The U.S. attack on Venezuela has shifted the playing field for guerrilla groups operating across the country’s border areas with Colombia and raised fears of possible betrayal by Venezuelan regime officials. At the same time, it opened the door to a larger conflict if U.S. boots ever hit the ground, local security experts say.
Since the January 3 attacks, reports have emerged of an increase in guerrilla movements on both sides of the border. The region’s most powerful guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has reportedly closed some camps in Venezuela, fearing a possible betrayal of their locations by regime officials to U.S. authorities that could lead to strikes, experts say.
“They are reconfiguring their security frameworks and protocols, consolidating and reviewing their systems of social control that the ELN maintains in certain communities in Venezuela where its leaders are present,” said Jorge Mantilla, a Bogotá expert on armed conflict and national security.
The ELN has also stopped training operations in the country and plans to set up a special unit with the help of the Venezuelan military, Mantilla said.
“There is a lot of uncertainty about what could happen,” he said.
However, the ELN had long expected a US attack in Venezuela, Mantilla said.
In September, Pablo Beltrán, one of the ELN’s chief negotiators, suggested in an interview that the US would attack Venezuela for its resources.
In 2019, the ELN sent a letter to President Nicolas Maduro That was intercepted by Colombian intelligence and warned the then Venezuelan president about traitors in the upper echelons of the Venezuelan military, Mantilla said.
Continental ambitions
The attack could also open the door for the ELN to achieve its long-sought goal of becoming a continental guerrilla force if the U.S. military establishes a presence in the country or if the regime in Venezuela collapses into factions, he said.
“This would become the military and political platform that the ELN was hoping for … to transform itself into what they call a continental guerrilla, a symbol of resistance, not for Colombia or Venezuela, but for Latin America,” Mantilla said.
The leader of one of the ELN’s main guerrilla enemies on the Venezuela-Colombia border released a video statement late this week calling on guerrilla groups to form a common front with the Venezuelan military to resist the US
Ivan Mordisco leads a group that broke away from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). which officially disbanded in 2017. He said the armed groups should put aside differences because they “face the same enemy.” Mordisco, whose real name is Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, called for a meeting of the leadership of the various guerrilla movements.
Gerson Arias, a researcher with Colombia’s Ideas for Peace Foundation, said he doubted anyone would take Mordisco’s call because he wasn’t trusted much.
Mordisco also brings too much excitement as one of Colombia’s most wanted criminals, Arias said.
The Colombian government of President Gustavo Petro has placed a bounty of around $1 million on his head.
ELN and Venezuela have a long history
A group like the ELN, with an estimated force of 6,000 to 8,000 people and operating in Colombia and Venezuela while controlling about 1,200 kilometers of border areas, has no incentive to make peace with Mordisco’s organization, Arias said.
Arias said the ELN operates in parts of the southern Venezuelan states of Amazonas and Bolivar, including areas rich in natural resources such as rare earths. The main sources of income include illegal mining and drug trafficking.
The ELN has a long history with the Venezuelan regime, dating back to the presidency of Venezuela Hugo Chavezwho was elected in 1998, Arias said.
The ELN’s leadership moved to Venezuela in 2002 and the group shares the same political ideology as the regime in Venezuela, Arias said. It considers the defense of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela to be its core task.
“The ELN saw itself as the rearguard of Venezuela, but gradually emerged as a place where it could develop its political and military project,” Arias said.
In a recent phone call, US President Donald Trump and Petro agreed to work together in the fight against the ELN, Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said in an interview with local radio. Petro is scheduled to visit the White House next month.
Eliana Paola Zafra, a human rights activist in the border city of Cúcuta, Colombia, said the U.S. has long provided money to the Colombian military to fight the country’s armed groups, but that has never brought peace.
“We need a policy of total peace, we need to empower communities in Latin America to defend life, peace and human rights,” Zafra said.
