Chávez's Excellent Adventure
By Douglas Farah
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, apparently afraid that Colombia's willingness to allow Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in Colombia, will spend early September visiting a number of pariah states in an effort to strengthen his standing.
According to the official presidential press office, Chávez will spend most of the first two weeks of September visiting Libya (where a convicted terrorist was just received as a hero by Gadaffi et al); Iran (whose newly-nominated defense minister Ahmad Vahidi is a wanted terrorist and responsible for numerous terrorist attacks, including one that killed Americans), then off to buy a battalion of tanks from Russia, arriving via Syria, another state sponsor of terrorism.
Lovely trip. While visiting Gadaffi, Chávez will also participate in an African Union summit, perhaps for the chance to rub elbows with Mugabe, Kabila and others to share lessons learned in destabilization.
Chávez is deeply vexed that Colombia would allow the United States to locate several FOLs in its national territory, a move largely designed to offset the loss of the Manta FOL in Ecuador, where the 10-year lease expired in July and was not renewed by the Correa government.
One of the issues that is of serious concern is not just the loss of the ability to monitor the Pacific corridor drug flights without Manta (a capacity that would be enhanced by the Colombian SOLs but would still be far less than it was in Manta), but the impact of the loss on the Mexican drug situation. My full blog is here.
