Tension in Apure and Arauca: 5 keys to understanding the escalation of violence on the border between Colombia and Venezuela

On the Colombian side there are more and more shelters, tents and displaced people. And on the side Venezuelan there are more and more tanks, mines and soldiers.

In two weeks at least 5,000 people (almost half of them children) crossed into the Colombian municipality of Arauquita after a conflict escalated between the Venezuelan army and a dissident Colombian guerrilla group.

There have been bombings, homes have been raided and the displaced denounce extrajudicial executions.

But the opacity abounds: it is not known how many injured or deceased the crisis has left, nor who the protagonists or their interests really are.

This 2,200-kilometer border is used to conflict, but this does not usually occur in the regions of Arauca, in Colombia, and Apure, in Venezuela, part of what in both countries is known as “the plains”.

The governments of Bogotá and Caracas accuse each other of “abandoning the border.” They disagree on the diagnosis of the problem and have not spoken to each other since bilateral relations were broken two years ago.

But they agree on at least one qualifier: that of “terrorists” to describe those who fight against the Venezuelan army. But for some they are terrorists of the left and for others, of the right.

The coliseum, the school and the soccer field of Arauquita are some of the spaces taken over by the migratory crisis. (AFP).

1. What is happening?

On March 21, residents of La Victoria, a Venezuelan border municipality, heard shelling and were forced to suddenly leave their homes and cross the river to the Colombian municipality of La Arauquita.

Since then the clashes and displacements have not stopped.

Units from the Special Action Forces (FAES), a powerful command of the Bolivarian National Police of Venezuela.

Caracas assures that it has detained 31 people, destroyed nine camps and deactivated six explosive devices.

The government of Nicolás Maduro says it is confronting a Colombian armed group that has the “protection and tolerance” of Bogotá. The displaced, they say, are Colombians who want to return to their country.

This Monday, the Venezuelan Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino, announced that he will create a special defense zone to “guarantee peace and territorial integrity” of Venezuela before “an imperial plan to Balkanize the country” promoted “by the United States with the support of Colombia.”

Padrino came to assure a few days ago that “the incursions into the Venezuelan geographic space should be considered as an aggression sponsored by Iván Duque.”

Venezuelan media related to the government describe the armed irregularities as “narco-mercenaries.”

Bogotá, for its part, argues that Maduro is taking its toll your complicity with guerrillas and that it has concentrated its efforts on assisting the thousands of displaced people who arrived in Arauquita.

The NGO Human Rights Watch and local media have released testimonies from displaced persons who assure that their relatives were extrajudicially executed to present them as guerrilla casualties.

Caracas denies this version.

This is how the Venezuelan people of La Victoria remained. (AFP).

2. Where is it happening?

This border area, known as the “piedmont plains” because it is between the mountain ranges and the tropical savannah, has for years been a key step for drug trafficking routes.

Although control of the area was exercised by the National Liberation Army (ELN) Since the 1980s, today there is also the presence of at least two different groups – and probably rivals – of the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Venezuela has always denied that it “gives refuge” to Colombian guerrillas.

Nicolás Maduro attributes his presence to the “lack of control” of the conflict in Colombia.

Jorge Mantilla, an expert on border and security, assures “that the Colombian guerrillas, the armed groups and the Venezuelan authorities” had managed to keep the peace thanks to “to arrangements, sometimes tacit, of income distribution and territorial control”.

And now, according to Mantilla, who is working on a doctoral thesis at the University of Illinois on crime on this border, that peace has been altered by FARC dissent.

40% of the migrant population in this crisis are children. (AFP).

3. Who are facing?

That actor who apparently seeks to restore control of the area calls himself “Tenth Front of the FARC“, Led by” alias Ferley “and which has acquired greater military and economic capacity in recent months.

In 2016, the FARC signed, with logistical support from Venezuela, a peace agreement with the Colombian state. But several groups within the same guerrilla either opposed the agreement or rearmed shortly after it was signed.

Today the different FARC dissidents have different expressions, interests and territories of control.

The Venezuelan government has always denied any pact with the Colombian guerrillas, but Mantilla maintains that “now there has been a tension between the local arrangements that the Tenth Front may have with the regional components of the Venezuelan army and the national arrangements that the government may have. national in Caracas with the Second Marquetalia (another dissidence) ”.

The foothills of the plains are a region shared by two countries, but the border between Arauquiita and Victoria is marked by a river. (AFP).

4. Why now?

The situation occurs at a time when the management of public order in Colombia is getting complicated: Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in other regions of the country and massacres and murders of social leaders continue to dominate the scene.

Although the government of Iván Duque defends the drop in homicides in 2020 and its implementation of the peace agreement, the opposition has described its peace agenda as insufficient, with the result that the violence has escalated, the conflict has become fragmented and the coca production has increased.

In April, Duque hopes to reactivate the spraying with glyphosate on illicit crops.

These are all elements that can explain why now some armed groups are moving their chips at a time of reactivation of illegal economies around the world after the pandemic.

According to the Venezuelan government, four soldiers died in combat. It is the only death data that has been given. (AFP).

5. What could the outcome be?

Mantilla assures that two things can happen to lower the tension: either a return to the non-aggression status quo or one group prevailing over the other.

The ELN, a guerrilla that some today consider “binational”, is probably the illegal actor with the greatest military power in the area and what happens will depend on whether they enter to fight against dissidents in defense of their territory or the Bolivarian revolution.

It also remains to be seen what Caracas will do to show that, as it has sustained for years, does not tolerate the presence of illegal armed groups and fights against drug trafficking.

To the equation is added that the government of Iván Duque does not recognize Maduro as president and that there are no communication channels between the authorities of both countries.

In addition, what happens in Colombia and Venezuela is usually on the radar of the great powers: the United States on the one hand and China and Russia on the other.

On both sides of the border, it doesn’t seem like an easy situation to control.