| And who better to train them than Hugo, the hero of... ummm... |
VENEZUELAN military officers have started classes in unconventional warfare to repel an invasion left-wing President Hugo Chavez warns Washington is planning. Snipers draped in foliage and civilian reservists armed with knives, catapults and handguns crawled out of a hidden tunnel in a mock demonstration as an instructor lectured officers on resistance tactics. Captains joined lieutenants straining behind a cordon to see another soldier camouflaged inside tree perch as he fired a bow and peppered a uniformed dummy target with arrows. "If no one comes, then that's fine, we can continue as the free and sovereign country we are, but we cannot permit that any foreign force tries to invade," instructor Lt. Col. Antonio Benavides said as gunfire cracked from a firing range. "All Venezuelans, the state and civil society, have a joint responsibility to defend the nation," he said over the weekend. Locked in a fierce confrontation with the U.S. government, President Chavez is building up civilian reservists and ordering the armed forces to adopt a doctrine emphasizing "asymmetric war" or resistance war against a more powerful foreign force. An initial group of 500,000 civilian reservists and territorial guard volunteers will start four-month basic training nationwide at weekends, said retired Col. Hector Herrera, a reservist advisor.
Washington dismisses Mr Chavez's charges that it plans to oust him to control the world's No. 5 oil exporter and brushes off his invasion talk as sabre-rattling to stir up nationalism before elections in December. But tensions are high as U.S. officials portray Mr Chavez, a self-styled socialist revolutionary allied with Cuba, as a negative influence in Latin America. Washington has opposed Venezuela's recent arms purchases and the reservist drive. The United States and Venezuela last month expelled diplomats after Chavez accused a U.S. naval attache of spying and the former soldier has stepped up threats to cut off U.S. oil shipments. Since surviving a 2002 coup, he has often accused U.S. officials of trying to topple him.