In the early hours of March 1, Colombian military forces fired rockets at narcoterrorist leader Raúl Reyes. They hit their target, and the political ricochet may wind up taking Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan president is apparently so outraged that someone would kill his terrorist chum that he is threatening to hurl his country into a war it can’t win. Chávez’s hysterical reaction, along with the treasure trove of damaging documents that Reyes left behind, may knock the blocks out from under his teetering regime. 

Reyes, whose real name was Luis Edgar Devia, was a senior chieftain of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has morphed from a left-wing guerrilla force into a criminal enterprise that produces and transits illegal drugs for profit and uses terrorism as a weapon. Reyes was wanted by Colombian and U.S. authorities for murdering and kidnapping dozens of innocent people, and for trafficking in persons and cocaine. 

Along with about two dozen of his FARC comrades, Reyes was sleeping comfortably in a well-established rebel camp in Ecuador’s Sucumbíos Province, less than two miles outside of Colombian territory. Colombian ground troops recovered Reyes’s body and several laptop computers containing a wealth of information about FARC logistics, operations, and financing. 

In the past, this sort of border incursion has been met with angry rebukes by authorities in Quito and contrite explanations from Bogotá. However, Ecuador does not have the capability or the political will to eliminate the narcoterrorist camps within its borders, and Colombian security forces concluded they had no choice but to strike when a high-value target like Reyes came into their crosshairs. Only the worst kind of hothead would suggest that the two countries go to war over a dead thug.

Enter Hugo Chávez. 

Eight months ago, a reluctant Colombian President Álvaro Uribe authorized Chávez to negotiate the release of nearly 800 innocent persons being held hostage by the FARC. Chávez was eager to whitewash the FARC’s image and garner a diplomatic triumph for himself. But when Chávez violated the terms of his mandate last November, Uribe withdrew his authorization to broker the hostage talks.  

When the FARC finally released two female hostages in January, Chávez recognized the group as a legitimate force and demanded that the United States and the European Union remove it from their respective terrorist lists. Decent people were shocked to see Chávez championing a gang of terrorists that preys on his own people. But the Venezuelan leader saw this process as a way to play “peacemaker” and to embarrass Uribe, whom he reviles for his closeness to the United States. 

Venezuelans have been rioting over the scarcity of basic staples—and now Chávez’s saber-rattling is choking vital two-way trade with Colombia.

In the meantime, Uribe never suspended his military offensive against the FARC, which Raúl Reyes and his sponsor in Caracas learned the hard way on March 1. Chávez was furious that one of his collaborators, with whom he had spoken by telephone days just before, was killed so efficiently and so suddenly. Published reports that Colombian intelligence services located Reyes by triangulating the signal from a phone call with the verbose Venezuelan president must have left Chávez, well, speechless. 

Lieutenant Colonel Chávez—who served in Venezuela’s military until he mounted a failed coup attempt against a democratically elected government in 1992—ordered tanks and troops toward the Colombian border. Colombian commanders have not responded in kind. They probably realize that Venezuela’s politicized and corrupt military has little chance of punching through dense jungle, climbing over mountainous terrain, or slogging through marshes along the border.  

But Colombia did launch a devastating diplomatic offensive, publishing documents discovered in the hard drives of Reyes’s computers that allude to Chávez’s commitment to donate weapons and $300 million to the FARC. The documents cite a meeting between Reyes (a man wanted by Interpol) and Ecuador’s security minister, as well as an alleged offer by the Ecuadoreans to assign FARC-friendly military personnel to the border. No wonder Reyes was sleeping so soundly that morning. 

Colombia’s attack was criticized by virtually every country in the region. But Chávez’s provocative opportunism has undermined his case. Several diplomats speaking at an urgent March 4 meeting at the Organization of American States (OAS) echoed the admonition of Peruvian President Alan García that third countries should not “add fuel to the fire.” Other delegations noted that Colombia is fighting an insurgency that finds refuge in neighboring countries, and referred obliquely to Chávez’s own reckless interference in the internal affairs of other countries. 

As a result, Colombia was spared formal condemnation in an OAS resolution adopted on March 5. Instead, the OAS cited the violation of Ecuadoran territory and dispatched a diplomatic commission to examine the facts and report back to a meeting of the Western Hemisphere’s foreign ministers on March 17. One can hope that greater OAS attention will force Colombia’s neighbors to help clear out the 120 FARC camps said to exist in border areas. 

As for Chávez, his saber-rattling is choking vital two-way trade with Colombia, despite the fact that the Venezuelan people have been rioting for months over the scarcity of basic staples. Indeed, Lieutenant Colonel Chávez may be the only military leader in history to attack his own supply lines. His pointless deployment of thousands of troops along Venezuela’s remote western border must be draining vast resources from a disastrously managed national budget. 

His internal opposition, the Patriotic Front, led by respected democrat Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, has denounced Chávez’s alliance with the FARC as treason against Venezuela. Colombia says it will press the OAS Commission and the International Criminal Court to validate the damning Reyes documents; if the alleged donations of money and weapons to the FARC are proven, Venezuela may be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, which would smother whatever is left of its national economy. 

In the ultimate irony, Chávez’s antics may shake loose the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, which has been languishing in Congress for many months. Approving the Colombia deal would be a fitting American response to the Venezuelan aggression. It would send a clear signal to Chávez that his actions have consequences—just not the ones he may have expected. 

Roger F. Noriega, a senior State Department official from 2001 to 2005, is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His law firm, Tew Cardenas LLP, represents businesses and foreign governments.

Image by Darren Wamboldt/The Bergman Group.