The United States is once again slinging baseless accusations against the Venezuelan government for facilitating the “global drug trade.”
A recent article published in the Los Angeles Times quotes U.S. drug agents claiming that “widespread corruption” and
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Venezuela was highlighted in the latest U.S. State Department annual report on global drug trafficking as a “growing threat.”
U.S. accusations against Venezuela, however, have nothing to do with narcotrafficking. The United States is once again pulling the “war on drugs” card out of its sleeve in order to advance its own imperialist foreign policy interests.
Venezuela terminated its 17-year relationship with the U.S. DEA in August 2005 after evidence revealed the DEA was involved carrying out espionage activities. “The DEA was using the fight against drug trafficking as a mask, to support drug trafficking, to carry out intelligence in Venezuela against the government,” Chávez said. (FOX News, August 2005)
DEA espionage was only the latest in a series of actions against the Venezuelan government—including a U.S.-backed coup in April 2002, reversed within two days by the masses of people who took to the streets in support of Chávez. U.S. efforts to undermine the Chávez government continue unabated today.
Colombia implicated
For geographical reasons, Venezuela is a natural transit route for drugs originating from Colombia. The two countries share a 1,300-mile border, which makes it particularly hard to prevent drug smuggling.
Nevertheless, Venezuela continues to make efforts to combat trafficking through its soil. In a recent interview, director of the National Anti-Drug Office Néstor Luis Reverol Torres highlighted that last year alone Venezuela apprehended more than 60 tons of cocaine and captured 6 major narcotraffickers wanted by international authorities.
“The SENIAT [Venezuela’s Customs Service] is placing non-intrusive X-ray machines at the ports that will permit the inspection of a complete cargo container to determine if it carries drugs,” explained Torres. “Additionally, we performed a feasibility study for the creation of an anti-drug special task force in the border states, especially in the Amacuro Delta, because of its geographical location.”
To understand the real imperatives behind the U.S. “war on drugs,” one needs to look no further than Colombia, Venezuela’s next door neighbor. Death squads made up largely of soldiers out of uniform operate freely in the country, forming an integral component of the government’s war against the people and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples’ Army (FARC-EP).
The government-backed paramilitary forces obtain 80 percent of their funds from drug trafficking.
The FARC-EP, the largest guerilla army in the Western Hemisphere, grew out of a few peasant self-defense communities attacked by the CIA and Colombian government in 1964. They currently have a presence in every municipality nationwide.
The United States finds the Marxist FARC-EP a much more suitable target for its war on terror than the right-wing paramilitaries allied with its Colombian puppet government. In 2006, the United States showered Uribe’s government with $800 million dollars—much of it military aid to combat the so-called war on drugs.
Afghanistan, CIA and global drug trade
The U.S. invasion and occupation has been a leading factor in the resurgence of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which had nearly eradicated opium production prior to the 2001 U.S. attack.
The country’s fragile economy was devastated by the bombing and the occupation that followed, forcing farmers to turn
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The CIA also has been an active participant in the global drug trade.
In the 1980s, the CIA participated in drug trafficking operations to provide covert funding to the Contras—a U.S.-backed mercenary force fighting a proxy war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Covert funding became critical after Congress suspended overt funding in 1984.
The CIA also played a key role in propping up the “French Connection”—a smuggling scheme to move heroin through Europe and into the United States.
As part of the U.S. effort to undermine the growth of communism in Europe following World War II, the CIA supported Corsican mobsters in Marseille to help them battle communist-led unions for control of the city’s docks. (Institute for Policy Studies, May 1998)
The French Connection reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 70s when it supplied the vast majority of the heroin consumed in the United States.
The utter disregard for human lives and wellbeing shown repeatedly by the U.S. imperialists is on display again with its slanders targeting Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution.
The Chávez government has announced its plans to steer Venezuela toward socialism—and it has the support of the masses to advance this project. Earlier this year, the Venezuelan government announced plans to nationalize the Orinoco oil fields as well as telecommunications and energy sectors. The announcement shook up capitalist investors around the world.
Chávez is now calling all political organizations that support the revolutionary process to join the new Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela. He says that the organization will provide the centralized leadership and ability for unified action that are needed to move the Bolivarian revolution forward.
Such developments present a serious obstacle to U.S. imperialism in Latin America.
Given the record of the U.S. government on drugs, the latest attacks against the Venezuelan government are nothing but a smokescreen for U.S. imperialism. Revolutionaries in the United States must reject Washington’s phony “war on drugs” and continue to fight all attempts to discredit the anti-imperialist government of Venezuela.
