Venezuela’s ‘Unprecedented’ Military Offensive Raises Border Tensions With Colombia

For years, the Venezuelan government has permitted armed groups from neighboring Colombia to operate within its borders. It has even occasionally conspired with these groups, taking a cut of the profits from their drug trafficking, extortion and other illicit activities in exchange for allowing them freedom to maneuver.

But last month, Venezuela launched a major military offensive against a faction of Colombian guerrillas that is active near the two countries’ border, and which is believed to have fallen out of favor with President Nicolas Maduro’s autocratic government. These are not the first clashes between Venezuelan security forces and Colombian armed groups, but experts say the current fighting is fiercer than ever before. The violence has sparked a humanitarian crisis, displacing thousands of civilians, while also bringing the Maduro regime’s shadowy ties with Colombian guerrillas into the open.

The Venezuelan military’s assault has centered around La Victoria, a small town in western Apure state on the Venezuelan side of the Arauca River, which marks the country’s border with Colombia. The target of the campaign is the 10th Front, a group of dissident rebels who once belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the prominent leftist guerrilla group that agreed to demobilize when it signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government in 2016. Venezuelan officials said earlier this month that eight of its soldiers and nine members of armed groups had been killed in the clashes, while 33 people were being prosecuted by its military justice system.

But human rights groups have accused the Venezuelan armed forces of committing atrocities against the local civilian population, including extrajudicial killings, beatings and arbitrary detentions, out of suspicion that they are collaborating with the guerrillas. At least 5,000 people have fled the area around La Victoria and sought refuge in the town of Arauquita, on the Colombian side of the border. Human Rights Watch said it had found “credible evidence” that Venezuelan security forces had carried out the extrajudicial killings of three men and a woman during the ongoing offensive. In Arauquita, refugees fear returning to what they call the “war zone” on the Venezuelan side, and have crowded into makeshift shelters and tent settlements.

Compared to previous clashes on the border, the ongoing fighting between Venezuelan forces and the 10th Front is “definitely the most violent,” Bram Ebus, a consultant for the International Crisis Group, told WPR in an email interview. “The operation’s scale is unprecedented,” he added, with Caracas deploying military aircraft and special police forces in support of the operation. The guerillas have reportedly fought back with landmines, leading Maduro to seek assistance from the United Nations in clearing them. Ebus also noted that the prolonged duration of the violence—Venezuela launched its military offensive on March 21—is “highly unusual.”

While the precise cause of the conflict is unclear, most experts believe it grew out of a dispute over resources between the 10th Front and Venezuela’s armed forces. “Local alliances between the Colombian guerrillas and the Venezuelan military are profit-based, making relationships very volatile and prone to violence when monetary agreements/expectations are not fulfilled,” Ebus wrote in his email. “This is exactly what happened.”

The lawless region along the Venezuelan-Colombian border has been a theater for organized crime for years, with a complex web of alliances and feuds that has developed among various guerrilla groups and units of the state security forces. These unstable relationships, based on criminal convenience and profiteering, explain the sudden military offensive against the 10th Front guerrillas.

Some analysts have also suggested that the Venezuelan offensive is a reprisal for violating unwritten rules laid out by the Maduro regime or its allies. According to Ebus, the decision to attack the 10th Front “implies that the [Venezuelan] armed forces favor relations with other Colombian guerrilla groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Segunda Marquetalia,” another group of former FARC rebels that is led by the FARC’s former second-in-command, Luciano Marin—better known by his nom de guerre, Ivan Marquez.

The conflict in Apure is also fueling tensions between the Venezuelan and Colombian governments, further souring a relationship that was already in a dismal state after the two countries cut diplomatic ties in 2019. Colombian President Ivan Duque’s government has increased its military presence along its side of the border with Venezuela, and blamed the violence on the Maduro regime’s dealings with drug traffickers. The Venezuelan government, for its part, has claimed that the attacks are being orchestrated by Duque’s government. Whatever the case, the spike in tensions is raising fears of a broader military conflict.

“In a moment like this, the grave risks of the lack of communication between Caracas and Bogota are painfully evident,” Ebus said. At the same time, a bilateral conflict is not in the interest of either country, “as the political and economic costs would be too high.” Furthermore, he added, “frictions and upticks of violence are rather local and related to the control over illicit economies and should not be misinterpreted too easily as cross-border threats.”

For now, tensions remain high in the region, as the violence shows little sign of easing. With greater attention focusing on the Venezuela-Colombia border, Maduro may also be forced to come clean about his regime’s dealings with armed groups. “For the Venezuelan government, which stubbornly denied the presence of Colombian guerrilla forces in their territory for many years, it seems that there is no way back now,” Ebus said. The dispute between Maduro and the guerrillas “is out in the open and it will be hard for either side to back down.”