bia. He did not pro­vide fur­ther details of those groups, or of how they planned to cross the bor­der and launch an attack.

He said they had acquired hand­guns, eas­i­ly avail­able along the bor­der, and were seek­ing to raise funds to buy fur­ther weapons, explo­sives, bul­let-proof vests, food and water.
...

They also claim to have have made con­tact with gar­risons inside Venezuela that are ready to join their side once the oper­a­tion gets under­way. So the offi­cial plan is to launch the inva­sion and just hope these gar­risons stick with the plan. Kind of like the last coup attempt but this time it’s going to start with inva­sions of towns:

...
Rodriguez’s team said they have made con­tact with gar­risons in Venezuela and many were ready to fight once the oper­a­tion began. He did not pro­vide details about spe­cif­ic gar­risons and Reuters could not inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the infor­ma­tion.

“They’re wait­ing for us to enter to make their troops avail­able (to fight),” said Pedro Mene­ses, an indus­tri­al engi­neer and rights work­er who said he man­aged the militia’s logis­tics. “We want to do this with min­i­mal blood­shed.”

For­mer Sergeant Major Efren Fer­nan­dez, who desert­ed to Cucu­ta in Feb­ru­ary, told Reuters that he was also ready to fight for Guai­do.

“Mr Pres­i­dent Guai­do, rely on our sup­port,” he said. “Here are your sol­diers ready for bat­tle, for com­bat.”
...

And while there’s no short­age of prob­lems fac­ing this plan, per­haps the biggest imme­di­ate prob­lem is that the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment is declar­ing that any groups that take up arms could be con­sid­ered para­mil­i­taries and detained by author­i­ties:

...
Vic­tor Bautista, bor­der direc­tor for Colombia’s for­eign min­istry, said any groups who actu­al­ly took up arms would be con­sid­ered a para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion and would be detained by author­i­ties if they were found.

“That would be total­ly reject­ed by our gov­ern­ment and ful­ly tak­en up by the appro­pri­ate author­i­ties to apply cor­re­spond­ing legal mea­sures,” said Bautista.

A Colom­bian intel­li­gence offi­cial, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said the intel­li­gence ser­vice had detect­ed an unspec­i­fied num­ber of Venezue­lan mili­tia groups in the coun­try but could not act against them because they had not yet com­mit­ted any crimes. Sep­a­rate­ly, a high-lev­el Colom­bian gov­ern­ment offi­cial who asked not to be named said arrestable offences could include ille­gal pos­ses­sion of weapons and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit a crime.

An esti­mat­ed 1.2 mil­lion Venezue­lans have crossed into Colom­bia in recent years, flee­ing a painful reces­sion and hyper­in­fla­tion in their home­land that has left mil­lions of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from hunger and short­ages of basic goods. They include increas­ing num­bers of defec­tors from the armed forces, some of whom are form­ing mili­tias with the inten­tion of push­ing for the over­throw of Maduro.

...

Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Ivan Duque has rec­og­nized Guai­do as Venezuela’s right­ful ruler and brand­ed Maduro a dic­ta­tor. Maduro sev­ered diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with Colom­bia after Duque backed oppo­si­tion efforts to bring U.S. aid into the coun­try in Feb­ru­ary, although Duque has ruled out sup­port­ing any mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion.

More than 1,400 mem­bers of the nation­al guard and oth­er mem­bers of the armed forces have left Venezuela for Colom­bia since Maduro’s troops vio­lent­ly drove back the aid con­voys, accord­ing to Colombia’s migra­tion office.

As per an agree­ment with the Venezue­lan oppo­si­tion, Colom­bia pro­vides dis­si­dent mil­i­tary offi­cials with food and hous­ing, and the right to work.
...

That’s the offi­cial gov­ern­ment line from Colom­bia. No planned inva­sions are allowed. And yet there appears to be armed groups open­ly call­ing for funds to pur­chase weapons and explo­sives in order to wage a cross-bor­der mil­i­tary cam­paign. If the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment was seri­ous­ly intent on crack­ing down on para­mil­i­taries it’s tak­ing its time on that. At the same time, we can’t dis­miss what a night­mare a Venezue­lan civ­il war could be for Colom­bia. The Colom­bian gov­ern­ment might want to see Maduro go but it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly want to pay the price of mil­i­tar­i­ly inflam­ing the region and host­ing the invad­ing forces. And so while we should­n’t be super sur­prised if we sud­den­ly get reports of armed con­flicts over con­trol of Venezue­lan bor­der towns at this point, giv­en what a poten­tial night­mare this is for Colom­bia we should still be kind of sur­prised if we hear that news. Just not super sur­prised, all things con­sid­ered.