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Nigeria: Incinerating Latin America

Owei Lakemfa

13 March 2008

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Lagos — Latin America is back on war footing. For a region that has known political turbulence since 1821, the last decade has been largely peaceful due to an upsurge in peoples' power expressed through the ballot box.

Now, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador has troops to the border with neighbouring Colombia. He has made two seemingly innocuous demands: that Colombia apologises for invading Ecuador on March 1, 2008 and undertake not to invade any country again.

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, sent ten tank battalions to the Colombian border. He told Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, "Let's choose between two paths -war or peace."

The cause of the tension is President Uribe whose troops marched into Ecuador and killed 24 Colombian rebels.

The most prominent victim was Raul Reyes, the deputy leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Of course, Uribe has no regrets invading Ecuador; he claims it is the desire of the 43 million Colombians he leads. Secondly, he does not rule out the possibility of future attacks.

Latin American countries are livid; Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, broke diplomatic relations with Colombia, describing its invasion as an act of "political terrorism".

Latin America is essentially one big country. In fact, by September 15, 1821, when colonial Spain pulled out of the region, Guatemala, El-Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua were provinces of a single country.

Therefore, events in one country is bound to affect others.

But United States President, George Bush, sought to stoke the fires of war. He gave the invasion pass marks and announced that U.S. fully supports Colombian "democracy" and will help defend her.

This was the same policy of "hot pursuit" which the US employed in encouraging Apartheid South African troops to invade countries like Mozambique and Angola and kill African National Congress (ANC) officials, whom US claimed were "terrorists".

The FARC, which began an anti-US revolt in Colombia over 40 years ago, has, in the last two months, been enjoying a good image by releasing some of those it considered POWS. In killing FARC leaders, Colombia's Uribe would hope that FARC would stop releasing the prisoners. This will stop world leaders, like Sarkozy of France, from contacts with FARC.

The primary motive for the attack might be to draw out a temperamental Chavez and lure his government into a war which may suck in other countries and, hopefully, incinerate a region which has slipped out of American hands.

Then, the US can intervene directly or indirectly to re-establish its power in Latin American.

This will be consistent with Colombia's history in the region. That country, since its 1819 independence, has not known peace for long spells of time. Its "A Thousand Days War" between pro and anti US forces ended in 1902.

The following year, a separatist group, funded by America, broke away to found the new state of Panama. Having carved out a defenseless Panama, US built and controlled the Panama Canal.

The Pro and anti-US forces in Colombia engaged in a series of wars from 1948 to 1957, during which 4 out of every 100 Colombians were killed.

The FARC was born under these circumstances to liberate Colombia from US grip, rescue its people from a military that would not allow the people's sovereignty and from drug barons that control most of the world's cocaine trade. For the right wing Uribe, elected President in 2002, his consuming passion fired by US is to militarily defeat FARC.

The speed with which the Organization of American States (OAS) condemned Colombia for violating Ecuador's sovereignty is unprecedented, especially as it affects an American ally. The US has, for centuries, regarded Latin America as its "backyard".

It, indirectly, ruled the region with an iron fist mainly through military dictators and rightwing death squads.

When Fidel Castro led the Cuban revolution in 1959, that country became the lone anti-US voice in the region and the OAS. It is ironical that with the emergence of a unipolar world, which has US as the dominant power, Latin America has slipped out of its hands.

The populace in that region has turned against traditional U.S. allies and brought some of them to book for the blood bath in the region. Across Latin America, pro-poor, pro-labour and pro-people political parties have swept into power in countries like Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, leaving a country like Colombia an orphan in the region.

What happened? Was U.S. sleeping or it is simply the logic of history? Was the U.S. so preoccupied in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war against "terror" in Pakistan and Iran that it left its "backyard" uncared for?

It will be logical for U.S. to seek a reversal. Having virtually given up on Cuba, it seems logical for it to pick on the most irritating of the new leaders in the region, Hugo Chavez. A former para-trooper, Chavez had survived a coup attempt but lost a referendum that would have given his government more powers.

He got enormous goodwill from various countries by offering them cheap oil. He has built a strong power base by redistributing the oil wealth to benefit the Venezuelan populace. Chavez had called off the bluff of Exxon-Mobil and threatened to stop oil sales to U.S. To the Americans, Chavez's cup is full.

While it is no longer fashionable for a powerful country to invade another the way Soviets did in Afghanistan and the Americans in tiny Grenada, such a country can intervene in a war that can oust a troublesome government.

This is why Chavez will need to apply the brakes and pull back from a war with Colombia. If he claims fidelity with Fidel, Chavez must learn the ways of his model; Fidel could read a political script even before it is written in Washington. Latin American countries must ignore the Colombian bait.

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